Focus on Dividend Practices of Omani Firms Questionnaire Survey Findings

Keeping in view that it is a conventional practice to classify dividend policy into three mutually exclusive groups -- residual, independent and simultaneous models -- and being fully aware that the basic idea of the residual dividend policy is that firms consider their investment and financing activities as more important than their dividend decisions, the author in this paper has employed Fama's methods to determine the three decisions: dividends, borrowings and investment simultaneously which are mutually exclusive. Based on the author's expirical research which focused on factors which have played an important role in determining the firms' dividend policy, he has opined that Omani firms' dividend payments are determined by the previous dividend level, current profits, future position, the shareholders' preference, balances of retained earnings etc. and keeping in mind that the stability of dividend payments is one of the main concerns of management. Additionally, firms are using their dividend payments as a signal device of the Management's forecast of the firms' future prospects