Dutch banks face a special tax to cover the costs of their bailouts, whereas France and Germany scrapped similar levies after Brussels set up an EU-wide fund for the same purpose. They can’t deduct the full amount of interest costs from taxes, as banks in most other countries can. New rules allow companies to claw back bonuses if performance suffers. And bankers must sign an oath that they’ll always put customers’ interests first, won’t abuse confidential information, and will acknowledge their “responsibility to society.”

The biggest battleground is pay. Bonuses in the Netherlands can’t exceed 20% of fixed compensation, whereas elsewhere in the EU they can equal a worker’s base salary.

In the face of public pressure, ING and ABN Amro Group NV have in recent years withdrawn proposed pay increases for their executives. After ING last year announced a pay rise, Prime Minister Mark Rutte criticized the move, calling banks “sort of semipublic institutions” that must show greater accountability than other companies. ING soon backed off the idea.

The banks have responded by dispatching top managers to schools to explain the importance of finance, and they’ve stopped hiring aggressive outsiders to collect on bad loans.

They’ve scaled back investment banking units and limited their foreign expansion. And their international loan portfolios have tended to focus on less risky businesses such as cargo trade and agriculture, sectors they’ve historically specialized in. That’s as it should be, says Joost Sneller, a member of parliament from D66, a social-liberal party in the governing coalition. For the Dutch, a good banker is “boring and decent,” Sneller says, “not someone who’s adventurous and pushing limits.”

BOTTOM LINE - After state bailouts for three of the four biggest Dutch lenders, the country’s finance industry faces widespread mistrust and some of Europe’s strictest regulations.


Bloomberg Businessweek Terminal
13.junij 2019

Zanimivo, glede na to, da pri nas politiki in "finančniki" upajo, da več kot en procent ljudi nikoli ne bo vedel, kaj je to bil Glass-Steagall Act. V primeru prvih je seveda vprašanje ali je kdo od njih sploh kdaj slišal zanj. Treba je namreč upoštevati, da je Slovenija v kapitalizem vstopila z bankami, ki jih je pred tem Kučanova banda oplenila in preselila kapital v tujino. Del tega kapitala je šel direktno v osebno porabo rdečih direktorjev in nekaterih univerzitetnih profesorjev ekonomije, se pravi so ga ukradli direktno, del pa so ga ukradli indirektno tako, da je potem postopoma "kupoval" slovenska podjetja.

Če pogledamo, kaj je 30 letni rezultat delovanja teh opic v vladah, na univerzi, v državnih bankah in Banki Slovenije, vidimo, da je razlika do Nizozemske ogromna, saj pri nas ta segment, razen krasti, nikoli ničesar ni znal.

Ker kredit zna odobravati vsak kmet in ker je baje država ostala 25 odstotni lastnik NLB, tako ni jasno, zakaj se za obračunavanje provizije, kar lahko dela srednja izobrazba, dobiva pol miijona na leto. Investiranja v visoko tehnologijo in vrednostne papirje v tujini namreč ni, tako da ni jasno, kaj je pri vodenju NLB toliko vredno. Tako, da po moje, mora država od NLB zahtevati mesečna poročila o učinkovitosti plasiranja kapitala na svetovnih borzah in kapitalskih trgih. In čim to ni primerno, to je, vsaj 4% mesečno, je treba takoj ukrepati proti upravi NLB. Isto seveda velja za Abanko.

Uriah Heep.