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Billionaire Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta, a diversified natural resources company, has announced its highest-ever interim dividend of ₹21.20 an equity share, leading to an outflow of ₹7,881 crore in this financial year.
Similarly, the company will also pay a dividend of 7.5 per cent a year for this fiscal on the preference shares of ₹3,010 crore and allotted to shareholders of erstwhile Cairn India which was merged with Vedanta last April. The total dividend payout to both its equity and preference shareholders is ₹8,091 crore.
As part of consolidating its holding in India, Vedanta merged Cairn India with itself last year. Investors received for each equity share held in Cairn India one equity share and four redeemable preference shares in Vedanta.
The company has fixed March 21 as record date for both dividend payouts which help the parent company Vedanta Resources to reduce its debt of $18 billion as of last fiscal while the India subsidiary has a debt of $11 billion. However, both the companies have been repaying debt in the last few months.
The board of directors who met here on Tuesday also approved the appointment of former SEBI Chairman UK Sinha as a Non-Executive Independent Director.
Sinha was the Chairman of SEBI between February 2011 and March 2017 and was instrumental in bringing about key capital market reforms. Prior to SEBI, he was the CMD of UTI AMC and has also worked for the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance.
Navin Agarwal, Chairman, Vedanta, said Sinha is an architect of the strong regulatory regime of India’s capital markets.
Emphasis on disclosure
UK Sinha said he will contribute to Vedanta achieving greater levels in its corporate governance practices with emphasis on disclosure and governance for corporate India in the current environment.
Vedanta has business interests in oil & gas, zinc, lead, silver, aluminium, copper, iron ore and commercial power. The company has American Depository Receipts listed on the NYSE.
Shares of Vedanta gained 1 per cent to ₹321 on Tuesday.
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