UK quarterly dividends jump to record £36.7bn despite slow underlying growth

1.1% underlying growth

UK dividends have risen by 11.2% year-on-year to a record £36.7bn, following a jump in one-off special dividends.

When excluding one-off special payments, regular dividends reached £32.5bn, also representing a new record and a 1% increase year-on-year on a constant currency basis, according to Computershare's Q2 UK Dividend Monitor.  This low underlying growth rate of just 1% can be attributed to a volatile mining sector which saw a second consecutive year of cuts, reaching £2bn in Q2. Had the mining sector been excluded from the data, growth would have been recorded at 8.6%. Growth was notably broad-based too, with 16 out of 21 sectors seeing increased payouts. HSBC regains crown as top UK...