Yale Collecting Interest on 1648 Dutch Bond
Amusement, Netherlands, Perpetual Bond, Yale University
Lekdijk Bovendams, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
Yale University acquired a 17th century Dutch bond as an acquisition for its rare book & manuscript collection, but that is not stopping Yale from collecting the interest due on the perpetual bond.
Yale University will receive 136.20 euros ($153) in interest on a perpetual bond issued in 1648 from Dutch water authority de Stichtse Rijnlanden.
The 1,000 guilder-bond ($509), which is written on goatskin, is among five of the world’s oldest bonds that still pay interest, according to Clarion Wegerif, a spokeswoman for the water authority. The money will be paid out on Monday.
Yale contacted the agency to collect the interest, Wegerif said in a phone interview from Houten, the Netherlands. “We’ll be handing out a symbolic check and wire the rest.”
Yale, which has an endowment of $23.9 billion, paid 24,000 euros to acquire the bond in 2003 as an artifact. The university hasn’t been paid interest since the acquisition, according to the agency. The bond was issued to pay for a small pier in the Netherlands’s Lek river.
