Friday Email: 17 July 2015
Every Friday morning our lead analyst Mark Riding sends out his weekly run-down and upcoming events in the investor calendar, like this one:
After a weekend that saw the Greek crisis head towards resolution, the FTSE 100 has risen steadily from Fridays close of 6673 to Thursdays close of 6796, up 123 points as the measures for Greece are slowly put in place.
On the corporate front the past week was very quiet with only four companies that we cover reporting. Dixons Carphone produced a big dividend increase of 42%, which was the highlight. Carnival cruises also increased its quarterly dividend for the first time in a long time by 20% from 25 cents (US) to 30 cents.
The week ahead sees the start of the interim reporting season which for me always gives you a feel for the overall outcome for individual companies and the markets as a whole for the year. It is a relatively quiet week which becomes extremely busy in the week beginning 27th July. Companies going ex-dividend in the week ahead include the 3.81% SSE final dividend and the 2.25% GVC dividend which is effectively a quarterly dividend.
There was one request for an addition to DividendMax this week and that was AdEPT Telecom
The Friday email is delivered to over 20,000 subscriber’s every week, and remains a widely read run-down of recent events and what investors can expect in the week ahead written by our chief analyst Mark Riding.
It’s included as part of the free DividendMax trial.
Read next: 10 July 2015
That was an interesting week considering that there was very little corporate news. We started with the aftermath of the Greek referendum vote and in the middle of the week the Chancellor Of The Exchequer announced big changes to the tax treatment of dividends, applicable from April 2016; which will be at the same time that individuals who who took out annuities in the past can cash in their annuities and manage the money themselves or pass it to somebody else to manage. Main thing is that you can draw down on the principal and pass on what you don't use to whomever you want. So. A great deal for the DIY investor to ponder in about over the next nine months. The UK market has not reacted badly to the new dividend proposals with the Greece and China situation carrying far more weight at the moment.