In last few months, quite a few Indian business houses embarked upon fund raising for one reason or the other. Some businesses raised funds for debt financing needs, some needed operation cash, some needed working capital, some need for growth needs, and many needed it little bit for everything. Furthermore, the method adopted by business houses have been varied such as qualified institutional placements (QIPs), american depository shares (ADS), global depository shares (GDS), non-convertible debentures (NCDs), asset sales, stake sales, and public offering (IPOs). In general the response has been tremendous and quite a bit of capital was/is being committed by all the participants, including retail investors like you and me.
In April/June 2009 timeframe, it is estimated that a total of $24 billion was raised by Indian companies, while it is estimated that $30+ billion was raised in first six months of 2009. Now this is just the amount raised and does not include the amount committed. The table below shows the some the companies that have gone to capital markets for raising funds. It is not comprehensive but shows the level of capital raised in foreign markets, and in Indian markets.
There are many different styles, approach, and methods of investing. Many individual investors focus on trading (swing, positional, momentum, speculation, technicals etc.), while many others focus of investing (value, growth, blend, etc), and still many others on special situations (opportunistic, arbitrages, etc). In addition, there are quite a few individual investors that attempt at combination of trading and investing. Similar to glass being half full or half empty, I believe every style has its own pros and cons’ depending upon in what context one is looking at it. Individuals have to figure out what works best for them.
S&P Pan Asia Dividend Aristocrats
Standard & Poor’s is a US based provider of financial market intelligence which includes ratings, investment research, risk evaluation and data, and various types of indices. Among multiple different indices with different focus areas, one index is the dividend aristocrat index.
The Dividend Aristocrats is an index which consists of S&P500 companies that have been raising dividends continuously for 25 years or more. That is, every year, the dividend per share keeps on increasing. If any company that reduces or cuts the dividend in any given year, it is removed from the index. Now this is the characteristics that can be viewed in multiple ways, but TIPBlog is about Indian investments. Therefore, I will not go into detailed discussion. But it gives the context for this posts further discussion.
In markets of Asia or other parts of the world, it has been difficult to find a single company that has consistently raised their dividends year after year. Outside United States, there has been lack of consistency in the way the corporate’s managed dividend strategy, or the way the government policies taxed dividends to companies and common shareholders.
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