European companies generally pay higher dividends than American companies. Most companies have maintained that tradition during the past two years when the global financial crisis ravaged world markets. Many European banks have reduced or suspended their dividends due to government bailouts and the subsequent ownership stakes they acquired. Because of their high dividend yields, European dividend stocks are worth considering when looking for developed market equities that offer stable growth with solid dividends.

The Dow Jones EURO STOXX® Select Dividend 30 Index offers exposure to the highest dividend-paying European stocks relative to their home markets. “Set up in advance of the launch of the Euro currency, the index covers stocks from Eurozone countries and stocks are screened by defined historical non-negative dividend-per-share growth rates and dividend to earnings-per-shares ratios. The benchmark is a yield weighted index.” The iShares DJ Euro STOXX Select Dividend ETF (IDVY) which trades on the London Stock Exchange, tracks the above index. The fund has a 4.31% (Euros) dividend yield.

One of the dividend ETFs for European stocks is the iShares DJ Euro STOXX Select Dividend (FDD). This ETF offers exposure to European companies that have historically paid out high dividends.

The Top 10 holdings in the iShares DJ Euro STOXX Select Dividend ETF are listed below together with the current dividend yields and ticker if listed in the US markets as ADRs:

The Dow Jones Utilities Titans 30 Index represents 30 leading companies in the global utilities sector. These stocks are selected based on “rankings by float-adjusted market capitalization, revenue and net profit.”

Generally considered as defensive plays, utility stocks offer consistent yields and stable long-term growth. However this year the sector is under-performing other sectors. For example, the S&P 500 is up 10.13% for the year as of September 2nd. The IT components in the index are up a cool 35.88% year-to-date (YTD). But the utility components are the second worst performers with a loss of 1.94% YTD.

Too many green investors – and the U.S.-based fund managers that cater to them – are about to miss out on green energy’s long term trillion-dollar payoff because they insist on investing in companies that generate 50% or more of revenue directly from sales of green products like wind turbines and solar panels.

Nobody would mistake German engineering giant Siemens AG (SI), Swiss engineering behemoth ABB Ltd. (ABB), or Deutsche Bank AG (DB) as green energy companies. Indeed, Siemens and ABB are detested by many environmentalists because they construct fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants.

The OTC market is often overlooked by investors. Some of the large foreign companies are listed in the OTC markets.

When I ran my screen with the conditions:
Market Cap >= $25B
Dividend yield >=5%

Oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth's surface. As the world's largest solar collectors, oceans generate thermal energy from the sun. They also produce mechanical energy from the tides and waves. Even though the sun affects all ocean activity, the gravitational pull of the moon primarily drives the tides, and the wind powers the ocean waves.

Wave power is the capture of the energy from waves on the surface of the ocean. It is one of the newer forms of renewable or 'green' energy under development, not as advanced as solar energy, fuel cells, wind power, ethanol, geothermal companies, and flywheels. However, interest in wave power is increasing and may be the wave of the future in coastal areas according to many sources including the International Energy Agency Implementing Agreement on Ocean Energy Systems (Report 2009).

With solar and wind energy heating up gradually, there is breaking news everyday around the globe in this sector. This article will be updated weekly in the renewable energy sector summarizing what happened and what's coming up. I will keep it simple, straight and just focus on the facts.

1. President-elect Obama on Saturday released his latest weekly speech to the nation, reaffirming his efforts to invest more on renewable energy as part of the nation's new energy plan.
2. China Datang Corp., the China's second-biggest power producer, received state permission to build a 4.5 billion-yuan ($659 million) wind farm in Jilin province as the government expedites project approvals to spur economic growth. The plant will have a capacity of 400 megawatts according to a Bloomberg report.
3. A-Power Energy Generation Systems, Ltd. (APWR) on January 2 announced it will celebrate the launch of its first wind turbine production facility, the largest in China, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Shenyang, China, on Sunday, January 11, 2009. Mr. Jinxiang Lu, A-Power's Chairman and CEO, said, "We look forward to having our investors join us at this extremely exciting, and historic, event, which marks the full launch of our wind turbine business in China. Our wind turbine facility, strategically located in the city of Shenyang, is the largest in China, with total annual production capacity of over 1,125MW of wind turbines."
4. Photovoltaic module manufacturer Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP) announced that it is jointly constructing a 66MW on-grid photovoltaic project with Yunnan Provincial Power Investment and other investors. The project began construction in December in Shilin.
5. Schmid Silicon Technology announced on December 31, 2008 it will invest in China to build a monosilan and polysilicon production plant. The company is expected to start production in June 2009, and annual production capacity can reach 540 tons of monosilan.
6. According to a Chinese newenergy.com report(in Chinese: www.newenergy.com.cn), China's wind energy capacity has reached 1GW in 2008. Solar energy is expected to increase 30% in 2009.
7. Energy firm RWE nPower (RWEOY.PK) has revealed plans to build up to three new nuclear power stations in Anglesey, Wales, the Guardian has reported. The British branch of the German-owned firm has announced its intention to make a 'multibillion-pound investment' in the area which could generate 3.6 gigawatts of energy which could provide power for up to 5m homes from 2012.

Disclosure: Long STP.

The Dow Jones STOXX Global Select Dividend 100 Index tracks the high-dividend-yielding companies in the Dow Jones STOXX Global 1800 Index that includes the Americas,Europe and Asia-Pacific. The 100 components in the index contains 40 stocks for the Americas and 30 each for Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The Dow Jones STOXX Global Select Dividend 100 Index Components:

The German economy is the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world. The country attracted EUR 439 billion Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 2006. With a high productivity rate and a world-class education system Germany ensures that its citizens maintain high standards of living. Germany is also number one for research and is Europe’s largest logistics market. Decreasing labor costs and corporate tax levels have created an investor-friendly economy.

Some of the world’s leading companies are based in Germany. To identify the largest companies in Germany, I used the main stock market index in Germany- the DAX. The DAX contains the 30 largest and most liquid stocks traded in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The DAX is a performance-based index. All dividends, stock splits and other events occurring to index components are rolled into the index. The 30 stocks represented in the index are the blue chips of Germany.

Many high quality large foreign companies can be found trading on the Pink Sheets market. These stocks do not attract attention from investors in the way stocks traded on the organized exchanges do. One need not completely ignore the Pink Sheet stock market just because some of the rogue company stocks trade there. One of the main reasons some foreign stocks list their ADRs on the Pink Sheets is because they do not want to follow the expensive regulatory requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley act. Some of the successful companies that trade on the Pink Sheets are Nestle (NSRGY.PK), E.ON (EONGY.PK), and BASF (BASFY.PK).

To find the top international pink sheet stocks, I ran a stock screener with the following criteria:

In this post, let's discuss the top 10 European utility companies and their ADR stocks.

For our analysis, we'll use the Dow Jones STOXX® 600 Utilities Index as the proxy. This contains all the largest utility companies of Europe. There are a total of 33 components in this index. The components are:

The amount of water on this planet hasn’t really changed in the last million years. However, today there are over six billion humans drinking and bathing in the stuff. And while the world’s population has doubled in the last 60 years, water consumption has more than tripled over the same time period.

Wave power, is the capture of the energy from waves on the surface of the ocean. It is one of the newer forms of renewable or 'green' energy under development, not as advanced as solar energy, fuel cells, wind power, ethanol, geothermal companies, and flywheels. However, interest in wave power is increasing and may be the wave of the future in coastal areas [no pun intended]. All of the following companies participate in wave power, however for most of the following stocks, wind power is only a very small part their business.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PCG) is building the first American commercial wave power plant in Northern California, in conjunction with Finavera, which will be located 2.5 miles offshore and is expected to begin operating in four years, powering about 1500 homes. The contract to begin the project was signed in 2007. The stock has a P/E of 15, a PEG of 1.77 and a yield of 3.9%.

Many investors believe that Pink Sheets stocks are speculative and dangerous investments. I've even been criticized for mentioning Pink Sheet stocks in some of my articles, in spite of the fact that the stocks I mentioned were major, large cap companies.

Pink Sheet stocks shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, because sometimes this is the only way to invest in many foreign stocks. As a matter of fact, dozens of European companies have opted out of trading on the New York Stock Exchange and have decided to have their ADR's traded on over-the-counter.

The Carbon Disclosure Project [CDP] is a self-styled institutional investor collaboration on the “business implications of climate change.” The group has its beginnings in the United Kingdom but has been joined by some high-profile U.S. institutions like Blackrock, CalPERS and CalSTRS.