UNCLAIMED DIVIDEND: MATTERS ARISING

Abstract

One of the major essences of investment in the ordinary shares of an organization is the return on investment which could be in the form of capital appreciation or dividend. Dividends are payments made by company to its shareholders. It is an after tax profit appropriated to the members of the company (shareholders). Over the years the value of these dividends remaining unclaimed in the books of these organizations are becoming alarming. Various reasons are attributed to this increase in unclaimed dividends. Some of these reasons include: death of shareholders, change of address by investors, lost of dividend warrant on transit. In order to understand the dynamics of unclaimed dividend descriptive statistic was used to analyze data from First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) for the period of ten years. We discovered that unclaimed dividend is increasing geometrically.