Lascelles de Mercado said Monday it would pay dividend amounting to $14 per share, ending a drought for ordinary shareholders who have received no returns for at least two years.

Dividends have, however, been paid on the preference shares.

Lascelles, which has 96 million issued shares, will on June 26 pay $6 per ordinary unit, and a special distribution of $8 per unit - totalling $1.34 billion.

Lascelles group Managing Director William McConnell said the special distribution represented a portion of the dividend collected from cigarette distributor Carreras Limited, in which the spirits company has 15.3 per cent ownership, or 74.26 million shares.

"If you look at history of Lascelles deMercado, they pass on to shareholders any extraordinary distribution by virtue of shareholdings in Carreras," said McConnell.

"I'm not saying passed on all, but a substantial portion. We wanted to separate that from the interim dividend, which is almost equal."

Carreras paid out super dividends last year, opting to share some $3.2 billion of savings from a tax case that was initially earmarked as tax penalties, but which the Revenue Court ruled it was not required to pay.

Lascelles has traditionally paid an annual $1 dividend to shareholders, last recorded in January 2007. It paid dividends in 2008, but on its six per cent and 15 per cent prefs.

Still, the new levels of generosity by the company comes under the new ownership of ultimate parent CL Financial group of Trinidad, which bought the Jamaican conglomerate in 2008.

And most of the dividend - $1.17 billion - will flow to companies in the CLF group, which together control 86.89 per cent of the ordinary shares.

business@gleanerjm.com