Suomen Työväen Säästöpankki
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

National Workers' Savings Bank (1971-1989) (In
Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...
; ''Suomen Työväen Säästöpankki'', in
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
; ''Arbetarsparbanken'') or STS-Bank (1989-1992) was a Finnish
savings bank A savings bank is a financial institution whose primary purpose is accepting savings deposits and paying interest on those deposits. They originated in Europe during the 18th century with the aim of providing access to savings products to al ...
and
commercial bank A commercial bank is a financial institution which accepts deposits from the public and gives loans for the purposes of consumption and investment to make profit. It can also refer to a bank, or a division of a large bank, which deals with co ...
. Workers' savings banks were syndicalist, social democratic corporations intended to compete with privately owned banks, which could deny credit to workers on political grounds. Created in 1971 through a merger of five local workers' savings banks, the oldest component of STS was the Helsinki branch, founded in 1909. The Turku workers' savings bank was the only one to choose to stay independent. With the merger, STS became the largest savings bank in Finland. The bank went almost bankrupt in 1992 and was sold at a loss to KOP (later
Nordea Nordea Bank Abp, commonly referred to as Nordea, is a European financial services group operating in northern Europe and based in Helsinki, Finland. The name is a blend of the words "Nordic" and "idea". The bank is the result of the successive m ...
), with the government taking care of much of the bad debt. In 1899, the Finnish Worker's Party (later SDP) decided in its general meeting to establish a bank. The Helsinki TS, was founded in 1908 by Albin Karjalainen, the financial officer of the party organ. The main motivation were the problems encountered with the finances of the party organ and building a house for the society. Both required loans, but commercial banks refused to lend for political reasons. For much of its history, it functioned efficiently as a savings bank with a working class (principally construction workers) clientele. President of Finland
Mauno Koivisto Mauno Henrik Koivisto (; 25 November 1923 – 12 May 2017) was a Finnish politician who served as the ninth president of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He also served as the country's prime minister twice, from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1979 to 1 ...
was the CEO of STS in 1959-1968. The "casino economy" craze of the late 1980s caught on also at STS. In 1989, the bank was transformed into a commercial bank, and foundations controlled by the leftist political parties SDP and SKP bought shares, intending to fund their activities with the profits of the bank. However, loose credit policies and the subsequent credit loss due to the early 1990s recession were disastrous for the bank. Esko Seppänen has opined that STS had become a sort of a "cash dispenser" from which clients could get cash without any strict payback obligation. As much as 40% of the loans were given against the bank's own policies, and 22% had indications of deliberate abuse. STS was one of the main contributors to the early 1990s banking crisis in Finland, where the country was at the brink of a banking system and
economic collapse Economic collapse, also called economic meltdown, is any of a broad range of bad economic conditions, ranging from a severe, prolonged depression with high bankruptcy rates and high unemployment (such as the Great Depression of the 1930s), to a ...
. In 1992, in addition to the official loss of 500 million
markka The markka ( fi, markka; sv, mark; sign: Mk; ISO code: FIM, typically known outside Finland as the Finnish mark) was the currency of Finland from 1860 until 28 February 2002, when it ceased to be legal tender. The mark was divided into 100 p ...
(Mmk), concealed was 740 Mmk bad debt, 700 Mmk asset overvaluation and 300 Mmk miscellaneous losses. Furthermore, STS had borrowed ½ billion to the cooperative retailer EKA and the construction company Haka, both bound for bankruptcy. An assetless shell, Siltapankki Oy, remained with the bad debt. Facing bankruptcy, the remaining parts were sold in 1992 to another major bank,
Kansallis-Osake-Pankki Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (KOP) was a Finnish commercial bank operating from 1889 to 1995. It was created by the fennoman movement as a Finnish language alternative to the largely Swedish language bank, Suomen Yhdyspankki (''Swedish: Föreningsbank ...
, which took over the operations and terminated its independent brand and existence. The owning foundation received only 75 million markka in the form of KOP shares (itself ripe for bankruptcy), thus leading to an immediate loss of 175 million markka (ca. 30 million euro).http://palkansaajasaatio.fi/ The government merged Siltapankki with the bad bank Arsenal in 1995. All savings customers were fully refunded. The total cost to taxpayers was ca. 2 billion Finnish markka (around 0.5 billion in 2010 euros) according to Esko Seppänen. The last CEO of the bank was
Ulf Sundqvist Ulf Ludvig Sundqvist (22 February 1945 – 22 April 2023) was a Finnish politician who served as chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, a minister in four cabinets in the 1970s and a banker in the 1980s. Political career Sundqvis ...
, a prominent SDP politician and the party president in 1991-1993. The allegations and protracted court cases due to the STS collapse damaged his career, preventing ascendancy to prime minister. Sundquist was eventually convicted of debtor's dishonesty (a felony of hiding assets from creditors), with his appeal denied by the Supreme Court in 2001. The minister involved on behalf of the government, Arja Alho, was forced to resign for negotiating the settlement poorly.Helsingin Sanomat. Sundqvist conviction stays in force. 11.4.2001. http://www2.hs.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20010411IE6 Other involved members of the board were given no opportunity to settle, and if the same standard had been applied to Sundquist, he would have been ordered to pay 5.7 million instead of 1.8 million in damages. The modern successor of KOP and thus STS is
Nordea Nordea Bank Abp, commonly referred to as Nordea, is a European financial services group operating in northern Europe and based in Helsinki, Finland. The name is a blend of the words "Nordic" and "idea". The bank is the result of the successive m ...
. The holding foundation still exists as Palkansaajasäätiö, which maintains the STS museum.


CEOs

* Jonas Laherma - 1916–1959 *
Mauno Koivisto Mauno Henrik Koivisto (; 25 November 1923 – 12 May 2017) was a Finnish politician who served as the ninth president of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He also served as the country's prime minister twice, from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1979 to 1 ...
- 1959–1968 *
Ulf Sundqvist Ulf Ludvig Sundqvist (22 February 1945 – 22 April 2023) was a Finnish politician who served as chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, a minister in four cabinets in the 1970s and a banker in the 1980s. Political career Sundqvis ...
- 1982–1991 * Yrjö-Olavi Aav - 1991-1992


References


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Suomen Tyovaen Saastopankki Banks of Finland Finnish companies established in 1971 Banks established in 1971