BANK of Ireland is to waive its charge for clearing the cheques issued by Statoil to former Aran Energy shareholders. However, Bank of Ireland customers will still have to pay any charges imposed by the Royal Bank of Scottish on whom the cheques are drawn. That charge is understood to be about £7.
Angry former Aran shareholders inundated their banks with complaints when told that the Irish pound drafts issued by Statoil through Royal Bank of Scotland in payment for their shares would take at least 10 working days to clear and that they would be charged up to £25 for the service.
Bank of Ireland told The Irish Times last night that it has decided to waive its charge, understood to be around £10.
"It is a very unusual situation. These are Irish pound items which have to be sent abroad for collection. We are waiving our charge for our customers and we will reimburse customers who have already paid the charge. But, we will have to pass on the Royal Bank of Scotland charge," a bank spokeswoman said.
Because payment to the shareholders who sold their shares to Statoil was made in cheques drawn on a foreign bank, the cheques, or drafts, have to be sent back to the foreign bank to be cleared.
The clearing process, through which the foreign bank issues funds to back the cheque to the bank to which the customer has presented the cheque, usually takes about 10 working days.
According to Statoil, the cheques were drawn on the Royal Bank of Scotland because it was advised that there were only two Irish banks which could act as "receiving banks".
A Statoil spokesman said that a "receiving bank" was a bank recognised by the banking authorities gas qualified to deal with the process of receiving share certificates or issuing new shares in a flotation. Both banks Bank of lreland and Allied Irish Banks were approached to act as "receiving bank" and both declined, he said.
One banker suggested that Statoil was looking for a bank with a registration department. However, Ulster Bank, a clearing bank with a registration department, is understood not to have been approached by Statoil or its advisers.
"As far as Statoil is concerned we have to abide by what the banks are prepared to do. We have been as quick as we can to get the cheques out to shareholders to mitigate the effect of the clearing delay.
"We issued the cheques eight days after receiving acceptances after the final offer went unconditional. We have 21 days to do so. So people were not disadvantaged.
However, some Irish bankers said yesterday that Statoil or Royal Bank of Scotland could, have avoided the clearing delays by setting up a bank account in Ireland with any of the five clearing banks
"Normally, if a foreign bank is making payments to Irish shareholders, it would set up a collection arrangement usually by opening an Irish bank account.
"If this arrangement had been made, clearing would be much quicker.
"As it is every draft has to be sent to Royal Bank of Scotland for collection and there are thousands of them," one banker said.
An AIB spokeswoman confirmed that the bank had been approached by Statoil's advisers. "At that stage we were contracted to another party and acting for Statoil could have given rise to conflicts of interest."
