U.K.-based Vodafone owns a very tidy 45-percent stake in U.S.-based Verizon Wireless, America's largest mobile phone network. After a long hiatus, the company begin sharing profits with their first payment to Vodafone being $10 billion, shared with Verizon's majority owner, Verizon Communications.

The results of this were $4.3 billion total, with $3.09 billion distributed to its shareholders through a 4-percent dividend in February. This number could rise from $4.3 billion to $4.6 billion this financial year, and balloon out to $6.1 billion by 2016, according to broker Liberum Capital. Liberum analyst Lawrence Sugarman says:

We expect news shortly that the payment will be repeated at a higher level. Verizon has material scope to increase its dividend going forward, and crucially, because of the need to fund the Verizon group dividend, has a significant incentive to pay one.

It should be noted that Verizon Wireless generates $1 billion in cash each month, with revenues continuing to rise.