Banks to Resume Paying Dividends

Things are about to start looking up for those invested in bank shares: Wall Street banks will resume paying dividends in the first half of this year after withholding them the previous three years while they fixed their damaged balanced sheets. It will put billions back in the pockets of pension funds and retirees who depended on their investment bank shares as a source of income. After the financial crisis in 2008, banks reduced their once-lucrative dividends to just pennies per share, hitting ordinary investors hard. No one knows yet how big the payout will be, but clues will come as the big banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo announce their financial performance for 2010. If they reveal a second straight year of profits, regulators will likely approve dividend increases as soon as March.