The proportion of foreign institutional investors has gradually grown in the stock markets of developing countries as a result of financial globalization. This trend has led to an increasing concern as to whether these investors can influence the management decisions of the local firms in developing countries. This paper empirically investigates the impact of foreign institutional investors on corporate dividend policy in the Indian stock market. Using sample firms whose ownership by foreign investors was 5% or higher through the fiscal period from 2007 to 2011, we examine whether foreign institutional investors with more than 5% of a company's shares can exert a significant impact on dividends. In addition, we investigate if more shares that foreign institutional investors have over major shareholders and the more shares that foreign institutional investors have over the previous year, the stronger the impact of foreign institutional investors have on corporate dividend policy. This study empirically shows the impact of foreign institutional investors from the viewpoint of corporate governance in India, where local institutional investors play inadequate roles as Stakeholders. FII STRONGHOLD A look at the BSE-500 ownership pattern suggests that FIIs held as much as 15 per cent of the full-market capitalisation of the BSE-500 and a whopping 35 per cent of the freefloat market cap as of March 2011, thus providing them considerable influence over stock markets. Domestic institutions (mutual funds and insurance companies), on the other hand, held a more modest 21 per cent of the free-float market cap. It is for this reason that FII trends cannot be ignored in the Indian context. SECTOR TRENDS Let’s first look at the long-term FII trends (in sectors within the BSE-500) to know sectors that have moved off the FII radar and those that are gaining ground. If we were to take