Sweden to Zimbabwe

The starting point - obviously - is that a share generates the requisite yield, say 4 per cent on the latest rolling 12-month payout. Next, I refine by just two criteria. First, I want shares where the price is depressed because that's where good value is most likely to be hiding. So I ask S&P Capital's database to include only those whose price is within 50 per cent of their three-year low. However, I also want some upward momentum; a sign that something is coming right. So the second criterion is to ask for shares where the price is within 10 per cent of the 52-week high.

Actually, the full list is longer than the 16 companies shown. Mostly, I have excluded those overseas companies with a London quote that fulfil the criteria, but more of that in a moment. Instead, the list focuses on UK-domiciled companies as these are the ones that readers are most likely to follow. The only current holding in my income fund to show is Vodafone (VOD), although Tesco (TSCO), a serious contender, is also there (see 'The fallout moment').

Two especially interesting candidates crop up - money broker ICAP (IAP) and oil giant BP (BP.). For years, ICAP was the archetypal growth stock as the company prospered on the back of relentless expansion in the world's financial markets. However, it slowed dramatically when trading volumes collapsed after the credit crunch, and then was brought low by its part in the Libor-rigging scandal. The Libor issue could yet weaken ICAP irrevocably - hence the dividend yield its shares offer - although that's the worst-case scenario.

Similarly, BP has had to negotiate its own scandal - Deepwater Horizon. That won't be a company-breaker, although it will be with BP for years to come. Yet for anyone wanting to take a 10-year view - not that long in an investment lifetime - buying BP's shares for little more than eight times earnings and starting with a 5.5 per cent dividend yield may well turn out to be good business.

However, an intriguing name to crop up is that of Scandinavian paper and packaging group Stora Enso. About 10 years ago the group - created by the 1998 merger of Swedish paper maker Stora and Finnish forestry products company Enso - became a victim of its bosses' wooden thinking. That revolved around its $5bn acquisition in 2000 of US paper maker Consolidated Paper, which became a case study in corporate hubris - wrong company, wrong markets, wrong timing, all of which Stora's bosses could have known when they did the deal.

Consolidated Paper was sold to private equity in 2007 for barely $2bn. Slimmed down, Stora has still never really prospered. However, the key point is that, throughout its trials of the past 10 years or so it never axed its dividend. If it didn't then, it's much less likely to now. True, the current €0.3-per-share payout is just two-thirds of the amount paid between 2003 and 2007. Even so, it yields 5.5 per cent and offers an interesting currency play because Stora's shares are quoted in euros and in Swedish krone (SEK). The euro-denominated stock is easier to trade in London, but the SEK shares are a major constituent of the Stockholm branch of the Nordic Exchange. One for bears of sterling, maybe.

■ Here's a thought. Zimbabwe held presidential and general elections on 31 July, a date hurriedly brought forward by the (mis) ruling Zanu-PF party. The assumption was that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - Zanu-PF's junior (and reluctant) partner in Zimbabwe's ruling coalition - would win a free election. And the slim hope is that - under pressure from other sub-Saharan states (especially South Africa) - Zanu-PF's scope to bribe, bully and beat its way to a victory, as it did in 2008, will be weakened sufficiently to allow the MDC to win this time. True, the MDC are no angels, so there is no saying that Zimbabwe's prospects would be transformed if Zanu-PF and its 89-year-old leader, Robert Mugabe, were kicked out. But prospects could be improved enough to boost local share prices. In which case, shares in Jersey-based closed-end fund Masawara (MASA), which invests almost all its $92m of assets in Zimbabwe, might be worth a look. True, at 54p and a 25 per cent premium to net assets, you can't say Masawara's shares suffer a Mugabe discount. Still, they are decidedly illiquid, so even a little buying would get them moving.

Depressed, but moving