COMMENT: Like "borrowing" a bike
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By Jyri Raivio
Outside the Sanomatalo headquarters of this newspaper, in the summer months one can see dozens if not hundreds of employees' bicycles parked up during the working day.
It is not completely unheard of that once in a while one or two of these bikes go AWOL and then reappear a couple of weeks later.
This is quite out of order, and it is also illegal. Taking something without the owner's permission is punishable by law.
On the other hand, in the world of banking this kind of unlawful use of another party's property seems to be a common and accepted practice.
The bank, in the attached example Wells Fargo, hijacks the customer's money for several weeks and then derives interest revenue on the use of it.
The customer's role in the proceedings is to pay a fat fee for the recovery of the money.
According to a recent interim report, Wells Fargo produced a third successive quarter of record net earnings, amounting to USD 9.5 billion in the year to date, up 75% on 2008.
The Mr. J in the attached case congratulates Wells Fargo on its excellent result, in the formation of which his money, too, played its own ever so humble part.
The customer is nevertheless not happy, nor is he satisfied with his own bank Nordea.
One would have imagined that it would have looked after the interests of its own Finnish customer and not those of the giant American bank, but instead it contents itself with collecting the lion's share of the hefty charges associated with the transaction.
Nordea does not even appear to be aware of why its clearing bank takes the liberty of using its client's money for weeks before passing it on.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 26.10.2009
More on this subject:
 Chequemate: U.S. banks hold onto Finns' money for weeks
JYRI RAIVIO / Helsingin Sanomat
jyri.raivio@hs.fi
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