📅 On This Day
Microsoft's Darkest Day Plants Seeds of Dividend Glory
On July 17, 2014, Microsoft announced the elimination of up to 18,000 positions — roughly 14% of its workforce — with about 12,500 cuts tied to the Nokia Devices business it had acquired for $7.2 billion just months earlier. The pain was real, but the pivot was purposeful: CEO Satya Nadella was steering the company hard toward cloud computing. That strategic wager would eventually make Microsoft one of the world's most valuable companies and drive years of steady dividend growth.
What looked like a $7.2B blunder became the clearing of the runway for one of tech's great dividend stories.
MSFT — 1X MSFT
🇺🇸 US
Source: SEC Filings; The Wall Street Journal
📅 On This Day
Microsoft's Darkest Day Plants Seeds of Dividend Glory
On July 17, 2014, Microsoft announced the elimination of up to 18,000 positions — roughly 14% of its workforce — with about 12,500 cuts tied to the Nokia Devices business it had acquired for $7.2 billion just months earlier. The pain was real, but the pivot was purposeful: CEO Satya Nadella was steering the company hard toward cloud computing. That strategic wager would eventually make Microsoft one of the world's most valuable companies and drive years of steady dividend growth.
What looked like a $7.2B blunder became the clearing of the runway for one of tech's great dividend stories.
MSFT — Microsoft Corporation
🇺🇸 US
Source: SEC Filings; The Wall Street Journal
📅 On This Day
Microsoft's Darkest Day Plants Seeds of Dividend Glory
On July 17, 2014, Microsoft announced the elimination of up to 18,000 positions — roughly 14% of its workforce — with about 12,500 cuts tied to the Nokia Devices business it had acquired for $7.2 billion just months earlier. The pain was real, but the pivot was purposeful: CEO Satya Nadella was steering the company hard toward cloud computing. That strategic wager would eventually make Microsoft one of the world's most valuable companies and drive years of steady dividend growth.
What looked like a $7.2B blunder became the clearing of the runway for one of tech's great dividend stories.
MSFT — Microsoft CDR (CAD Hedged)
🇺🇸 US
Source: SEC Filings; The Wall Street Journal
🌍 Around the World
Denmark's Dividend Tax Bites Hard — Even for Treaty Partners
Denmark taxes dividend income at 27% up to DKK 61,000, then steps to 42% above that threshold — placing it among Europe's highest effective dividend tax rates, according to the Tax Foundation. Foreign investors face a standard 27% withholding rate, though the U.S.-Denmark tax treaty trims that to 15% for qualifying American shareholders. The catch: the reclaim process is notoriously slow, meaning your money can sit in bureaucratic limbo long after the dividend is paid.
A 15% treaty rate sounds like a win — until you factor in how long Denmark takes to actually send the refund.
🇩🇰 DK
Source: Tax Foundation Europe; PwC Tax Summaries
🔥 Dividend Streak
RLI Corp Built a Dividend Dynasty on a Forgotten Niche
RLI was founded in 1965 as Replacement Lens, Inc. — the world's first contact-lens insurance provider, created because lenses were expensive enough to insure. When cheap disposable soft lenses made that coverage irrelevant, the company pivoted into commercial property and liability insurance, kept its initials, and quietly kept raising its dividend. Starting in 1976, RLI has now raised that dividend for 50 consecutive years — a streak built on the rubble of a product almost no one remembers.
The initials 'RLI' are a 60-year-old fossil of a vanished product — the dividend streak behind them is very much alive.
RLI — RLI Corp
Source: Wikipedia — RLI Corp
💡 Did You Know
Buffett's Dividend Case Is About Tax Friction, Not Philosophy
Warren Buffett's argument against paying a Berkshire dividend isn't ideological — it's mathematical. Because value compounds untaxed inside the stock, shareholders can sell a thin slice of shares whenever they want income, choosing their own tax timing rather than accepting forced taxation on every quarterly payout. He laid out the arithmetic in his 2012 shareholder letter, and he's candid about the tradeoff: if you need a predictable quarterly check, Berkshire genuinely isn't your stock.
The 'homemade dividend' isn't a workaround — for Buffett, it's the more logical structure, and the math backs him up.
BRK.B
🇺🇸 US
Source: Berkshire Hathaway 2012 & 2013 shareholder letters