Sunday, November 27 2005 16:13 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Shareholders of NYSE-listed Wipro including its chairman Azim Premji with his 81 per cent holding, can expect windfall as the soap-to-software maker is considering 'generous' dividend pay-outs than the last two years, from its approximate one billion dollar cash reserves.

"We have one billion dollar in cash reserves we plan to give more generous dividends to the shareholders than over the past two years but under the broad outline of the company's current dividend policy," Premji said here today (Nov 27, 2005).

However the entire reserves would not go towards the payouts as Premji said part of the reserves would be utilized in funding acquisitions.

"We are looking at mid-sized companies of 25 million US$-100 million US$ companies in US, Europe and domestic also. We are interested in acquiring companies with specialized verticals like retail in certain geographies like continental Europe", he said.

For the year 2004-05, the board of Wipro had recommended dividend of Rs 5 a share (250 per cent on par value), despite a bottomline growth that fell short of market expectations.

The company had also declared a one-time special dividend of Rs 25 on the eve of crossing the billion-dollar revenue mark in addition to the regular dividend.