Sumathi Kumaraswamy

This study identifies the dividend policy determinants of banks and other financial institutions listed on Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) for a period from 2009 to 2015 through studying the impact on eight factors on banks’ dividends per share. Three models were adopted to investigate the determinants of the dividend policy and the factors that affect a bank’s decision to pay out dividends. The findings indicate that the previous year’s dividends per share, earnings per share, cash flow per share, firm size and return on average equity are positively related to the current year’s dividends per share, as hypothesized. The study shows that the leverage position, bank’s life cycle and growth opportunities are negatively related to the dividend payment. The study also reveals that banks and financial institutions in Qatar do a bit of “earnings smoothing” when comparing the earnings figures with the cash flow.

This paper is in pursuit of analyzing and elongating prior research on the performance evaluation of mutual funds by a comparative analysis with three categories of 82 Saudi equity funds during 2011 to 2016 using Fama’s decomposition model. The paper also made an attempt to explore the relationship with the risk reward ratio to the relative performance measure in predicting the future performance of the Saudi equity fund returns. The empirical results show that Saudi local equity funds perform better followed by Arabian and international/global equity funds in terms of expected signs and diagnostic tests.