There was plenty of news across the dividend space this week, so let's get right to the top story lines.
Dividend alert
That favorite telecom dividend payer, Frontier Communications
The company finds itself in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. S&P said the company's generous dividend makes it harder to reduce its debt. But if it stops paying a dividend or reduces it drastically to lower that debt, there will be an even bigger investor evacuation than it's already seen lately. The price of the stock has fallen 32% in the last three months.
Apple shines even brighter
If Apple's
Will one head be better than two?
Research in Motion
Lazaridis said in a statement, "I am so confident in RIM's future that I intend to purchase an additional $50 million of the company's shares, as permitted, in the open market." The price for RIM stock has dropped almost 75% since the beginning of 2011.
Clearwire's good news
Clearwire
A wireless transfer
AT&T
And Speaking of the FCC
AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson wasted no time during his company's earnings conference call to press and re-press his desire for the FCC to have no say on who does and does not get to bid on any upcoming wireless spectrum auctions.
What's at stake are some unused broadcast spectrum licenses that Congress is contemplating auctioning off. Stephenson, whose favorite topic is how AT&T will not survive without more spectrum and how "it appears the FCC is intent on picking winners and losers rather than letting [the] markets work," has even made it a little personal. "I think the chairman made a speech the week after the holidays -- the chairman of the FCC -- where he said he needed the rules [of the spectrum auctions] to be fluid. My interpretation is, these rules are so fluid, you can drink out of them with a straw right now."
On that note, until next week.
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