Annual Report 2010 - Enel.com

of industrial economies (such as Germany, Japan and the
United States), but less vigorous in the other industrial
countries.
The central banks of the main developed economies
continued to maintain an expansionary monetary policy
stance in 2010. For the entire year, official interest rates in
the euro area and the United States were kept at a historically
low level (the European Central Bank left its main refinancing
rate at 1%, while the Fed kept its target federal
funds rate at 0.25%).
As regards the financial markets, differences in the performance
of the European economies were reflected in
prices on their respective securities markets.
In the euro area, there was a divergent pattern of developments
in equity indices. More specifically, 2010 ended
with a significant rise in Germany (the DAX index closed
the year with a gain of 16% on 2009), while markets in the
countries of the Mediterranean basin performed markedly
less well (in Italy, the FTSE Italia All Share index closed
the year with a loss of 11.5% and Spain’s IBEX index fell
by 17.4%).
Dividend per
share of €0.28 at
December 31,
2010
Against this background, the utilities segment was among
the worst-performing sectors in 2010. Together with the
banking sector, the utilities indices were the only ones to
post losses for the year (the STOXX Europe 600 Utilities index
fell by about 8% in 2010).
The strong correlation between the utilities sector and the
country risk associated with the perceived sovereign risk
helped drag down the performance of the segment.
In this environment, the performance of the Enel stock
price was in line with the European sector index (Enel
shares closed the year at €3.74, down 7.6%) but significantly
better than all its main European competitors (Enel
outperformed RWE, EDF, E.ON, Iberdrola, EDP and GDF
over the year).
On November 25, 2010, Enel paid an interim dividend on
2010 profits of €0.10 per share, which together with the
dividend paid on June 24, 2010, brought total dividends
paid during the year to €0.25 per share.
At December 31, 2010, the Ministry for the Economy and
Finance held 31.2% of Enel, while institutional investors
37.0% and individual investors the remaining 31.8%.
For further information we invite you to visit the Investor
Relations section of our corporate website (http://www.
enel.com/en-GB/investor/), which contains financial data,
presentations, on-line updates on the share price, information
on corporate bodies and the regulations of shareholders’
meetings, as well as periodic updates on corporate
governance issues.
We have also created contact centers for private investors
(which can be reached by phone at +39-0683054000 or
by e-mail at azionisti.retail@enel.com) and for institutional
investors (phone: +39-0683057975; e-mail: investor.relations@enel.com).
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