📅 On This Day
Overstock CEO Exits After Spy Scandal Rocks Company
On this day in 2019, Patrick Byrne resigned as CEO of Overstock.com, writing that he was 'far too controversial to serve as CEO' and planned on 'disappearing for some time.' His departure followed a remarkable public statement invoking the FBI and a 'deep state,' and a New York Times interview in which he admitted a romantic relationship with Maria Butina, the Russian operative sentenced to 18 months in prison. Overstock shares had fallen around 39% over three days — then surged more than 10% on the resignation news.
Few 8-K filings have ever carried quite the dramatic weight of Byrne's August 22 farewell.
OSTK
🇺🇸 US
Source: Time; CNBC; The New York Times
🌍 Around the World
Sweden's Dividend Season Flows Through Powerful Family Holding Companies
Sweden's equity culture is shaped in no small part by listed investment companies — most famously Investor AB, founded by the Wallenberg family in 1916 — which hold stakes in major industrials and pass dividends through to their own shareholders. Most Swedish companies pay a single annual dividend each spring following AGM approval, creating a concentrated, almost ceremonial dividend season. Industrial stalwarts like Atlas Copco, tracing its roots to 1873, and SKF, founded in 1907, anchor the income landscape on Nasdaq Stockholm.
Sweden's AGM-driven spring payout calendar makes dividend season a genuinely national financial event.
🇸🇪 SE
Source: Investor AB investor relations; Nasdaq Stockholm
🔥 Dividend Streak
Kao Corporation Quietly Builds Japan's Most Enduring Dividend Streak
Kao Corporation has raised its JPY-denominated dividend for 35 consecutive years as of FY2024, lifting its annual payout to 152 yen per share — a record streak on the Tokyo Stock Exchange tracked informally by local analysts rather than any official exchange methodology. Japan has no equivalent of the US 'Dividend Aristocrat' label for 25-year increasers, meaning Kao's remarkable consistency since 1990 is easy for global investors to overlook. That quiet durability, analysts note, is precisely what makes it worth seeking out.
In a market without streak labels, 35 straight years of raises speaks loudly for itself.
4452
🇯🇵 JP
Source: Kao Corporation Integrated Report 2023; Japan Exchange Group data
💡 Did You Know
One 2003 Law Transformed How Americans Think About Dividends
For most of US history, dividends were taxed as ordinary income — reaching rates as high as 38.6% in 2002 — while long-term capital gains were taxed at just 20%, effectively penalizing dividend-paying stocks and nudging companies toward buybacks instead. The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 changed that calculus in a single stroke, creating the 'qualified dividend' classification and dropping the top rate on most corporate dividends from 38.6% to 15%, matching capital gains treatment. That one legislative moment is widely credited with sparking the modern American culture of dividend growth investing.
Cutting the dividend tax rate to match capital gains made income investing a serious strategy for high-net-worth Americans.
Source: US Treasury JGTRRA tax provisions; Wikipedia JGTRRA