ThyssenKrupp to pay dividend despite loss -paper

FRANKFURT Oct 26 (Reuters) - ThyssenKrupp (TKAG.DE), Germany's largest steelmaker, plans to pay its shareholders a dividend for the fiscal year just ended, despite expecting a hefty loss, German newspaper Die Welt said on Monday.

ThyssenKrupp's owner and the management have agreed in principle to pay shareholders at least 0.30 euros ($0.45) per share for the year to September 2009, Die Welt said citing company sources, adding no formal decision had been taken yet.

ThyssenKrupp paid 1.30 euros per share for the previous year.

The company declined to comment on the report.

ThyssenKrupp's most recent outlook envisaged a pre-tax loss in the high hundreds of millions of euros before one-offs.

Die Welt reported in September that ThyssenKrupp was heading for a bigger than expected pretax loss of more than 2 billion euros, weighed down by special items. [ID:nL9218039]

The company's chief executive Ekkehard Schulz told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung earlier this month that ThyssenKrupp would shed as many as 20,000 more jobs in its current fiscal year. [ID:nLG396788]

The company is due to report results on Nov. 27. ($1=.6650 euros) (Reporting by Eva Kuehnen and Tom Kaeckenhoff in Duesseldorf; Editing by Greg Mahlich)