📅 On This Day
Google's Garage Birth Leads to a Historic First Dividend
On September 4, 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated Google Inc. out of a friend's Menlo Park garage, setting in motion one of history's most remarkable corporate journeys. For its entire first quarter-century as a public company, Alphabet resisted the dividend, channeling capital into moonshots and buybacks instead. Then, in 2024 — 26 years after that garage lease began — it finally paid shareholders their first dividend.
From a Stanford research project to a $2 trillion company that made dividend investors wait a quarter-century.
GOOGL — Alphabet Inc Class A
🇺🇸 US
Source: Google Wiki; The Wall Street Journal
🌍 Around the World
Cyprus Keeps Dividend Withholding Simple for International Investors
Cyprus generally imposes no withholding tax on dividends paid to non-resident shareholders, placing it alongside Malta and the UK as one of Europe's more straightforward jurisdictions for income investors. For the relatively small number of Cypriot-listed stocks that cross international portfolios, the withholding mechanics are refreshingly uncomplicated. That said, investors still owe whatever their home country demands — Cyprus's generosity stops at its own border.
No withholding at source is only half the story — your home tax authority still has something to say.
🇨🇾 CY
Source: PwC Tax Summaries
🔥 Dividend Streak
Canadian Utilities Holds a 52-Year Streak Behind a Modest Label
Canadian Utilities has raised its CAD-denominated dividend for 52 consecutive years as of 2024 — a streak that matches the elite US "Dividend King" threshold. Yet under the S&P/TSX Canadian Dividend Aristocrats methodology, the company earns only the same "Aristocrat" badge as a five-year increaser. Cross-border investors who rely on index labels alone may never realize they're looking at a streak dating back to 1972.
Same label, vastly different legacy — always read the methodology before trusting a dividend title.
CU
🇨🇦 CA
Source: Canadian Utilities Investor Relations; S&P Dow Jones Indices Canadian Aristocrats methodology
💡 Did You Know
Preferred-Stock Coupons Reveal the True Price of Desperation
When U.S. Steel issued preferred stock in 1901, it paid 7% — generous but unremarkable for a blue-sky industrial moment. When Warren Buffett extended Goldman Sachs a credibility lifeline in 2008, he extracted 10%, a premium that reflected just how dire the financial system's condition had become. The instrument is the same across both transactions; what changed is the price of capital when the world is frightened.
The worse the moment, the higher the coupon — preferred-stock pricing is fear, distilled into a percentage.
🇺🇸 US
Source: Finaeon; Goldman Sachs