Realities of the Dividend Freeze

The scan: The Week v6 no16.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

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from a special corresnondent The July 29th White Paper stated that company dividends "should not be increased during the current 12 month standstill period." The compulsory standstill under the Act coes not apply to dividends so that the freeze, such as it is, remains an entirely voluntary affair. Even where a company complies with the Government's request, the dividend is not lost to the shareholder, but is placed into the company's reserve fund to be paid out at some later date. One large civil engineering compa the Cementation Company, for example, set up a special £100,000 fund which will presumably pay a 3 per cent bonus at an appropriate time, following the witholding of a 3 per cent dividend rise which they had intended to pay. Another glaring weakness concerns the inability of the “reasury to know whether the freeze is being complied with. The half a million private companies , some of which make very large profits, are under no compunction to announce their dividends end checks, either by their workneople or by the Government are non-existent.