Dividend party for UK investors may soon be over

Inside Business: Payouts to investors are running at record levels. But is that a good thing?

Nearly all the FTSE 100’s constituents pay dividends (Getty)

Investors on the hunt for dividends are having a fine old time of it.

Broker AJ Bell recently found 20 FTSE 350 (which includes the blue chip FTSE 100 and the second tier FTSE 250 indices) companies that have managed to increase their payouts by more than inflation over every year of the past decade, with the average annual hike ranging from a stunning 34 per cent (in the case of Ashtead, which hires out industrial equipment) to a still highly respectable 7 per cent.

Meanwhile Link Group’s UK dividend monitor found that in the second quarter of this year, they rose 14.5 per cent on a headline basis, with the total pay out hitting a record at £38.7bn. That’s £4.4bn above the previous high set two years ago.