Welcome to Ex Dividend Date

Benchmark Yields

When buying shares, to be eligible to receive the dividend you must have purchased your shareholding before, and held the shares up to and including, the ex-dividend date. You can then sell the shares at any point after the market opens on the ex-dividend date and still receive the dividend payment. If you are new to dividend investing, we have a guide to dividends and dividend definitions. If you have any questions, notice any errors in the data displayed or have any other feedback please don't hesitate to contact us.

Over the long term, and especially when reinvested, the most impressive returns in the stockmarket come from income in the form of dividend payments. Before buying shares for income investing, use our website to filter ex-dividend dates and find dividend paying shares according to:

• Index: FTSE 100, FTSE 250, FTSE Small Cap, FTSE Fledgling and AIM
• Ex-Div Date: when the share is going ex-dividend
• Payment Date: when the dividend is due to be paid

If you'd like to check the latest share prices of the companies listed, you have the option of displaying the EPIC as a link to Yahoo Finance. This will allow you to see the share price of the company concerned, delayed by 15 minutes. You can then divide the value of the Amount column (note: if it's in cents (¢), you'll need to convert it at a website such as www.xe.com first) in the table above by the share price and multiply by 100 to see what the next dividend payment would yield were you to purchase shares at the current share price.

When considering whether to invest in a company for income on the stockmarket, investors will often look towards benchmark yields before deciding whether to buy shares. One such benchmark is the yield of the 10 year gilt. Most investors will demand a premium to the 10 year gilt yield, which, as a government-backed asset, is seen as a far less risky investment compared to equities. As a result, you will most likely be looking for a premium to this. However, a caveat is that anything more than around 1.5 times this may be too good to be true and prove to be shortlived. Other benchmarks include the FTSE dividend yield, with investors keen to confirm a dividend is competitive with the wider market.