When the Dutch East India Company began sailing to Asia, voyages were risky and expensive – expeditions needed money and investors were not always easy to find.
Someone had an idea – why not incentivise wealthy merchants to invest by offering them annual rewards? The concept of dividends was born – initially paid in nutmeg and cloves, subsequently hard cash – and, more than 300 years later, it is alive and kicking.
FTSE 100 companies are expected to pay almost £89 billion in dividends this year, a record sum for Britain’s leading stock market index, according to investment platform AJ Bell.
The largest
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