Because AT&T's common shares earn a dividend while the wireless shares do not, each share that is exchanged would allow AT&T to reduce its overall dividend payments, which totaled $2.7 billion last year.
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, left, who outlined the new plan Sunday, said owners of these "New Singapore" shares would be able to either redeem them for cash or hold them and earn a dividend each year and a bonus in bumper years.
Similar grumbles are also heard from annoyed debt-holders in America.The picture is further complicated by Germany's takeover laws, which give minority shareholders the right to earn a fixed dividend on their shares even if the company makes a loss.
The investors, who also included TPG Capital, Magnetar Capital and EIG Global Energy Partners, will earn a 6 percent quarterly dividend and a 3.75 percent royalty from the first 1,000 new wells drilled on the land in Oklahoma.
Investors are told that nontraded securities, which have limited liquidity, allow ordinary people to participate in real estate investment while earning a higher dividend than what the traded ones offer, free from the volatility of the stock market.
Buffett's preferred stock earns a 10percentt dividend annually.
Before capital became more global, most equity investors in British companies were UK-based pension funds wanting to keep their holdings over the long term to earn a reliable income through dividends.
Companies with positive three-year dividend growth earn an average relative risk score of 69, versus 56 for dividend payers with flat or declining payouts.
The two companies have outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and the REIT industry over the last three years, during which they returned about $3.5 billion to investors by way of dividends, earning a total return of about 14percentt a year.
If it fails to earn that dividend, the payment becomes a return of capital.
His argument only strengthens the image of two Americas -- the one, as Bai writes, "where so many Americans earn stock dividends and where a growing number are self-employed"; and the other, where 1.3 million workers are employed by Wal-Mart, many at a subsistence-level income.
