"Extended payment" funds would redeem shares at any time but could take longer than seven days to pay shareholders.

The board of Allegis, which owns United Airlines, decided to pay shareholders $60 a share in cash while letting them keep their stock.

Under the plan, the $750 million cash to pay shareholders would come from United's current cash holdings of $1.9 billion.

In other words, more of the earnings would be available to pay to the other claimants, that is, shareholders and creditors.

This means they use their money to run their services and reward their members - not to pay outside shareholders.

As a result, Credit Suisse said it would cut the dividend it pays shareholders for the first time in its 146-year history.

So are the companies' accountants, underwriters, insurers and anyone else with money to pay shareholders for the injuries they claim.

Microsoft displayed an extreme example of this recently in the huge dividend it voted to pay shareholders.

Performance often suffers because managers must hold cash to pay exiting shareholders, especially during the first six months after the conversion, when redemptions are usually high.

Such schemes use the cash from new investors to pay shareholders.