DIVIDEND BONANZA

Stock markets may have turned topsy-turvy, but shareholders of the 30 Sensex stocks are in for over Rs 36,000-crore bonanza in terms of dividend payouts by these companies. While promoters of these top blue-chip companies will get around Rs 15,500 crore as their share in this dividend bonanza, the non-promoters, including retail investors and institutions, would also get over Rs 20,000 crore. These dividends have been approved by the boards of the respective companies for the fiscal year 2012-13 and would be paid to the shareholders in the coming weeks. They include special or interim dividend payments in some cases. Companies like ITC, ICICI Bank, HDFC and L&T have no promoter entities and therefore the dividend payouts by these companies would entirely go to non-promoter shareholders. Leading the dividend charts, ITC is expected to pay more than Rs 4,000 crore, followed by RIL (over Rs 3,000 crore), SBI (nearly Rs 2,900 crore), Coal India (Rs 2,700 crore), TCS (Rs 2,500 crore) and ICICI Bank ( Rs 2,300 crore). Among others, mortgage major HDFC is expected to dole out nearly Rs 1,900 crore as dividend, power utility NTPC about Rs 1,650 crore, IT giant Infosys Rs 1,550 crore, private lender HDFC Bank Rs 1,300 crore, two-wheeler major Bajaj Auto Rs 1,300 crore and FMCG behemoth HUL close to Rs 1,300 crore. Sensex constituents like L&T, Wipro and Hero MotoCorp are also expected to pay total dividend of over Rs 1,000 crore each, while other bluechips like Sun Pharma, Gail Tata Steel and Tata Motors could pay over Rs 500 crore in dividends.