Dividends

Amgen Inc. provided a long-term financial forecast above Wall Street estimates and said it would begin paying a dividend this year amounting to about 20% of its adjusted net income, and increasing in the future. The world's largest biotechnology company, seeking to map out its growth strategy, told a meeting of investors and analysts in New York on Thursday that it expects 2015 revenue of $16 billion to $18 billion and earnings of $7.25 a share to $8.60 a share. Analysts on average are estimating 2015 earnings of $7.16 a share and revenue of $16.95 billion, according to Thomson Reuters, but Amgen shares fell 4.5% Thursday.

Goldman Sachs took a hit to its first quarter earnings after paying dividends to billionaire investor Warren Buffett's company, which invested $5 billion in the bank at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. The investment bank's first-quarter income fell 72 percent to $908 million after it paid $1.64 billion in dividends to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said its revenue fell 7 percent to $11.9 billion on weakness in some of its core businesses including stock and bond trading and advising clients.

Bank of America Corp. revealed Wednesday that the Federal Reserve rejected its plan for a modest dividend increase in the second half of the year, even as other large banks are raising dividends in the first half of the year. The bank, based in Charlotte, said in a securities filing that it would continue to work with the Fed and planned to submit a revised capital plan that would again call for a modest increase in the quarterly dividend, now at 1 cent a share. A spokesman said BofA would resubmit its proposal in "the coming months.

Citigroup Inc. will resume paying a nominal dividend after it uses a reverse stock split to shrink the number of shares outstanding, taking a small step in its recovery from the financial crisis. Citigroup will pay a quarterly dividend of a penny a share, its first payout since 2009. But the bank's shares dropped Monday, in part because it remains behind rivals like JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co. Those banks Friday received regulatory authorization to increase their dividends as much as 20 cents a share and buy back stock.

The Federal Reserve is letting some of the nation's 19 largest banks increase or restart dividend payments, freeing them from restrictions in place since early 2009. The Fed's decision came after it completed a second round of extensive "stress tests" on the banks to determine whether they could release some of their capital reserves and still withstand future economic shocks. Some of the banks, such as Wells Fargo & Co. in San Francisco and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, quickly announced increases in dividends following the Fed's statement Friday.

Avery Dennison Corp., a maker of adhesives for everything from beverage labels to apparel tags and road signs, said on Wednesday its fourth-quarter profit more than doubled on sales gains at its two biggest business segments. The Pasadena-based company also said its board raised the quarterly dividend by 25 percent, and authorized additional share repurchases. For the three months ended Jan. 1, Avery Dennison reported net income of $114.2 million, or $1.06 per share, compared with a profit of $49.9 million, or 47 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago. Excluding items such as restructuring and asset impairment charges, Avery Dennison reported a profit of $105.

Declaring that it is now stronger than before the recession, Los Angeles-based City National Corp. reported 37% higher fourth-quarter earnings, even after two large one-time charges, and doubled its dividend to shareholders. The parent of City National Bank said after the close of trading Thursday that it earned $39.7 million, or 74 cents a share, up from $29.1 million, or 38 cents, in the final quarter of 2009. Excluding the two one-time charges, fourth-quarter net income totaled $47.1 million, or 88 cents a share, the bank said.

Pasadena's East West Bancorp Inc. has repaid its more than $300-million slice of bailout funds from the U.S. Treasury, but several smaller Southern California banks are struggling even to make dividend payments on their investments from Uncle Sam. East West, the largest bank focused on the Chinese American market, said Wednesday that it used available cash to return the $306.5 million in preferred stock that the Treasury Department had purchased at the height of the financial crisis, along with a final quarterly dividend of $1.8 million.

California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has ratcheted up the pressure in a long-running dispute with Cypress-based PacifiCare. Poizner has ordered the health insurer not to pay $120 million in dividends to two subsidiaries of its parent company, saying the money may be needed to cover possible penalties in an administrative case brought by the Department of Insurance. The department has accused PacifiCare of violating state law nearly 1 million times from 2006 to 2008 by mismanaging medical records, losing patient documents and failing to pay doctors what they were owed.

Sitting on a record pile of cash, corporate America is beginning to open its wallet ? at least to shareholders. General Electric Co. on Friday raised its dividend payment to investors for the second time this year. The conglomerate lifted its quarterly payout to 14 cents a share from 12 cents, a 17% increase. That followed a 2-cent boost in July. GE's increased generosity is part of a broader trend: Standard & Poor's monthly tally of dividend payments by public companies showed that 137 firms raised their payouts in November, up 83% from the 75 increases in the same month of 2009 and the most for any month since April 2008.