Paris (AFP)
"Double talk", "hypocrisy": the dividends paid by the multinationals in the second quarter broke a new record despite the economic slowdown, what exasperate the anti-globalization in the approach of a G7 summit focused on the fight against inequality.
A record $ 513.8 billion was distributed as dividends to shareholders in the second quarter, according to the benchmark study released Monday by fund management firm Janus Henderson Investors.
However, their rise (+ 1.1%) was constrained by a slowing economy and the strength of the dollar. By way of comparison, the amount of dividends jumped 14.3% a year earlier.
"The growth rate was the weakest in more than two years", the deceleration of the world economy having "begun to be felt on the dividends", underlines the report, which analyzes dividends paid by the 1,200 companies the largest in terms of market capitalization.
Europe (excluding the United Kingdom), where dividends fell 5.3% to $ 169.5 billion, was the first affected. The global economic slowdown is "particularly noticeable, which affects earnings and therefore limits the ability of European companies to increase dividends," Henderson said.
The Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan also did less well than last year (-2.9% to 43.2 billion dollars), weighted by Hong Kong where "a quarter of the companies" analyzed have reduced their dividends, to because of the Chinese slowdown, according to the document.
- The policies in question -
Not enough to tear up the anti-globalization organizations participating this week in the "counter-summit" of the G7 to "show that there are public policies that could reduce inequalities, finance the fight against climate change, the protection of biodiversity" .
"The world against G7 is not surprised" by "this record figure that illustrates the policies that must be transformed today to finance the general interest rather than remunerate the shareholders," said AFP Maxime Combes, spokesman for Attac France.
And to denounce "a double discourse between a G7 that wants to be that of the fight against inequalities and national policies that help to increase", including encouraging the payment of dividends.
A "hypocrisy" which testifies, according to him, of "the impasse in which we locks this neo-liberal system which privileges the remuneration of the shareholders in the general interest".
"The G7 countries are putting in place policies that favor the payment of dividends, especially at the expense of wages," also said Quentin Parrinello, spokesman for Oxfam France, to AFP.
Compared to last year, "dividends paid in G7 countries have risen three times faster than wages," according to calculations by Oxfam France.
- France very generous -
And if France comes out of this study as "by far the largest payer of dividends in Europe" (+ 3.1% to 51 billion dollars), it is thanks to a tax favorable shareholders, Oxfam criticize together and Attac France.
Since 2015, the global dividends of the second quarter have steadily increased and this pace does not seem to stop.
For the year 2019, Janus Henderson keeps his forecasts unchanged, counting on a record amount of $ 1.430 billion in dividends, an increase of 4.2%.
"Global dividends have grown extremely fast over the last two years and the slowdown we are seeing is not a cause for concern," said Ben Lofthouse, Janus Henderson's director of high-yield international equity management. , quoted in the text.
These forecasts also suggest that dividends will grow faster this year than global economic growth, for which the consensus is between 2.6% (World Bank forecasts) and 3.2% (according to International Monetary Fund estimates). revised downward at the end of July).
The G7, which will gather from Saturday to Monday the leaders of the seven richest countries in the world in Biarritz (south-west of France), has made the fight against inequality its spearhead.
© 2019 AFP