Higher dividend payouts yielding results for Asian Pacific equities

A spate of Asian income fund launches at the end of 2005 is switching investor attention to the yield on offer in the region. Aberdeen, Schroders and Newton are among the groups that brought out products last year but research from UBS suggests it is not just Asia ex Japan that has a good yield story to tell. While it predicts a 3.7% yield for the region in 2006 with dividend cover of 2.3 times, it also predicts 4.1% for Latin America with cover of 2.8 times. This compares with the lower yields of 2% in the US and 1.2% for Japan. However, each country a has higher dividend cover at 3.4 ...