The best dividend recovery plays in the UK right now

The collapse in UK dividends this year has been unprecedented. But in time they will return. Cris Sholto Heaton looks at some of the UK's most interesting income plays.

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Shell is well placed for decent growth once oil demand recovers
(Image credit: © Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

If you’d told investors at the start of 2020 that a crisis would halve UK dividends, nobody would have believed you. Yet that’s roughly what happened in the second and third quarters of the year.

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Cris Sholto Heaton

Cris Sholto Heaton is an investment analyst and writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2006 and was managing editor of the magazine between 2016 and 2018. He is especially interested in international investing, believing many investors still focus too much on their home markets and that it pays to take advantage of all the opportunities the world offers. He often writes about Asian equities, international income and global asset allocation.

Cris began his career in financial services consultancy at PwC and Lane Clark & Peacock, before an abrupt change of direction into oil, gas and energy at Petroleum Economist and Platts and subsequently into investment research and writing. In addition to his articles for MoneyWeek, he also works with a number of asset managers, consultancies and financial information providers.

He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and the Investment Management Certificate, as well as degrees in finance and mathematics. He has also studied acting, film-making and photography, and strongly suspects that an awareness of what makes a compelling story is just as important for understanding markets as any amount of qualifications.