📅 On This Day
BNP Paribas Fund Freeze Marks Credit Crisis Opening Shot
On August 9, 2007, BNP Paribas suspended redemptions from three investment funds exposed to U.S. subprime mortgages, telling the world it could no longer value the underlying assets. The announcement detonated a liquidity freeze in European interbank lending almost instantly. Many financial historians mark this date — not the later Lehman bankruptcy — as the true beginning of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, the wave that eventually swept away bank dividends across two continents.
The credit freeze that followed forced some of history's most painful dividend cuts at banks on both sides of the Atlantic.
🇫🇷 FR
Source: Financial Times; BNP Paribas
🌍 Around the World
UK Pays Dividends Gross — No Withholding for Foreign Investors
The United Kingdom abolished dividend withholding tax in 1973, and foreign investors have been collecting the full declared amount ever since — no deduction at source, no foreign tax credit required. For U.S. investors, that means ADRs like BP, GSK, Shell, AZN, and HSBC land in the account gross. UK REITs are the notable exception: property income distributions may carry 20% withholding unless a treaty exemption applies.
In an IRA, UK ADRs are especially efficient — no withholding means no credit lost and no reclaim paperwork.
🇬🇧 GB
Source: PwC Tax Summaries; HMRC guidance
🔥 Dividend Streak
SPAM Fed Allied Armies; Hormel Has Raised Its Dividend Since 1966
During World War II the U.S. government purchased 150 million pounds of SPAM to fuel soldiers across Europe and the Pacific — GIs grumbled, but the Soviets and British relied on it. Hormel turned that wartime scale into a consumer-staples empire with remarkable staying power: the company has raised its dividend every single year since 1966, now 60 consecutive annual increases. Uninterrupted quarterly payments stretch even further back, all the way to 1928.
Few brands travel from battlefield ration to Dividend Aristocrat — Hormel's streak started the year the Beatles played their last concert.
HRL — Hormel Foods Corporation
Source: Hormel Foods investor relations
💡 Did You Know
P&G Has Outlasted Roughly Twelve CEOs Without Cutting Its Dividend
Since its incorporation in 1890, Procter & Gamble has been guided by roughly a dozen chief executives — and not one of them broke the dividend streak. Two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the 2008 financial crisis came and went; the payout did not. The pattern echoes at Coca-Cola, which has distributed dividends across approximately 10 CEOs over 106 years of continuous payments — a reminder that at institutions like these, it's the company that pays, not the individual in the corner office.
Every incoming P&G CEO since 1890 has inherited the streak — and every one of them has honored it.
PG — Procter & Gamble Company
🇺🇸 US
Source: P&G investor relations; Simply Safe Dividends; Coca-Cola investor relations