what is the likely reason that the bank have a different year end than the other companies
The exact Financial calander followed is different for different regions/countires. The difference is more historical and a convinient practise that has no advantage / reason to change. Many Countries like US/Japan the Financial year can be choosen by companies and needs to be same every year. This need not be same as the Financial year followed by Government. Typically Banks would follow the Financial year followed by Government as this would have more direct impact on the business per say in terms of policy changes which are typically from the begining of new financial year for Government. If the Banks follow a different calander, there would be additional overhead of segregating transactions for reporting. Large corporates on other hand would tend to follow a Calander year as it is more convinient when operating in different geographies.  There is a very good article on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year
I've had all my account with the same bank for all my life. Generally, the disadvantage is that if I want some kind of product like a credit extension or a mortgage, I have the one bank to go to and if they don't want to help me I'm out of luck. However, occasionally there are also perks like the bank spontaneously offering you increased credit or even a whole line of credit. They can do this because they have your whole history and trust you. My grandfather owned a small business, and I asked him that very question.  His answer was that year-end closeout is very time-consuming, both before and after  EOY (end of year), and that they didn't want to do all that around Christmas and New Year. Your question is missing information. The most probable reason is that the company made a split or a dividend paid in stock and that you might be confusing your historical price (which is relevant for tax purposes) with your actual market price. It is VERY important to understand this concepts before trading stocks. "Great question. There are several reasons; I'm going to list the few that I can think of off the top of my head right now. First, even if institutional bank holdings in such a term account are covered by deposit insurance (this, as well as the amount covered, varies geographically), the amount covered is generally trivial when seen in the context of bank holdings. An individual might have on the order of $1,000 - $10,000 in such an account; for a bank, that's basically chump change, and you are looking more at numbers in the millions of dollars range. Sometimes a lot more than that. For a large bank, even hundreds of millions of dollars might be a relatively small portion of their holdings. The 2011 Goldman Sachs annual report (I just pulled a big bank out of thin air, here; no affiliation with them that I know of) states that as of December 2011, their excess liquidity was 171,581 million US dollars (over 170 billion dollars), with a bottom line total assets of $923,225 million (a shade under a trillion dollars) book value. Good luck finding a bank that will pay you 4% interest on even a fraction of such an amount. GS' income before tax in 2011 was a shade under 6.2 billion dollars; 4% on 170 billion dollars is 6.8 billion dollars. That is, the interest payments at such a rate on their excess liquidity alone would have cost more than they themselves made in the entire year, which is completely unsustainable. Government bonds are as guaranteed as deposit-insurance-covered bank accounts (it'll be the government that steps in and pays the guaranteed amount, quite possibly issuing bonds to cover the cost), but (assuming the country does not default on its debt, which happens from time to time) you will get back the entire amount plus interest. For a deposit-insured bank account of any kind, you are only guaranteed (to the extent that one can guarantee anything) the maximum amount in the country's bank deposit insurance; I believe in most countries, this is at best on the order of $100,000. If the bank where the money is kept goes bankrupt, for holdings on the order of what banks deal with, you would be extremely lucky to recover even a few percent of the principal. Government bonds are also generally accepted as collateral for the bank's own loans, which can make a difference when you need to raise more money in short order because a large customer decided to withdraw a big pile of cash from their account, maybe to buy stocks or bonds themselves. Government bonds are generally liquid. That is, they aren't just issued by the government, held to maturity while paying interest, and then returned (electronically, these days) in return for their face value in cash. Government bonds are bought and sold on the ""secondary market"" as well, where they are traded in very much the same way as public company stocks. If banks started simply depositing money with each other, all else aside, then what would happen? Keep in mind that the interest rate is basically the price of money. Supply-and-demand would dictate that if you get a huge inflow of capital, you can lower the interest rate paid on that capital. Banks don't pay high interest (and certainly wouldn't do so to each other) because of their intristic good will; they pay high interest because they cannot secure capital funding at lower rates. This is a large reason why the large banks will generally pay much lower interest rates than smaller niche banks; the larger banks are seen as more reliable in the bond market, so are able to get funding more cheaply by issuing bonds. Individuals will often buy bonds for the perceived safety. Depending on how much money you are dealing with (sold a large house recently?) it is quite possible even for individuals to hit the ceiling on deposit insurance, and for any of a number of reasons they might not feel comfortable putting the money in the stock market. Buying government bonds then becomes a relatively attractive option -- you get a slightly lower return than you might be able to get in a high-interest savings account, but you are virtually guaranteed return of the entire principal if the bond is held to maturity. On the other hand, it might not be the case that you will get the entire principal back if the bank paying the high interest gets into financial trouble or even bankruptcy. Some people have personal or systemic objections toward banks, limiting their willingness to deposit large amounts of money with them. And of course in some cases, such as for example retirement savings, it might not even be possible to simply stash the money in a savings account, in which case bonds of some kind is your only option if you want a purely interest-bearing investment." Another reason for banks to push this is sitckyness.  Once you have all of your bills setup, its more trouble to change banks.  This reduces the customer turnover rate, which lowers their costs. Out of curiosity I went through a couple of prospectuses and all contained various clauses for the event where LIBOR is not published although the language suggests more of anticipation of brief technical difficulties. Some are rather vague and prone to manipulation. Personally, I use the earlier date in Quicken so that it looks like I lose money earlier.   This isn't 100% accurate, but it keeps me from thinking my accounts have more money than they would otherwise have. "Why do stock markets allow these differences in reporting? The IRS allows businesses to use fiscal calendars that differ from the calendar year. There are a number of reasons a company would choose do this, from preferring to avoid an accounting rush at end of year during holiday season, to aligning with seasonality for their profits (some like to have Q4 as the strongest quarter). Smaller businesses may prefer to keep the extra stress of year end closeout to a traditionally slower time for the business, and some just start their fiscal calendar when the company starts up. You'll notice the report dates are a couple weeks after fiscal quarter end, you would read it as ""three months ended...,"" so for Agilent, three months ended October 31, 2017, so August, September, October are their Q4 months." I work at a large bank, that isn't too unusual although a lot of banks are moving to fee-free basic accounts and upping their fees on other specific transactions. For example, my bank did away with minimum balance requirements to waive a monthly service fee, but we started charging $2/month for paper statements and upped our out-of-network ATM fee by 50 cents.  Would like to point out that most financial institutions will reorder your transactions slightly for the purposes of accounting. It is much easier to run all transactions in big batches at the end of the day than individually as they come in. Required disclosures you receive upon account opening explain the exact order but most banks do all credits (money in) first and then debits (money out) like checks, debit cards, and ACH payments after. If you overdraft you can usually avoid a fee if you make a cash deposit before the end of the business day as the cash will go into your account before your purchases are debited.  OCCASIONALLY this accounting-based reordering will result in additional fees but that is not the intended purpose of reordering them. And I would always refund any incurred fees that happened due to accounting-based transaction reordering.   What Wells Fargo is doing has been illegal since 2008 and their continued appeals are hoping to get the ruling overturned so they won't have to pay out restitution to affected customers. It's frankly despicable. "If you're referring to times when they pay nothing (or receive a refund) at the end of the year, it's because they're paying taxes throughout the year. At the end of the year, the accountants find that they paid exactly what they needed to (or more), so they don't have to pay anything (or get money back) on their yearly forms.  I don't think there's a US corporation paying ""almost zero tax"" in the US." They changed the way trailing interest is calculated back in 2008 if I recall correctly. The idea at the time was that the interest charges to the customer were somewhat less, but it made trying to get a payoff quote a PITA. They used to take payments for more than the current balance due at that time, however. I can't provide any insight as to why they won't now, though. They need to spread the work for all customers over the whole month, and they don't work on weekends. Combine the two, and the rule becomes clear - if months have minimum of N working days, 1/N of all customers gets set on each day. You seem to be on day 5: If the month starts with a Monday, the fifth working day is the 5. (Friday); if there is a Sat or Sun in between, it will be the 6th, and if there is both a Sat and a Sun in there, it will be the 7th. However, the statement itself is not very important at all. It is just the day where they print it on paper (or even only on a PDF). You can see your bank account activity every day 24/7 by checking online, and nothing keeps you from printing it on every 1st of the month if you want (or every day, or whenever you prefer). "Your bank is maintaining different states for transactions, and changing the state depending on real-world events and the passage of time. withdraw €100 from my bank account on 30 September […] my bank does not process the transaction until 2 October. The bank probably have that transaction marked as “pending” on 30 September, and “cleared” on 2 October. transfer €100 from Bank A to Bank B, Bank A's statement dates the transaction on 20 September, but Bank B dates it as coming in on 22 September. Similarly, bank A will have the transaction marked as “pending” initially. Bank B won't have a corresponding transaction at all, until later; they'll have it “pending” too, until they confirm the transfer. Then (probably at different times from each other) the banks will each mark the corresponding transactions “cleared”. The bookkeeping software that I use doesn't seem to allow for this ""transfer time"" between accounts. When I enter a transfer from one account to another, they both have to have the same date. You may want to learn about different bases of accounting. The simpler option is “cash-based” accounting. The simplification comes from assuming transactions take no time to transfer from one account to another, and are instantly available after that. Your book-keeping software probably books using this simpler basis for your personal finances. The more complex “accrual-based” accounting tracks each individual transaction through multiple states – “pending”, “transfer”, “cleared”, etc. – with state changes at different times – time of trade, time of settlement, etc. – to more accurately reflect the real world agreements between parties, and different availability of the money to each party. So if your book-keeping program uses “cash basis”, you'll need to pick which inaccuracy you want: book the transfer when you did it, or book the transfer when the money is available at the other end." Can someone who understands this part of the business explain what exactly happened and how they benefited? I have read a few articles, and I don't really understand.    I work in a bank, and seeing how some other aspects of the financial crisis were portrayed in the news, I have a feeling the whole story isn't being told. How could this have possibly gone on undetected? When you want the transaction to be concluded in the current year vs an expiration in the next year.