📅 On This Day
Anheuser-Busch Board Accepts InBev's $70-a-Share Bid
On July 13, 2008, the Anheuser-Busch board agreed to InBev's sweetened $70-per-share cash offer — roughly $52 billion — closing the chapter on about 150 years of independence for the maker of Budweiser. The deal forged Anheuser-Busch InBev, a brewing colossus carrying a debt load so heavy that the combined company's dividend policy turned notably more conservative than either predecessor's. For income investors, it remains a textbook lesson in how a takeover premium can quietly reshape a yield story.
A landmark deal: $52 billion and a transformed dividend culture followed the board's handshake in 2008.
BUD — Anheuser Busch Inbev NV ADR
🇺🇸 US
Source: IndustryWeek, Bloomberg
🌍 Around the World
Austria's 27.5% Withholding Rate Demands Attention From Dividend Investors
Austria applies a dividend withholding tax of 27.5% — a meaningful upfront drag for international income seekers. Treaty-eligible investors may be able to reduce that rate, often down to 15%, but claiming relief requires navigating the reclaim process efficiently. Without that effort, Austrian dividends can arrive noticeably lighter than expected.
Treaty relief can matter: the gap between 27.5% and 15% is real money over a full dividend cycle.
🇦🇹 AT
Source: PwC Tax Summaries
🔥 Dividend Streak
W.W. Grainger's Eight-Page Catalog Quietly Built a Dividend King
In 1927, Bill Grainger launched a wholesale electric-motor business in Chicago, mailing postcards and an eight-page catalog — the MotorBook — assembled by Grainger, his sister Margaret, and two employees. That humble pamphlet grew into a $17-billion industrial distributor. Starting in 1972, Grainger has raised its dividend for 54 consecutive years, earning it a place among the Dividend Kings.
From a mail-order pamphlet to 54 straight years of raises — GWW is proof that essential distribution compounds beautifully.
GWW — WW Grainger Inc
Source: FundingUniverse — W.W. Grainger Company History
💡 Did You Know
An 1901 Court Case Captured Preferred Stock's Eternal Bargain in One Phrase
A Maryland court ruling in 1901 wrestled with shares promising their holder "a perpetual dividend of six per centum per annum and no more" — and in doing so, distilled the essential logic of preferred stock: reliable, fixed income paid ahead of common shareholders, but capped if the company flourishes. The legal framework that ruling helped establish hasn't fundamentally changed since. Priority in exchange for capped returns — a trade-off income investors still weigh every day.
"Perpetual … and no more" — six words from 1901 that still define the preferred-stock bargain today.
🇺🇸 US
Source: EBSCO, Maryland Court Records