by Chin-Bun Tse, Man age ment Cen tre, Uni ver sity of Leices ter, Uni ver sity Road, Leicester Eng land, U.K. LE1 7RH Ab stract We ex am ine the divi dend pay out pat terns for all UK listed in dus trial com pa nies fea tured in the FTSE All Share In dex for the pe riod 1992-1998. Then we match the pay out pat terns to dif fer ent divi dend poli cies. From our em piri cal ob ser va tions, we ar gue that divi dend sig nal ling does not uni ver sally ap ply to all firms. We also re port our evi

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... ence that there is no in dus try norm for divi dend pol icy, par ticu larly when firms have de cided whether to use divi dends to sig nal or not. In ad di tion, we found that the per cent age of in sid ers' share hold ings, mar ket capi tali sa tion and as set book val ues are sta tis ti cally sig nifi cant for de termin ing whether firms use divi dends to sig nal or not. Key words: divi dend sig nal ling, pay out pat tern, divi dend pol icy In tro duc tion