Technology and financials companies bolstered global share buybacks to almost $572bn in the second quarter of 2026, up almost 26.8% from last year, according to the recent Janus Henderson Investors Global Dividends and Buybacks Index.
With $121.1bn in shares repurchased during the period, technology has become the largest source of buybacks globally and recorded the fastest underlying dividend growth at 23.5%.
Jane Shoemake, equities CPM lead, EMEA at Janus Henderson, said: “Dividends remain an important long-term commitment, but buybacks give management teams much more room to respond as their priorities change.
“That flexibility is particularly important in technology, where the scale of investment in AI is forcing companies to balance shareholder returns with significant demands on capital.”
That said, financials remained the largest payer of dividends, with nearly $239.7bn paid out to investors during the period. This represents almost a third of the total payouts delivered by the 1,500 companies in the benchmark index, the report noted.
Indeed, in the UK some of the largest dividend payers were financial stocks, with names such as HSBC, NatWest, Lloyds, Standard Chartered and Legal and General featuring prominently in the top 10.
Shoemake added: “Banks have spent years rebuilding their dividend bases and are now increasingly using buybacks to return surplus capital without committing themselves to permanently higher payouts.
“More broadly, this is becoming a much more selective market, where strong earnings still support shareholder returns, but where that growth comes from depends on the structural and competitive forces facing each sector,” she added.
In the UK more generally, dividend payouts remained broadly robust, with more than $39.5bn distributed and dividend growth coming in at 14.6%, while global underlying dividend growth came in at 7.3%.
Europe was the second-largest regional dividend payer, but growth was much more modest than other markets at just 3.2%. This was attributed to consumer weakness in areas such as automotives, which have faced the twin challenges of softer demand and competition from Chinese car makers.
Looking forward to the rest of 2026, Janus Henderson forecasted global dividend growth of about 6% and buyback growth of up to 8%. Dividends should be supported by corporate earnings and strong cash generation in financials and technology and so seem mostly well protected according to the report.
