European countries in conflict with Brussels over bank takeovers
The European Commission is investigating the Spanish and Italian governments over their interference in major domestic bank mergers. Brussels is irritated by what it sees as unfair attempts by those countries to block takeovers when their own competition authorities have already approved the deals.
The Commission has wanted bigger and more efficient banks in Europe for years to strengthen the internal market and compete with the US and China. But member states are resisting. Spain and Italy recently blocked mergers on grounds of the ‘public interest’, despite the green light from their supervisors. Brussels believes this undermines the free movement of capital.
In Spain, the government imposed additional requirements on BBVA for the acquisition of Banco Sabadell, possibly due to political pressure. Sánchez needs support from a Catalan party, which wants to protect Sabadell’s regional identity. Nevertheless, the Spanish competition authority did not see any competition problems.
Italy had a similar conflict. UniCredit wanted to take over Banco BPM, with the approval of the central bank. But the Meloni government imposed so many conditions that UniCredit backed out, using a law that is supposed to block foreign takeovers – not intended for domestic deals.
It is unusual for governments to block mergers after regulatory approval. Usually it is the other way around: regulators reject mergers because of competition concerns, but governments support them.
The shift in the policy of member states is striking. Where they used to stimulate ‘national champions’, they now want to rein in dominant banks. In Italy, people fear the power of UniCredit and Banco BPM, and the government wants to keep a third player for balance.
Financing outside banks
In 2024, small businesses increasingly opted for financing outside banks . The total amount of loans granted up to one million euros increased by fourteen percent to €12.6 billion. More than a third of this came from non-bank financiers. Due to the strong growth in bank loans, the share of financing by non-bank financiers is slightly lower at 34 percent than last year (36 percent), according to the annual survey by the SME Financing Foundation (SMF). The strong increase in the number of small loans up to €50,000 is striking, which indicates a growing need for accessible and flexible financing solutions within small businesses, according to the SMF. Interest rates for such solutions are rising to more than 14%.
The total non-bank financing market grew by 16.4 percent in 2024 to a total of €5.8 billion in loans. More than three billion euros of this financing relates to financing below €250,000. The share of business credit up to €50,000 grew by thirteen percent in 2024 to 39,478. This increase was partly driven by growth in lease contracts, but mainly by a strong rise in small, short-term loans. In recent years, banks have increasingly withdrawn as lenders to SMEs.
The number of SMEs with bank loans has fallen by 34 percent over the past six years. This withdrawal is partly due to stricter capital requirements that were introduced after the financial crisis. Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism regulations are even more effective. Banks are required to identify customers, monitor suspicious transactions and check sanctions lists. They must report to authorities and cooperate internationally to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. KPMG speaks of a “compliance tick-box culture” at banks. This costs time, money and puts considerable pressure on their profit margins, making it less attractive to provide smaller SME loans.
Nationwide network of ATMs
There are fewer than 4,916 ATMs in the Netherlands. That is 879 fewer than a year ago. According to Geldmaat, the use of cash is decreasing, but the obligation that everyone must have an ATM within 5 kilometers is not in jeopardy. A bill on cash payments was submitted and adopted. The law requires large banks to maintain a nationwide network of ATMs. This means that there must be a working ATM within a radius of 5 kilometers. The law also stipulates that customers of large and medium-sized banks can now deposit banknotes at ATMs. De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) will monitor compliance.
Banks are working to accelerate the circular economy
Interest rate policy
The ECB’s interest rate hikes created room for banks to start paying interest on savings themselves . From 10 April 2024, savers with a deposit of up to 25,000 euros at SNS and RegioBank received 1.8 percent interest, where it was 1.7 percent. The highest savings interest elsewhere is now 2.7 percent, including at Banca Progetto, Open bank, CKC Spaarbank, Bigbank, Nordax bank, Renault bank, Inbank, Klarna, Bunq (2.46) or Garantibank. Fixing savings at Banca Progetto even yields 4.75 percent interest if you deposit at least 5,000 euros. In Belgium, there is the Staatsbon, which is also accessible to Dutch savers and this gives a net return of 2.81 percent.
Dutch savings banks often offer significantly higher interest rates in Germany than they do to savers in the Netherlands. However, the Dutch are increasingly saving abroad. At the end of 2023, there were 12.3 billion euros of Dutch people in an account in other euro countries, 1.8 billion euros more than in October. For savers at ASN, this will increase again in July. These costs amount to 9 to almost 14 percent and have more than doubled at all banks in five years. On average, around 38.40 euros must be paid for the service. According to ACM, the savings interest rates are too low because there is too little competition. The ACM has no indications of mutual agreements, but according to it it is plausible that there is a case of ’tacit coordination’. The ECB therefore took a new interest rate decision on 30 January 2025 and lowered it by a quarter of a percentage point. Last year, the central bank lowered the interest rate four times. Inflation in the eurozone continues to ease towards the 2 percent target, giving the ECB room for more rate cuts to stimulate the ailing economy. In March 205, the rate went to 2.5%.
Rates
As of 1 January 2025, ING and ABN Amro have increased their rates again . A current account with a large bank has become two to three times more expensive in five years. This is evident from research by comparison site Bankenvergelijking. A standard bank account in the Netherlands currently costs an average of 35.39 euros per year. However, the site states that a side note should be added: this figure is somewhat distorted by foreign digital banks that offer free current accounts in our country. For most Dutch people, the average is higher.
Deposit Guarantee Scheme
The Dutch Deposit Guarantee protects account holders up to 100,000 euros per person, per bank. If a bank goes bankrupt, the Central Bank ensures that account holders regain access to their money within 7 working days. With 5 billion euros, the Dutch banks meet this standard. All banks within the EU now also meet the requirements of the European directive for deposit guarantee schemes, which has been set by the ECB at 0.8 percent of the total amount placed with banks, to the extent that this qualifies for protection by the Deposit Guarantee.
Global bank stocks plummet due to inflation and aftermath of coronavirus crisis
Shares of the world’s largest banks have fallen by $635 billion in the past year, largely due to inflation fears and the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. banks suffered the heaviest losses, while Japanese institutions such as Japan Post Bank saw relatively limited declines.
Notable losses per bank
Wells Fargo (US): –56.26% ($128 billion)
Banco Santander (Spain): –46.16%
JP Morgan Chase (US): –30.16% ($131 billion, biggest absolute loss)
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC): –27% ($73 billion)
Bank of China: -$30 billion
Mizuho Financial Group (Japan): –11.33% ($4 billion)
Crédit Agricole (France): –30% ($12 billion)
The four largest Chinese banks lost a combined $179 billion, underscoring the sector’s vulnerability.
US banks are collapsing
Since April 26, 2024, three U.S. banks have failed, bringing the total to 17 since 2019. Metropolitan Commercial Bank, NYCB, Valley National Bancorp, HarborOne Bancorp, Comerica Bank) have all but failed, and NYCB and Metropolitan Commercial Bank remain particularly vulnerable due to exposure to commercial real estate loans. Defaults remain a concern, with regional banks expected to increase 30% in 2024. The March 2024 expiration of the BTFP has put pressure on smaller banks, while the Fed’s balance sheet has shrunk to $7.3 trillion.
Central bank rescue and search for new revenue
In March 2023, rapid intervention by central banks prevented a larger crisis. At the same time, banks are experimenting with state-backed digital currencies and alternative revenue models to strengthen their position.
After the EU elections, the sector is waiting for clarity on a common deposit guarantee scheme, a crucial part of the banking union. Without further integration, the European banking sector remains vulnerable to shocks.
The combination of economic uncertainty, political decision-making and technological innovation will determine whether banks can accelerate their recovery in the coming years.
Suspicious transactions
Thousands of leaked documents from the American FinCEN to Buzzfeednews from the years 2000 to 2017 show that almost 2 trillion euros in black and criminal transactions occurred at major international banks. Banks secretly report suspicious transactions with Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as standard to the Financial Crimes Investigation Network (FinCen). Two Dutch stockbrokers Schildershoven Finance BV (Cyprus) and Tristane Capital are said to have transferred money from Russia via a subsidiary of ING in Poland. The two companies used an exchange trick with “mirror trading” in shares and bonds and used an account of ING Slaski to launder approximately 675 million dollars in payments. The Financial Crimes Investigation Network (FinCEN) is also investigating money laundering practices at HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Barclays Bank.
‘mirror trading’ is a money-laundering scheme that involves the roundabout laundering of black money through share purchases and letterbox companies in tax havens . In 2017, Deutsche Bank was fined 630 million dollars by British and American regulators for this, because the bank had, whether consciously or unconsciously, participated in this trade.
The Panama Papers revealed that between January 2011 and October 2014, $20.8 billion in bribes were laundered from Russia through 5,140 corporate accounts at 732 foreign banks in 96 countries. The network included 21 untraceable companies in the United Kingdom, Cyprus and New Zealand. Russian companies moved their money out of Russia by signing an IOU and having it certified by a Moldovan court at Moldindconbank in Moldova (a republic in south-eastern Europe) and Trasta Komercbanka in Lithuania.
The companies had their accounts at the same bank. HSBC channeled 545 million dollars through a branch of the bank in Hong Kong. 2.4 million dollars were allegedly laundered via ING . Three years after the publications, governments worldwide have already imposed more than a billion euros in fines and back taxes.
At ABN Amro , ING , Rabobank , Bunq and NIBC , the policy for tackling tax avoidance by business customers is still inadequate. These banks score a 5 or lower in the new policy research of the Fair Bank Guide . The policy on seven sustainability themes at ING, ABN Amro and ING is also inadequate with a score of 5.
RusKhimAlians sued UniCredit and Deutsche Bank, resulting in the seizure of €700 million in assets held by Deutsche Bank and UniCredit in Russia. Both decisions were issued by the court at the request of RusKhimAlians, which planned to build a large gas processing and liquefaction plant in partnership with German company Linde, which withdrew from the project due to sanctions. Both banks stood surety for the project. It began preliminary talks on a sale last year, but the talks failed to produce any results. Deutsche is at stake for €239 million ($260 million) and Italy’s Unicredit for around €463 million ($504 million).
Bonus culture
Currently, financial institutions in the Netherlands are allowed to pay a maximum bonus of 20 percent of the fixed salary. This is considerably lower than the European ceiling of 100 percent. An increase of this ceiling would be beneficial for the shareholders of ABN AMRO, which is therefore on the agenda.
The strict Dutch bonus regulations were introduced in 2015 as a direct result of the financial crisis. An evaluation was already carried out five years ago, but at that time it was decided to maintain the rules. Although the Supervisory Board of ABN AMRO did not yet see the bonus cap as a problem in 2020, the situation has now changed.
ABN AMRO is currently still subject to a total ban on bonuses, as the bank, like SNS, is largely owned by the Dutch state. The outcome of the evaluation by the Ministry of Finance is expected at the end of this year.
cum-cum deals
The cum-ex and cum-cum fraud remains one of the biggest financial scandals in Europe, with losses of billions for tax authorities. In 2021, Germany’s highest court ruled that the scheme was illegal. Although some banks have already been punished, legal cases and investigations remain ongoing, with new convictions and fines looming. Cum-ex and cum-cum deals resulted in double tax reclaims of €12 billion. Globally, the damage was as much as €150 billion
The Tax Authorities are demanding 241 million euros from stock exchange trading companies in 6 legal cases because they were guilty of illegal forms of dividend stripping.
On March 8, 2023, French authorities raided five major banks – Société Générale, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Exane and Natixis – on suspicion of tax fraud and money laundering. The investigation focused on dividend stripping and cum-cum fraud, involving complex schemes to wrongfully claim tax refunds. 150 investigators, 16 French and 6 German magistrates worked on the investigation, led by the French Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF).
The banks jointly risk €1 billion in repayments
ABN Amro was involved in fraudulent dividend arbitrage (CumEx trading) until February 2016. In 2020, the Dutch tax authorities seemed to have won a victory, but the Supreme Court quashed this verdict on 19 January 2024 and referred the case back for a new verdict. The Supreme Court found that ABN Amro’s administration was sound, contrary to earlier conclusions. ING denies involvement, but ABN Amro made a provision of €150 million for possible fines.
Germany: billion-dollar fraud and criminal cases
German authorities have been investigating more than 130 banks for years, including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Barclays, and JPMorgan Chase.
A PwC report shows that banks such as DekaBank, HypoVereinsbank and HSH Nordbank were involved.
Morgan Stanley, UBS and Santander were also caught, with fines running into hundreds of millions of euros.
Germany wants to recover €10 billion in fraudulent refunds (1999-2012).
How did the fraud work?
Banks and investors abused slow settlements at tax authorities by quickly moving shares around dividend payments, allowing two parties to wrongly claim tax back, while only one payment had been made.
It is estimated that tax authorities in Germany, the US and ten European countries lost €150 billion. Germany alone lost €36 billion, the Netherlands the heaviest in relative terms.
Sentences and recent convictions
Ulf Johannemann (top tax specialist at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer) was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison on January 30, 2024 for his role in the fraud.
A former banker at the failed Maple Bank was given a suspended sentence and ordered to repay €2 million.
In Denmark, a British banker has to pay back €1.7 billion + interest.
Ongoing investigations
In Germany, 120 investigations are still ongoing against 1,700 bankers and advisors. The Dutch Tax and Customs Administration is demanding €241 million back from stockbrokers in six cases.
There are approximately 11,000 banks in 200 countries. The five largest banks in the Netherlands are ING , Rabobank , ABN AMRO , BNG Bank and NWB Bank. Together they own more than 90% of the total assets . In order to reduce costs, banks are working on a major digitalisation drive. Tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared at the large banks since 2011. At the same time, there is an increasing demand for IT, risk and compliance, data analytics and cybersecurity .
So far in 2024, only one bank has failed in the U.S.. Republic First Bank (Philadelphia), which did business as Republic Bank, failed on April 26, 2024. It was the first Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) bank to fail since Citizens Bank of Sac City, Iowa failed in November 2023. It was the fifth FDIC bank failure in 2023, a year that saw some of the largest bank failures in U.S. history. Earlier in 2023, Silicon Valley Bank failed on March 10, followed by Signature Bank two days later, ending an unusual streak of more than 800 days without a bank failure. The next bank to fail was First Republic Bank on May 1, followed by Heartland Tri-State Bank on July 28. Later in November 2023, Citizens Bank failed. Since Republic First Bank failed, there have been three more bank failures in the U.S. The banks that failed are The First National Bank of Lindsay (October 18, 2024), Pulaski Savings Bank (January 17, 2025), and The Santa Anna National Bank (June 28, 2025).
The top figures in finance and central banking were in Washington for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The topic of discussion was the toxic mix of high inflation, food and energy shocks, high financing costs and the impact of climate change . Ghana, Egypt and Sri Lanka – need financial help and are knocking on the doors of multilateral banks. Ukraine is asking for solutions to secure billions in financing. Central banks outside the United States are trying to protect their currencies from a rising dollar.
Hedge fund Archegos causes billions in losses for banks
The 2021 bankruptcy of hedge fund Archegos Capital Management led to $10 billion in losses for major banks including Credit Suisse, Nomura, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. The collapse forced these banks to dump large blocks of shares – including ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global) and Discovery – at huge losses.
How did it go wrong?
Archegos speculated with borrowed money (leveraged financing) on price increases of media companies and technology stocks.
The fund had $160 billion in open positions, while its equity was only $10 billion – an extremely risky arrangement.
When prices fell, the loans could not be covered, forcing banks to sell shares en masse.
Credit Suisse (later acquired by UBS) suffered the biggest loss: $5.5 billion. Nomura lost $2.9 billion, Morgan Stanley $911 million and Deutsche Bank $120 million. UBS wrote down another $1.2 billion in Q1 2025 on Archegos-related losses
The chaos led to increased scrutiny of leveraged positions at hedge funds. Archegos’ executives, including founder Bill Hwang, were arrested on charges of market fraud and conspiracy. Their trial began on October 10, 2023. Hwang and his team were accused of manipulating stock prices and concealing risk. The trial has since reached a legal conclusion. In April 2025, Hwang was sentenced to 12 years in prison for fraud and market manipulation. His right-hand man Patrick Halligan was sentenced to eight years. The jury unanimously found that Hwang knowingly hid risks from banks while building up $160 billion in secret positions. Credit Suisse (now UBS) and Nomura were recognized as key victims during the trial. Hwang was also ordered to repay $3.5 billion in ill- gotten gains .
The trial was delayed by complex financial analyses. In February 2025, key testimonies from former Archegos employees emerged
The SEC introduced new rules for family offices in March 2025: Banks must now monitor leveraged positions of large clients in real time
Through his lawyers, Hwang said he would appeal the “excessive” sentence. However, experts believe the chances of a successful appeal are slim, given the overwhelming burden of evidence.
The case marks a turning point in the approach to shadow banking, with family offices now clearly subject to strict supervision. Meanwhile, the financial world is holding its breath for possible new revelations, as several banks complete internal investigations into their role in the scandal.
The Archegos debacle highlights the dangers of excessive leverage and the lack of transparency at some hedge funds. The shockwave led to billions in losses at major banks and accelerated the demise of Credit Suisse.
Access of 7 Russian banks to European market frozen
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has frozen access to the European market for 7 Russian banks. This has seriously disrupted the stability of Europe and the financial markets. European banks have been hit hard on the stock exchange since Russia’s war actions on 23 February 2022. European banks, mainly those from France, Italy and Spain, are very dependent on Russia. One important measure was to cut the country off from SWIFT, a highly secure network that connects thousands of financial institutions around the world. The CEO of the French central bank, François Villeroy de Galhau, sounded the alarm after the elections about the precarious state of French finances. He noted that French government finances have been in bad shape for some time. ‘We cannot allow the deficits to increase any further.’
Profits of Western banks in Russia have tripled to 3 billion euros, due to higher interest rates on loans
Three of the largest banks in China are refusing payments from Russia. Banks in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates also have this intention. European banks, including ING , are still doing well there and paid 800 million euros in taxes to the Kremlin last year. The sanctions imposed by the West on Russia have ensured that these seven banks were able to profit considerably, writes The Financial Times .
Banks are allowed to charge fees for withdrawing large amounts of cash. Since 1 July 2021, ABN AMRO customers have had to pay extra if they want to withdraw more than 12,000 euros per year. The price for a standard payment account has increased by an average of 42% over the past 5 years. In 2021, the banks collectively made a loss of 570 million euros on payment transactions. In 2005, the loss was still 23 million euros. The Netherlands is the only European country in which banks make a loss on cash transactions and PIN payments. Business payment transactions do generate income. Banks only earn money on credit cards and payment accounts thanks to interest income. Banks lose money on all other matters. This led to a loss of more than 1.1 billion euros. Banks are losing more and more money on risk and compliance costs due to the security of payment transactions and checks on cash flows.
Due to Corona, banks were able to borrow a total of 2.2 trillion (2,200 billion) euros from the ECB in 2020 at an interest rate of -1 percent. The intention was that the money would be lent to companies in order to stimulate the economy and prevent the economy from taking even harder hits. But the interest that banks pay is calculated as the average over the past three years. Rabobank booked a profit of approximately 3.7 billion euros in 2021, ABN AMRO 1.2 billion and ING 4.8 billion euros. Together approximately 10 billion euros. However, the additional costs for a current account have become an average of 42 percent more expensive for clients of eight Dutch banks since 2017. Triodos Bank leads the way with more than a doubling of costs and Knab is the only bank that has not increased prices in the past five years.
The banks applied a negative interest rate on current, savings and investment accounts from 1 March 2021. On the part of the balance that was higher than 100,000 euros, both private and business customers paid a negative interest of 0.5 percent per year. For other customers, the savings interest on amounts up to 250,000 euros remained 0.01 percent. Rabobank customers no longer had to pay money to deposit their savings with the bank from 1 August 2022. The bank abolished the negative interest it charged after the interest rate increase of the European Central Bank (ECB).
European banks have almost 1 trillion euros in problem loans. Significant write-downs are required on loans that may not be repaid due to the corona pandemic . Most banks are therefore in dire straits and due to the billions in claims, fines and lawsuits, cutbacks have to be made on all sides. Savings interest rates are deliberately kept low, many staff have to leave the field, branches are closed, buildings, non-core activities and credit portfolios and leasing companies are sold or floated on the stock exchange. By using repurchase agreements or repos, banks can temporarily adjust their debt ratios so that they fall within the limits set by supervisors on important reporting dates. The majority of the bad portfolios are sold on to specialized hedge fund buyers such as Elliott, Cerberus Capital Management and Lone Star Funds, often in securitized form with the help of the government guarantee program Gacs.
The financing comes from pension funds , charities and sovereign wealth funds, among others . Then there is also the ECB with quantitative easing and the special ’teltro’ counter. There, banks can temporarily raise money at a negative rate, provided they lend it to companies and households. The European banks have collectively built up 722 billion in (teltro) debt with the ECB that actually had to be repaid in 2020. Because the ECB has again made Teltro loans available, the repayments can be repaid just like with a Ponzi scheme. With quantitative easing (QE), central banks create (digital) money with which they buy securities (such as government bonds). This saves banks, lowers interest rates and also makes loans cheaper for banks.
The European Commission suspects eight EU banks of forming a cartel. The financial institutions are said to have excluded competitors from the purchase and trading of European government bonds. In May 2019, the European Commission imposed fines of almost 1.1 billion euros on Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and the Japanese Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) for illegal cartel agreements in currency trading. The Swiss UBS avoided a fine because it brought the case to the Commission. The violations took place in varying compositions of the banks involved between 2007 and 2013. Rabobank was also fined no less than 26.6 million euros for making secret agreements with Deutsche Bank on trading in government bonds. They secretly exchanged market-sensitive information and coordinated their prices and trading strategies, the European Commission ruled.
Since the banking crisis, Dutch banks and insurers have received fines of over 2.15 billion. 1.9 billion euros were imposed in the United States. Dutch financial institutions also paid around 140 million euros in fines in the United Kingdom. Rabobank has lost the most money in fines over the past ten years and paid a total of 822 million euros for its involvement in the Libor scandal. In July 2017, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase settled for 127 million euros in a case about influencing interest rates for the Japanese yen due to fraud.
Investors had filed charges against the banks for fiddling with Libor and Euroyen interest rates. Earlier, Citigroup and HSBC and the French bank BNP Paribas also reached settlements to avoid further prosecution for price manipulation. Credit Suisse also settled its price manipulation in November 2017 for 135 million dollars. The banks settled for a total amount of 5.8 billion dollars. Major banks have misused interest rate swaps, derivatives, Libor, gold and currency rates and are involved in all kinds of dubious activities. European banks book some 25 billion in profits in tax havens and more than thirty Swiss banks were involved in laundering bribes from Petrobras in Brazil .
The Belgian Optima bank lost its license due to mismanagement, bad governance and aggressive marketing and shady real estate investments and went bankrupt in mid-June 2016. Société Générale (SG) settled with the US justice department for 50 million dollars and must finance this in part with an IPO of its car leasing branch ALD. The five largest American banks and twenty European banks have already paid a total of more than 228 billion euros in fines and damages since the credit crisis, and another 50 to 60 billion euros will probably be added. Rabobank, ING, ABN AMRO and Volksbank have 171 cannabis shops as collateral for 1.1 billion euros in mortgage loans to landlords of cannabis shops. A third of the property owners of the 570 cannabis shops pay their bank financing with rent from the sale of soft drugs.
All Iranian private banks and insurance companies were nationalized in 1979 and the Islamic Bank of Iran (later reorganized as theThe Islamic Economic Organization (exempt from nationalization) was established in Tehran, with branches throughout the country. Iran’s 10 banks are divided into three categories – commercial, industrial and agricultural – but all are subject to the same regulations. Instead of charging interest on loans, which are considered usury and prohibited under Islamic law, banks charge a service fee, a commission or both. The Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran issues the rial, the national currency.
The European banks must clean up their balance sheets and sell problem loans, according to the ECB. For the whole of Europe, this would amount to 1,950 billion euros, or about 4 percent of all European bank assets. European banks took in more than 233 billion euros in a new round of cheap long-term loans from the ECB, the so-called TLTRO operation. Italian banks already had about 360 billion euros in bad loans and due to the stock market declines as a result of Brexit, the banks were faced with losses of more than 20 percent. French banks have almost 300 billion euros outstanding in Italy. The first Italian bank collapsed at the beginning of June.
The oldest bank in Europe, the Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), was recently saved with 8.8 billion taxpayers’ money, despite all agreements and resolutions. The Italian government liquidated Banco Populare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca. The damage was estimated at 10 billion euros. The European Central Bank had lost confidence in the two banks because the survival plans that the banks themselves wrote were not credible enough. The bad loans were placed in a ‘bad bank’ and Intesa Sanpaolo, which is now threatened by Fintech, took over the healthy parts and received more than 5 billion euros for this. In addition, the state has given guarantees for 12 billion euros. End of exercise for the 151 and 140 year old banks from Vicenza and Montebelluna respectively.
ING is currently undergoing a large-scale reorganisation, with 7,000 employees being laid off. ING Belgium is closing most of the Record Bank branches, leaving around fifty of the 536. Rabobank is selling its mortgage-backed bonds (covered bonds) to institutional investors and is setting up a new mortgage bank called Vista. With this, the financial group wants to sell mortgages financed by institutional investors such as pension funds. The real estate financing activities, including around 60 employees, a credit portfolio worth 1.7 billion euros and the customer portfolio of over 9,000 loans from RNHB Hypotheekbank were sold and Athlon Car Lease from De Lage landen was sold for 1.1 billion euros to Mercedes, which already wants to get rid of it. Rabobank also sold Robeco for 1.9 billion euros.
Bankia SA, the fourth largest (state) bank in Spain, had to be kept afloat with 18 billion euros in support from the EU. The Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) received almost 9 billion in state support despite the new regulations and Liberbank also teetered on the brink of the abyss and had to merge with Unicaja Banco. Aegon sold all its shares. Deutsche Bank poses the greatest threat to the banking system with billions in losses. The Austrian Hypo Alpe Adria Bank has already collapsed with a deficit of more than 8 billion euros, causing creditors to lose their money and the Netherlands to pay 63 million via write-downs at Staatsbank BNG. Trading in the largest Italian bank UniCredit had to be halted after it became apparent that €8.1 billion in state support was needed to prevent the bank from collapsing. The total portfolio of weak loans is said to be €50 billion. BNP Paribas and Société Générale together sold approximately 4.4 million of their shares in Euronext to institutional investors.
Due to the negative interest rate, there was an increasing risk of investing in, among other things, Contingent Convertible Bonds (CoCos). CoCos that become worthless when a bank collapses or becomes a bad bank. Bond funds in particular run enormous risks because they can only choose the riskiest variant of full write-off.
Investors who invest in bond funds precisely for safety and security will soon be disappointed. ING wrote large parts of a law that gave banks a significant tax advantage when issuing very risky bonds. ING’s top management adjusted the draft text of the law and the minister adopted almost everything at the time. According to the Ministry of Finance, ING had not co-written it, but had only been consulted. Companies can raise money with complicated and risky CoCo bonds, but if the company subsequently gets into trouble, the bond expires. This means that the lender then loses his investment and the writer of the bond takes the money.
On the other hand, the lending party receives a very generous interest rate to compensate for the risk. Because in an emergency the loaned money can be “taken” by the company that issues the CoCo, the amount may be included as equity. This makes the product extra interesting for banks, because they have had to maintain higher capital buffers since the crisis. The banks wanted the interest on these loans to be tax deductible. The bank went to the cabinet to make this possible, “otherwise lending would suffer”. Although civil servants at Finance also see the tax law amendment as state aid, the draft text of the law nevertheless states that the law only applies to financial institutions. ABN CEO Gerrit Zalm was then asked to remove the words “financial institutions” from the text, but in the end ING came up with a formulation and sent the amended law to the ministry, which was adopted by the minister.
The Swedish Handelsbanken is blacklisting forty international companies, including Shell, because these companies have been involved in environmental scandals, human rights violations, corruption or the controversial North Dakota oil pipeline project in the United States. Shell is, among other things, the cause of environmental pollution in Nigeria. Other companies on the blacklist are Chevron, Alstom, Deutsche Telekom, Lockheed Martin, Hewlett Packard Enterprises and Renault. The companies involved have almost 5 billion euros in investments. All Handelsbanken’s participations in these companies will be terminated.
ECB
The ECB (European Central Bank) directly supervises the 109 most systemically important banks in Europe. The ECB has threatened approximately twenty banks with fines if climate risk shortcomings are not addressed. The letters were sent in October and November 2023. New European rules have recently been introduced regarding the calculation of penalty interest. Banks assumed an incorrect fixed-interest period with a higher interest rate. AFM is investigating the calculation of the excessive refinancing penalties.
The Oversluitclaim foundation will take legal action and try to recover the overpayment. It is said to be almost 5 billion euros. SNS bank is not waiting for the process and will compensate customers who have paid too much. ABN Amro has already abandoned the calculation method that is disadvantageous to customers and ING and RABO also claim that the calculations are correct and in accordance with the requirements of the law. A cyber stress test carried out by the European Central Bank (ECB) revealed various shortcomings, which could make a serious successful cyber attack a significant threat. Some 109 banks were tested for their ability to recover from a cyber attack.
They had to implement a recovery program and demonstrate that they had successfully repelled the attack. Germany, France and Italy have asked the European Union for less stringent financial rules. In a joint letter to the EU, the countries argue that the regulations for banks should be adjusted so that they can compete equally with banks outside the EU.
A US judge of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has finally allowed private individuals to sue banks in civil cases for the manipulation of the Libor interest rate. According to the ruling, private individuals and investment funds may still file claims for damages in the United States, regardless of settlements already reached with the US justice department. The ruling overruled the previous ruling of the lower US court from 2013.
HSBC, JPMorgan and Credit Agricole were fined almost €485 million. In recent years, the banks have not only been busy with the Libor interest rate and derivatives, but also with the manipulation of gold prices. There are already a number of official investigations underway into, among other things, uncovered short positions, in which not only the central banks, but possibly also the Federal Reserve is involved.
A former Barclays trader exploited “weaknesses” in the bank’s trading systems to manipulate the gold price in June 2012, the FCA said. Barclays was fined £26m for this, but other banks were involved in the manipulation of the gold price. Deutsche Bank also settled charges of manipulating the silver price. Three former JPMorgan, Barclays and Citigroup traders are on trial for sharing information about influencing exchange rates via a secret chat group. Philippe Moryoussef, who had fled to France to avoid the British penalty, was eventually sentenced to eight years in prison.
Emsley Deonicio Tromp has been director of the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten and its legal predecessor the Central Bank of the Netherlands Antilles since 1991. He is on trial for tax fraud and is also suspected of money laundering in the private sphere. According to the Public Prosecution Service, Tromp has defrauded ’the country of Curaçao’ of some 2.8 million euros, but is still in office.
Interest rate swaps and derivatives
The foundation Renteswapschadeclaim has succeeded in ensuring that at least 90% of the victims affiliated with the foundation are generously compensated by the banks. On 5 July, an arrangement was finally reached with all banks regarding the handling of derivatives claims. The arrangement does not apply to large real estate companies, very large companies and companies that demonstrably had knowledge of interest rate swaps in-house. Rabobank is making an additional provision of 500 million euros on top of the 200 million that had already been reserved. Because the compensation for the banks is deductible, the taxpayer is also paying for the banks’ malpractice. Rabobank sold around 9,000 interest rate derivatives to SMEs, ABN Amro around 6,000 and ING Bank over 600. Due to the rising implementation costs, the sector has already had to reserve almost 2 billion euros.
Vicentine
Rabobank , ING , ABN Amro and FMO together lost 208 million euros due to the bankruptcy of the Argentine soy trader Vicentin. There may be fraud and banks believe that money has been siphoned off. The Development Finance Company (FMO) lost 150 million dollars, ING 72 million dollars and Rabobank 23 million dollars. ABN Amro together with Rabo and ING are losing even more due to the 34.7% stake they have in FMO. The Dutch government also has 51 percent of these shares. Vicentin suddenly went bankrupt in December 2019 and was one of the largest Argentine agro-industrial conglomerates. In 2019, the company received 500 million dollars in loans from banks. Almost half of that, 245 million dollars, was allegedly lent by the banks and the FMO.
American Express
The Russian Central Bank revoked the banking license of American Express Bank, after it had already decided to liquidate itself in the country. American Express ceased operations in Russia and was one of three U.S. credit card giants that blocked Russian banks from accessing their payment networks in response to Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. American Express was ranked Russia’s 300th largest bank by assets. Last month, American Express Bank became the first foreign bank subsidiary in Russia to decide to liquidate rather than sell its operations. President Vladimir Putin subsequently gave American Express Bank permission in May to “voluntarily liquidate” its Russian operations.
Vimpelcom
ING is said to have transferred bribe payments from telecom company Vimpelcom to an Uzbek government official without reporting this. The FIOD raided and investigated the bank in March 2016. VimpelCom itself settled the case for 795 million with the Dutch and American authorities. The company had paid more than 100 million euros in bribes to gain access to the local telephony market and to obtain 3G and 4G licenses. The government official ensured that the company had a turnover of more than 2.25 billion euros in Uzbekistan over the past ten years. The Russian VimpelCom established itself in Amsterdam in 2010 because of the favorable tax climate and is listed on the New York stock exchange, which also allowed the Americans to prosecute. The bribe payments took place between January 2006 and October 2011.
Henk van Dalen was the financial director of VimpelCom from September 2010 to November 2013 and during that period, on October 19, 2011, another 30 million dollars was paid. Van Dalen is now a commissioner at Rabobank, Avebe, Macintosh, Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij, Evides, a member of the supervisory board at the Erasmus Medical Center and previously also a director at chemical company DSM and postal company TNT. In 2015, Norwegian Jo Lunder, a former colleague of his, was arrested at Oslo airport for involvement in the corruption. The bribes were allegedly paid to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek leader Karimov. According to research, she received a total of more than 1 billion dollars. After the corruption case became public, the woman has been under house arrest in the capital Tashkent.
VimpelCom is a joint venture between the Norwegian Telenor and the Russian Alfa Group and one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world with a network of 222 million customers in countries including Russia, Italy and African and Asian countries. In 2007, the Gibraltar letterbox company Takilant Ltd. bought 33.3 percent of the shares of a subsidiary of VimpelCom from the president’s daughter for 20 million dollars. In 2009, VimpelCom bought the shares back for 57.5 million dollars.
In 2007, Watertrail Industries Ltd., a subsidiary of VimpelCom, paid 25 million dollars to Takilant. In 2011, Watertrail Industries Ltd. paid another 30 million dollars to Takilant. The Swedish-Finnish Teliasonera and the Russian MTS are also suspected of corruption with Takilant. These money flows also went through ING, Fortis, ATB and Svenska Handelsbanken. Teliasonera also paid 220 million via a third-party account of law firm Houthoff Buruma, who then transferred it to Fortuis, who then transferred it to Takilant in Gibraltar.
According to the OCCRP, the largest amounts were laundered via the Danske Bank (Denmark, $1.2 billion) and the Bank of China (over 700 million). An important intermediary in these transactions is said to be a Moldovan bank. 500 bankers and employees of the Russian secret service are said to be involved. Igor Putin, a cousin of the Russian president, is also said to play a role in the fraud, from a bank in Moscow.
The share of banks and insurers in the financial sector has decreased in the past ten years. In the past ten years they grew by 2300 billion dollars. The banks and insurers grew by only 1300 billion dollars.
TMNL/Transaction Monitoring Netherlands BV
Major Dutch banks are putting the collaborative action ‘Transaction Monitoring Netherlands’ (TMNL) on the back burner. TMNL has existed since 2020 and was intended to jointly combat fraud and money laundering. TMNL brought together transaction data from various banks and establishes connections between them that provide new insights into possible money laundering and terrorist financing. TMNL ensures that banks are better able to detect potentially unusual transactions and that patterns can be exposed that would otherwise go unnoticed. This allows investigative services to tackle money laundering more effectively, public funds are used more efficiently and criminals have less room to maneuver. Banks form an important link in the fight under the current Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act (Wwft) and can thus make a significant contribution to making the combating chain more effective.
Until recently, banks searched for potentially unusual transaction patterns individually and sent unusual transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit – Netherlands (FIU). The FIU investigates these transactions further and forwards them to the investigative services where necessary. However, individual banks have limited insight into potentially unusual transaction flows, because criminals often spread them across several banks. Rabobank, ABN Amro, Triodos, ING and de Volksbank) are always on the lookout for money launderers and terrorists who use their services. They spend one and a half billion euros on this search every year. The European law that will come into effect in 2027 makes the initiative’s working method impossible. Rotteveel calls it ’the umpteenth straw,’ after which the banks decided to stop TMNL. The anti-money laundering legislation that was adopted by the European Parliament at the end of April makes it much more difficult to share data between banks, which benefits customer privacy. Sharing data will soon only be permitted if a high risk of money laundering has been determined in advance. TMNL will therefore continue to exist, but will become much smaller.
ABN AMRO
Gerrit Zalm left the bank in 2017, a year earlier than planned after an uproar over poor supervision of money laundering affairs. Zalm took office at the end of 2008 and officially became CEO a few months later. His contract was extended by four years in 2014. ABN Amro will lay off 975 to 1,375 employees in order to structurally save 200 million euros per year. The private banking activities in Asia and the Middle East will be sold to bank and asset manager LGT from Liechtenstein. ABN AMRO was fined 750,000 euros and 2 million euros by the AFM for the sale and insufficient data maintenance of interest rate swaps to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In the Netherlands, a total of around 17,000 interest rate derivatives were sold that were intended to hedge interest rate risks. However, due to the current negative interest rate, these have acquired a negative value of billions of euros. ING and ABN Amro had each lent around 180 million euros to German fintech company and payment processor Wirecard. The caretaker cabinet of the Dutch State is selling its shares at an accelerated pace. The current stake of 49.5 percent is now being reduced to around 40 percent.
The caretaker cabinet of the Dutch State is currently selling shares at an accelerated pace and the stake has already been reduced from 49.5 percent to around 40 percent. This makes the bank interesting for takeovers. Deutsche Bank is said to be one of the possible candidates and is already informally investigating this. The rumours were reason enough for Silchester International Investors to take a 3.01 percent stake. The British now hold 26 million shares. ABN Amro took over one of the oldest German banks, the German private bank Hauck Aufhauser Lampe (HAL) from the Chinese owner Fosun Internation for 672 million euros. CEO Robert Swaak will step down in the first half of 2025 and will not complete his term. The European Commission approved the takeover. ABN AMRO was already active in Germany under the name Bethmann Bank for wealthy clients and now wants to merge the two banks. With the purchase of HAL, which was founded in 1796, ABN AMRO will soon have approximately 70 billion euros in German assets under management. HAL has a head office in Frankfurt and branches in various European cities and in China.
ABN Amro has also acquired the heavily loss-making investment platform Bux. Through Bux, the bank gained half a million, mainly young, customers spread across eight countries. In addition to the Netherlands, these are Belgium, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain and Ireland. BUX grew strongly but suffered a loss of 16 million euros in 2022. In 2021, there was also a loss of 17.7 million euros. BUX has raised a lot of money from investors, including ABN, in recent years for further expansion in Europe. In total, this amounts to 103 million euros between 2015 and 2021 and has grown into a large neobroker with mobile applications with 500,000 customers in 8 European markets. After the acquisition, ABN AMRO and BUX together became the largest provider of products for investors in the Netherlands. The combination is also a welcome addition for Deutsche Bank. The acquisition became official on 1 July.
The Dutch State is also selling its ABN AMRO shares at an accelerated pace and the stake is being reduced to around 30 percent. This makes the bank interesting for takeovers. Deutsche Bank is said to be one of the possible candidates and is already informally investigating this. The rumours were reason enough for Silchester International Investors to take a 3.01 percent stake. The British now hold 26 million shares. ABN Amro took over one of the oldest German banks, the German private bank Hauck Aufhauser Lampe (HAL) from the Chinese owner Fosun Internation for 672 million euros. CEO Robert Swaak will step down in the first half of 2025 and will not complete his term. The European Commission approved the takeover. ABN AMRO was already active in Germany under the name Bethmann Bank for wealthy clients and now wants to merge the two banks. With the purchase of HAL, which was founded in 1796, ABN AMRO will soon have approximately 70 billion euros in assets of Germans under management.
HAL has its head office in Frankfurt and branches in various European cities and in China. The bank is urgently looking for a new CEO now that Robert Swaak is leaving in the first half of 2025. NLFI will retain control over the bank’s socially sensitive remuneration policy. It will also retain a vote in the composition of the supervisory board and the board of directors. NLFI will only lose its right to participate and advise if the state’s interest falls below 10%. The state’s interest must be reduced from the current 40.5 percent to 30 percent and the sale of the shares will start at the end of November. ABN AMRO has cost the state billions of euros more than it has yielded across the board. Minister Eelco Heinen (Finance) said last month that the price of the ABN share should be 31.49 euros to prevent the state from incurring losses on the sale. The share was worth about half that on the stock exchange on Wednesday morning.
ASN
In 2017, the customer base of SNS subsidiary ASN grew to a total of 667,389. The growth in 2017 was mainly among customers with a general payment account. On 31 December 2021, there were a total of 834,917 customers. ASN Bank is promoted as a guide in making sustainable choices. In the financial sector, politics and media, there is a lot of attention for climate change and the energy transition. The number of new customers has grown considerably in recent years, with 2021 again seeing the largest increase (+6%) since 2012. Investment accounts were proportionally the most popular (+19%). Assets under management increased to 15.9 billion euros. ASN is financing a battery park that is due to be completed in the third quarter of 2025. Alfen is building a battery park in Flevoland for FlevoBESS for over 30 million euros.
FlevoBESS is a partnership of local entrepreneurs in wind energy. The battery park to be built with a total capacity of 31.6 MW will be connected to wind turbines in the region. At times when the wind is strong but there is little demand for power, the battery can store the surplus. The battery is used in the event of shortages. The batteries can store the surplus of wind power for four hours. Current battery projects in the Netherlands are smaller in size and can only store electricity for one to two hours. In addition to batteries, Alfen also makes transformer houses and electric charging stations. The energy storage division collapsed in 2024 due to a low global price for batteries. The park is part of a larger plan for three similar energy storage projects in Flevoland. The initiators, including Begro Energy Projects and Pure Energie, are still in a development phase.
Adyen/Klarna
Alfen Bank
Mikhail Fridman of the Carlyle Group, like many other oligarchs, became rich after the implosion of the Soviet Union. As co-founder of Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, he is a major shareholder in the Alfa Group, which also includes Russian food giant X5 Retail. When Alfa sold oil company TNK-BP to state oil company Rosneft in 2013, Fridman cashed in over $5 billion. He used the proceeds to start an investment group in London. There he owns the Victorian estate Athlone House, which cost around 75 million euros and houses an art collection worth over 50 million. In early October last year it became known that Fridman had left London. After a stay in Israel, he moved to Moscow. He won a lawsuit against the EU over sanctions imposed on him. The Council of the European Union can still appeal the verdict. In addition, the sanctions against the oligarch that date from after March 2023 and are better substantiated are still in force. The sanctions list includes more than 1,700 individuals and 400 companies. Dozens of them have announced that they will go to court in Luxembourg, just like Fridman.
Amsterdam Trade bank
The Amsterdam Trade Bank, a subsidiary of the Russian Alfa bank, was in dire straits and was looking for new investors or buyers. The heavily sanctioned Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman had to watch helplessly as the court in Amsterdam declared the bank bankrupt on April 21 , 2022. The Amsterdam Trade Bank was a small bank with approximately 100 employees and approximately one billion in capital, mainly active in the lending segment, to SMEs. They also served a group of savers in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. Some 23,000 savers, mainly in the Netherlands, have been affected. Amounts of up to 100,000 euros are guaranteed and investors can get back a maximum of 20,000 euros through the compensation scheme of the Dutch Central Bank. The FIOD raided the bank, which was founded in 1994, in 2017 for violating money laundering regulations.
The war with Ukraine led to sanctions being imposed on the parent bank in the US and the UK. Putting the bank up for sale was the only way for the oligarchs to save the day. Some 10,000 affected customers of the bankrupt Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB) have now received their money back. That is more than half of the 700 million euros from 23,000 savers. ATB / Alfa Bank is the first bankrupt bankrupt since the DSB Bank in 2009. Sanctions were imposed on several owners of the Russian Alfa Bank after Russia invaded Ukraine. The bank is on the sanctions lists of the US and the UK. The software of the payment systems was locked, meaning that the bank could no longer make payments. The guarantee fund now contains three billion euros, of the planned five billion.
AXA bank
Taken over by Crelan bank
BBVA (Spain)
Spanish bank BBVA has made a hostile bid for Banco Sabadell. With this bid, the second largest Spanish bank is now directly targeting the shareholders of its competitor. The board of the banking company is being bypassed. This is a sensitive issue, as the board had rejected the initial bid of 11.5 billion euros. The Sabadell board considers the amount too low. But according to Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, as BBVA is called in full, there is no room for a higher bid. That is why the same bid has now been sent to the shareholders.
This is the second time that BBVA has tried to take over its rival Sabadell. In late 2020, the banks briefly negotiated a possible merger. They were also unable to agree on a price. The merger would create a new major Spanish bank with a balance sheet of more than 1 trillion euros. The combined market value of BBVA and Sabadell would be around 70 billion euros. That is roughly equal to the market value of Banco Santander, Spain’s largest lender.
BMO Alto (US)
BMO Alto is part of BMO Financial Group, a financial services provider with more than 200 years of expertise.
BNG
BNG was founded in 1914 as a structured company. The bank’s shareholders are exclusively governments. The State holds half of the shares, the other half is held by municipalities, provinces and a water board. BNG Bank is located in The Hague and has no branches. The debt securities issued by BNG Bank have a credit rating of AAA by Standard & Poor’s (S&P), Aaa by Moody’s and AAA by Fitch. BNG Bank is one of the most creditworthy banks in the world. BNG Bank has a balance sheet of more than 130 billion euros and is the fourth largest bank in the Netherlands and a relevant player in the financing of local governments, housing, healthcare, education, energy and infrastructure.
The bank offers financing for all terms at the lowest possible prices. BNG Bank also offers customized financial services, such as credit provision, payment transactions and area development. The bank is active in project financing and participates in public-private partnerships. By far the largest part of the bank’s credit provision is credit risk-free, because it is provided to or guaranteed by governments. Carel van Eykelenburg, the current chairman of the Board of Directors of BNG, earns more than six hundred thousand euros per year. The Lower House is protesting against such obscene compensation. Members of Parliament have already submitted parliamentary questions to the Minister of Finance.
BNP Paribas (France)
Hugo Peek, will be the new CEO of BNP Paribas Netherlands from 15 January 2024. BNP Paribas wants to profile itself as a French bank on the Dutch market. The French bank settled a price manipulation charge for 350 million dollars. The share price fell by as much as 11% on 15 March 2023 after the unrest at Credit Suisse. The bank is also suspected of cum-cum fraud. On 28 March 2023, there was a search of the bank. BNP Paribas also paid a settlement of 37.5 million euros for the derivatives fraud that brought housing association Vestia to the brink of the abyss ten years ago. The bank is also involved in a controversial case that is currently being investigated by both the French and American judicial authorities. The investigation, which began in June, focuses on aggravated money laundering and focuses on numerous suspicious financial flows that occurred between 2019 and 2021 through TCR International Limited, a company based in Cyprus.
BNP Paribas Securities Services acted as a banking partner for TCR International during this period. Hundreds of millions of euros and dollars of potentially dubious origin or with dubious economic motives circulated through TCR International’s cash accounts in France. From January 2019 to January 2022, BNP Paribas Securities Services extended its securities custody services to this Cypriot entity. These services included the custody of stocks and bonds for institutional clients. The French investigation is focusing sharply on the origin and destination of the funds. The French investigation was triggered by an investigation by the U.S. federal justice system into the financial channels operated by the Wagner Group and its former head, Evgueni Prigojine, who died in a private jet crash in August.
The U.S. is seeking financial intermediaries that may have participated in such transactions, with a particular focus on certain flows related to TCR International that were routed through BNP Paribas Securities Services. The bank is in talks with French insurer AXA to buy 100% of its AXA Investment Managers unit for an agreed price of 5.1 billion euros ($5.50 billion). The potential combined entity would have total assets under management of about 1.5 trillion euros ($1.62 trillion), BNP said in a statement, and would rank among Europe’s top asset managers behind leader Amundi, which had 2.16 trillion euros in assets under management as of end-June. BNP said it expects the transaction to close in mid-2025.
Bank BPM
UniCredit made a €10.1 billion share offer for Banco BPM, which recently announced its acquisition of asset manager Amina. UniCredit is offering 0.175 new UniCredit shares for each Banco BPM share, which equates to a value of €6.657 per Banco BPM share. The Italian government has already given UniCredit permission, but has set (unknown) conditions. According to Italian rules, the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has the power to block takeovers and wants UniCredit to leave Russia quickly. The government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also wants to prevent many bank branches from closing after the merger of the two banks. The Golden Power conditions make the deal less attractive due to restrictions on synergies (e.g. branch closures) and legal uncertainty. The low offer price, combined with Banco BPM’s recent successes, motivates shareholders to wait for a better offer. The government’s preference for an MPS-Banco BPM merger reflects a broader vision to maintain competition, which strengthens Banco BPM’s position but also adds external pressure. Banco BPM’s stability is real, but the Golden Power intervention and political dynamics play a major role. UniCredit is challenging the ban.
Banco Generali Private
This bank was founded in the early 2000s by Assicurazioni Generali with the aim of concentrating all the activities for the promotion and management of financial products aimed at customers in Italy in a single hub. A Group that has existed for more than 180 years for families and companies. Mediobanca has made an offer for Banca Generali Private for 6.3 billion euros.
Mediobanca plans to finance the acquisition by selling a 13 percent stake in insurer Assicurazioni Generali. The bid is worth 54.17 euros per share, representing an 11 percent premium to Banca Generali’s closing price in Milan on Friday. Mediobanca expects the share swap to be completed by the end of October. The bank expects the proposed merger to generate synergies worth around 300 million euros. Mediobanca is itself a takeover target and is trying to fend off a bid from Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, while UniCredit wants to buy smaller rival Banco BPM, which has also rejected the takeover and is currently in the process of acquiring asset manager Anima Holding.
Banca Popolare di Sondrio (Italy)
Banco Populare had to be rescued because it could no longer meet its obligations in the short term. In recent years, Banco Populare has lent 37 billion to project developers for holiday bungalows, offices and houses, the value of which plummeted due to the economic crisis. The capital buffer had deteriorated so much that the ECB forced the bank to take measures.
The shareholders bore the brunt of the losses. Banco Popular could count on a buffer of 7 percent during the last stress test of the ECB. ING is considering making a bid and has hired legal and financial advisors to evaluate a bid for the bank. Banco Popolare di Sondrio has also received a takeover bid from BPER. Sondrio rejected the takeover bid from BPER last month as too low. That bid was entirely in shares. Converted, it involved 4.3 billion euros. In the banking sector, there has been an increased search for takeovers recently.
Bank Progetto (Italy)
A digital bank controlled by BPL Holdco S.à.rl and an investment vehicle of Oaktree Capital Management and led by Paolo Fiorentino, Has offices in Milan and Rome and a commercial network throughout the national territory. Banca Progetto specializes in services for small and medium-sized Italian companies and private clients. It is aimed at individuals with savings products such as deposit accounts, salary-backed loans for private employees, state, government, para-public and retired employees and SMEs with medium-term loans and factoring.
Banco Sabadel (Spain)
Bank of America (US)
The second-largest bank in the United States. A federal appeals court in the United States has overturned a lower court ruling that ordered Bank of America to pay $1.2 billion in fines for fraud in reselling bad mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Its subsidiary Countrywide was found guilty in 2013 of deception in reselling bad mortgages. Prosecutors say the bankers deliberately sold bad loans as good loans.
Bank of America has settled a case involving wrongful charges to customers for $250 million. The bank is accused of systematically charging customers too much credit fees. Of that amount, $150 million is a ‘fine’, the remaining $100 million must be refunded to affected account holders.
Bankia SA (Spain)
Bankia merged with smaller competitor Banco Mare Nostrum (BMN) Bankia says the merger will strengthen its position as Spain’s fourth-largest bank. The Spanish government hopes to get a better price if Bankia goes public. The merger will dilute the state’s stake to 66.56% and earnings per share are expected to increase by 16%. Bankia will issue 205.6 million new shares to the current shareholders of BMN, who will then jointly own 6.67% of Bankia’s shares. Bankia received around 18 billion euros in support from the EU to prevent it from collapsing. Bankia is the fourth largest (state) bank in Spain, founded in 2010 by seven existing (bad) banks. In 2012, a request for the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry was submitted by the opposition PSOE party, but the proposal was rejected by the governing PP majority by 175 votes to 139, all of whom had interests or ties to the bank.
A group of Spanish activists calling themselves “QuerellaPaRato” (lawsuit for Rato) have raised money to sue Rodrigo Rato because chairman Rodrigo Rato was able to resign with millions in compensation. Several shareholders and former employees have shown themselves willing to testify. Rodrigo Rato was chairman of Bankia between 2010 and 2012, which concealed billions of euros in losses and caused tens of thousands of small investors to lose their savings. Rato is suspected of money laundering, fraud, tax fraud and mismanagement, while he himself has always fiercely criticized tax fraudsters. Rato was the Spanish Minister of Finance, but also head of the IMF.
Rodrigo Rato used the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca through law firm Finsbury Trust & Corporate Services Ltd. to conceal his assets from the Spanish tax authorities. Rodrigo Rato was a minister in the conservative Aznar cabinet (1996-2004) and was director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) until 2007. In 2013, Rato liquidated his Panamanian companies Westcastle Corporation and Red Rose Financial Enterprises and transferred 3.6 million euros to his own bank accounts and to his company Vivaway Limited in the United Kingdom. Rato kept part of his fortune secret for more than twenty years through these companies. His Panamanian companies were registered in the names of front men. The Spanish authorities are now investigating the origin of the money.
Barclays (UK)
Barclays is a British financial services company that operates internationally. The company is a holding company, listed on the London Stock Exchange – where it is part of the FTSE 100 – and the New York Stock Exchange. Barclays is one of the largest banks in the world and is among the 25 largest companies worldwide according to Forbes. The bank was founded in 1690 and began using the Barclays brand name in 1736. In 1896, several London banks merged into one bank and this date is also considered the founding date. In 1967 , Barclays was the first bank in the world to have an ATM. Barclays is also the company behind the Barclaycard credit card, which is popular in some European countries . At the end of 2020, the bank had 83,000 employees. Barclays cut hundreds of jobs to cut costs.
There are also plans to restructure teams within the consumer banking division. CEO CS Venkatakrishnan is under pressure from shareholders to increase profits and had previously promised to cut costs at the bank. On 7 July 2016, four former employees of British bank Barclays were sentenced to prison for their part in the Libor fraud case. One of the bank employees was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison, two of them to four years and one to two years and nine months. Barclays cooperated with the investigation by the justice department into the manipulation of exchange rates. The three banks had previously reached settlements that required cooperation.
Barclays has since questioned all bank employees and studied 2.4 million documents and 100,000 audio fragments. In total, fines of around 4.5 million dollars have already been imposed. On 19 July 2018, traders from investment banks Deutsche Bank and Barclays were sentenced to a combined thirteen years in prison in London for the Euribor fraud. Earlier that month, the British jury acquitted several other traders. Euribor is an interest rate that banks use for financial contracts such as consumer loans. The rate was set by secretly making agreements with each other about it.
BAWAG Group AG
BAWAG Group AG is a listed holding company headquartered in Vienna, Austria, serving 2.1 million customers in the retail, small business, corporate, real estate and public sectors in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Western Europe and the United States. The Group operates under various brands and offers simple, transparent and affordable financial products and services via multiple channels. BAWAG acquired Knab from ASR in January 2024 for EUR 510 million.
Another 80 million extra will be paid in the second half of 2024 once the management of the mortgages has been transferred. Knab was founded in 2012 by René Frijters and has issued many loans via various digital credit platforms at home and abroad. Knab has reduced lending via platforms to less than 2 percent of the total balance sheet. Knab has approximately 346,000 customers and profiles itself as a bank for self-employed persons. At the end of 2023, the bank had a net profit of 32.2 million euros. The bank was fined 2,968,750 euros by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) for the period 2019 to 2022 because the risks of loans taken out by customers were not properly managed. A profit of 683 million euros was recorded in 2023 .
BES (EU)
Ricardo Salgado, the former CEO of Banco Espirito Santo (BES) has been placed under house arrest in connection with the investigation into tax fraud, money laundering and corruption and has been ordered to resign. Five others are also suspected and are being investigated by the Portuguese authorities. In addition to banks, insurance companies, (Tivoli) hotels and hospitals, ESFG also includes the 897 million euro stake of Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, which is now also involved in a judicial investigation. The stake in PT was acquired just before the collapse, which meant that a large part of the loss was passed on to the now faltering Portugal Telecom. ESFG also has assets in Brazil, including some energy projects.
With 4.9 billion euros in support from the EU, Banco Espirito Santo, the second largest bank in Portugal, had to be rescued and split up at the end of July 2014. The Portuguese judiciary has been conducting several investigations into Espirito Santo International (ESI), the parent holding company of the private bank, since 2011, because of ties between Swiss fund managers and clients in Portugal. The parent company Espírito Santo Financial Group (ESFG) has since gone bankrupt. Until the collapse of BES, Ricardo Salgado transferred a portion of the bank’s reserves every year as a dividend via Luxembourg to Espírito Santo Cayman Islands Limited. As a result, the EU contributed almost 80 billion euros and the French group Crédit Agricole, with 14.6% majority shareholder of BES, had to write off 708 million euros.
Basque bank (US)
In 1999, the founders at Texas Capital Bank pioneered digital banking by launching the first online-only savings bank in the U.S. Today, the U.S. bank offers customers the highest interest rate at 5.1%. It all started with the unique Bask Mileage Savings Account that rewarded savings with American Airlines AAdvantage® miles. Now, we’ve expanded the way our customers think about banking. In 2020, Bask reimagined the savings experience—and later expanded it with the Bask Interest Savings Account and Certificates of Deposit (CDs).
Bigbank
Bigbank, founded in 1992, is an international credit bank with headquarters in Tallinn (Estonia) and active in a number of European countries. In the Netherlands, they have been offering fixed-term savings deposits since 2012 and flexible savings accounts that can be withdrawn freely and with a relatively high interest rate since 2021. They use the deposits on savings accounts and deposits for small-scale loans to individuals and companies in a number of other European countries. They combine this traditional business model with smart digital systems and online services. As a result, they keep costs low and can offer savers high interest rates.
BinckBank
Relatively small bank with high savings interest. BinckBank sees a sharp decline in trading activity and also received 150 claims for a total of approximately 3.8 million euros from Alex customers who suffered losses on investments. BinckBank was fined 500,000 euros by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) for failing to report ‘over the counter’ transactions in Luxembourg in the period from 2010 to 2014 and from 2011 to 2014 on XBRD, a derivatives exchange in Brussels, and XMON, a derivatives exchange in Paris. Despite the financial setback, BinckBank acquired the fast-growing online asset manager Pritle for €12.5 million. Of this, €7.5 million in cash and an amount of €5 million in shares of Dutch online bank Binck. The purchase includes €60 million under management of 6,500 customers and 28 employees who will now be employed by BinckBank. The bank changed the tainted name to Saxo.
BPER ( Italy )
BPER Banca, the Italian bank from Modena, has acquired the troubled lender Carige from the Italian deposit guarantee fund FITD, which owns 80% of the shares. The acquisition is expected to close at the end of June 2022. Together, the two banks will become the number four in the country, behind Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit and Banco BPM. BPER, formerly known as Banca Popolare dell’Emilia Romagna. FITD will first make an additional capital injection of 530 million euros. In addition, BPER can count on €350 million to €370 million in fiscal support from Rom. Once the shares of FITD have been transferred, BPER Banco will make an offer for the 20% of the shares that are still in public hands.
Brand New Day
Pension insurer Brand New Day, founded in 2010, has been granted a banking license and wants to offer a much higher savings interest rate as a new savings bank. Brand New Day with an interest rate of 0.4 percent. No payment products are offered yet. The focus remains on pension products for consumers and companies. Bank savings is a form of supplementary pension. The bank has approximately 150,000 customers. In July, the 40,000 customers of the acquired Allianz Nederland Asset Management were added to this. This is the second time that the founders of Brand New Day have been granted a banking license.
Bunq
In 2012, Niknam, also the founder of hosting party TransIP , started the new bank Bunq . He describes the disrupter in the Dutch banking market as an IT company that ‘coincidentally’ provides banking services. Bunq has no offices other than the self-proclaimed ‘Bunqer’ and is one of the partners of Apple Pay . The online Bunq bank booked its very first net profit of 53 million euros in 2023. The number of users grew from 5.4 million to 9 million in the past twelve months, who together hold more than 4.5 billion euros in deposits.
Bunq wants to expand to the United Kingdom and the United States and has applied for a banking license there. In the US, the company will mainly focus on European expats. Online bank (Neo)Bunq suffered a loss of more than 16 million euros in 2020 and more than 13.4 million euros in 2021. But in the meantime, Bunq now has 2.3 billion euros in customer deposits under its management. 91 percent more than a year earlier. And in the last quarter of 2022, the bank was profitable for the first time. Bunq was founded in 2012 by Dutch entrepreneur Ali Niknam to offer an alternative to traditional banks.
When it acquired Irish lender CapitalFlow in July, founder Ali Niknam’s company predicted that the bank would structurally break even by the end of 2021. 90 percent of the bank is owned by Ali Niknam himself and 10 percent is owned by British Pollen Street Capital. Due to the relatively high savings interest rate of over 2.5% that Bunq offers, deposits have doubled in four months to 4.5 billion euros. In March, Bunq reported that deposits in savings accounts had doubled in one year to 2.3 billion euros.
Bunq has nine million users as of September 2023, half of whom contribute to revenue because they pay for banking services around a checking account or hold a savings account from which Bunq earns interest income. The other half largely consists of users of the Tricount app, which allows groups to settle joint accounts. Bunq acquired this app in 2022.
Bunq says it is targeting its current accounts at the ‘digital nomad’, who wants to be able to easily manage their finances anywhere in the world. It does not disclose the number of holders of such a paid account, but it is probably around 200,000. Niknam announced Tuesday evening during a meeting for employees and relations that customers of certain subscription types will get 1 percent of their food and drink expenses and 2% of their public transport expenses back. It will also be possible to save in American dollars and British pounds, at a higher interest rate than in the Netherlands. However, exchange rate risks must be accepted for this. These credits also fall outside the deposit guarantee scheme.
Foundations that fell victim to WhatsApp fraud are demanding almost €100,000 in damages from Bunq. The bank accounts of the organizations, which support refugees and manage student savings, were emptied by fraudsters last year and the victims hold the bank liable for the damage, because it allegedly intervened too late. The affected foundations believe that Bunq failed to prevent the fraud or limit the damage, by not acting or acting too late when suspicious transactions were carried out. For example, 900 euros were transferred to another bank more than 40 times in a very short period of time. And gold was purchased for tens of thousands of euros.
Student accounts also showed remarkable transactions that should have raised alarm bells. In a short period of time, 38 amounts between 250 and 1500 euros were transferred to a single other account. According to the affected parties, Bunq also provided inadequate aftercare after the fraud and they are therefore formally holding Bunq liable for 94,397 euros. If the foundations go bankrupt as a result of the fraud, they want to recover the full damage from Bunq. CapitalFlow was acquired in 2021. To increase diversity in the tech sector, bunq has donated €100,000 to the non-profit initiative Next Level. Next Level uses storytelling to inspire women and minorities between the ages of 16 and 28 to choose a career in the tech sector.
Bunq has raised 44.5 million euros in growth capital in a new investment round. In 2023, almost one hundred million was already invested in the online bank. Bunq says it wants to use the amount to accelerate its international growth. Current investors Ali Niknam, Pollen Street Capital and Raymond Kasiman were part of the investment round and agreed to a valuation of 1.65 billion euros. The online bank now has more than nine million European users, who together hold more than 4.5 billion euros in user credits. Profit was booked in 2022 and this is also expected for the whole of 2023. DNB had issued two fines in two years, totaling 875,000 euros.
According to DNB, Bunq had not had a good idea of who ten customers were and what they did with their money for several years. Bunq filed an objection with the court when DNB itself rejected the objection. Although Bunq did not win the case, the fine was reduced to almost 130,000 euros. Bunq customers are surprisingly often scammed with spoofing. In this, Bunq customers are called by someone who claims to be calling on behalf of the bank. Using a technical trick, the number appears to come from your bank. Criminals also successfully request logins and codes using emails from the bank that appear to be genuine. Bunq is not prepared to respond quickly and adequately to abuse and within a few hours the balance of Bunq account holders disappears, who are dejected and powerless to watch as their accounts are plundered.
Bunq CEO Ali Niknam says he understands the criticism of phishing fraud victims on customer service and is busy implementing improvements and plans to compensate victims. Niknam also states that bunq was in contact with victims before the media reports appeared. ‘For many we are still working to recover money, for others we are looking to what extent a goodwill payment is appropriate. Customers who have been robbed have now hired lawyers to summon Bunq.
The Consumers’ Association also finds it unacceptable that the internet bank is inaccessible for customers who fall victim to criminals. “That’s simply not possible,” says spokesperson Joyce Donat. “If you are in complete panic because a huge amount has disappeared from your savings account, you should be able to get a live person on the phone. That is not possible at Bunq, that is their policy.” In June, Bunq still set up a ‘deferred payment’ of 24 hours when the customer increases his standard limit, logs in on a new device or makes a payment to a new account number.
With the deferred payment, it seems as if the payment has been processed. But in reality, the bank will hold the money for another 24 hours. In case of doubt, the customer can still cancel the payment. Most other banks introduced a cooling-off period of 4 hours a few years ago when customers increase their transfer limit. This demonstrably led to less bank helpdesk fraud. Bunq stopped with waiting time for transfers, because ‘evaluation showed that it had no effect on the number of fraud cases, while it did lead to many complaints from our users.’
These were mainly users who found these restrictions difficult. Bunq also promises that a warning will be issued when consumers transfer money to an account where the name and number do not match. This measure has also been common practice at other banks for a long time. Most victims of fraudsters who want to claim damages from Bunq are unsuccessful in legal proceedings.
Bunq posted a loss of €13.4 million in 2021 and a loss of €10.5 million in 2022. The profit for 2023 is largely due to the interest margin. The profit of €53 million for 2023 will be used to further grow internationally. User funds grew from €1.8 billion to approximately €7 billion and gross interest income was almost five times higher than in 2022. Bunq is not allowed to start in the US for the time being. The application for a banking license was withdrawn on January 30, 2024, after waiting almost a year for approval .
A new application is being prepared. Employees may have violated the banker’s oath by secretly looking at bank accounts. This is the judgment of the Banking Disciplinary Board, which examines whether bankers adhere to the rules, based on an article in NRC . The newspaper spoke to four employees of the bank who say that they looked at other people’s banking transactions for private reasons and that no alarm bells went off. The Dutch Data Protection Authority will also contact the bank in response to the article and calls the accusations worrying. In 2024, the bank paid more than 10 million euros to customers who had fallen victim to fraud. In 2023, this was still 203,000 euros.
CKV Bank (Belgium)
CKV Spaarbank is an independent Belgian savings bank that has been active throughout Belgium since 1956 with a varied range of traditional savings products and high interest rates and also specialises in mortgage-backed loans, both for private and professional purposes. CKV Spaarbank has a distribution network of savings bank agents and independent credit introducers. CKV Spaarbank is a non-listed, independent financial institution. The Belgian savings bank is supervised by the National Bank of Belgium and the FSMA (Financial Services and Markets Authority). It is a stable financial institution and a participant in the Belgian deposit guarantee scheme. They are experts in niche lending in collaboration with a wide network of independent credit brokers. has a wide distribution network of savings bank agents and 50 professional, experienced and service-oriented employees.
Carige ( Italy )
The European Central Bank (ECB) placed Italian banking group Carige under full supervision after the 536-year-old bank failed to complete a necessary capital increase. The deposit guarantee fund ultimately had to save the bank from bankruptcy and the ECB appointed three directors to find a takeover partner. Carige has received €350 million to €370 million in fiscal state aid and customers have withdrawn around €3 billion in deposits. Losses in 2019 amounted to around €783 million.
BPER Banca acquired the ailing Carige at the end of June 2022. The Modena-based bank reached an agreement with the Italian deposit guarantee fund FITD, which owns 80% of the shares. Together, the two banks will become the country’s number four, behind Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit and Banco BPM. Carige has long been considered one of the government’s headaches, along with Monte dei Paschi di Siena. The Genoese bank, founded in 1483, almost collapsed in 2019 due to many bad loans, management problems and low profitability.
Citygroup
Citigroup is the third largest bank in the US, only JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America are larger. The bank was formed by the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group on April 7, 1998. Its shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange in New York. Citigroup cooperated with law enforcement in the investigation into manipulation of exchange rates after an earlier settlement was reached in which cooperation was a requirement. Within two years, 20,000 employees must now leave due to cutbacks,
The bank suffered a loss of 1.8 billion in the 4th quarter of 2024. In 2023, 7,000 employees had to leave, costing the bank 800 million dollars. In Mexico, another 40,000 employees will have to look for other work. That leaves 180,000 of the 240,000.
Clear Bank
British financial services provider ClearBank is getting a head office in Amsterdam. The bank arranges payment transactions for financial parties and is currently only active in the United Kingdom. According to Rintse Zijlstra, director of ClearBank Europe, the choice fell on the Netherlands because of the strong economy, good credit status and the flourishing fintech sector. ClearBank is already a big name in the UK and now the company wants to grow to first the EU and later the United States. ClearBank Europe received a license from the European Central Bank (ECB) and is supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). ClearBank focuses mainly on the fintech sector.
According to the bank, it plans to invest more than 70 million euros in its European activities. That money will mainly go to the expansion of ClearBank in every European country. A challenge, because every country has its own rules. Zijlstra sees the Dutch payment processors Adyen and Mollie as potential customers of ClearBank Europe.
Commerzbank (Germany)
Despite high restructuring costs, the bank made a profit of 430 million. In 2020, this was still a loss of almost 3 billion. Nevertheless, the bank wants to cut 3,900 jobs. CEO Manfred Knof already started a reorganization in 2021. Almost 2 billion euros were set aside for the reorganization and compensation of affected customers with loans in Swiss francs. During the reorganization, the bank also previously cut 7,300 jobs and stopped paying dividends. The total number of jobs cut then comes to 13,500.
Commerzbank once employed 50,000 people worldwide. The bank says it wants to hire many new people outside Germany, which should keep the total number of jobs stable at almost 37,000. Commerzbank now focuses only on smaller clients and has merged parts into three operational divisions. A leaseback construction was done with a subsidiary of Samsung for the head office in Frankfurt, which yielded around 600 million euros. Commerzbank is now a tenant of the 259-meter-high office building. The Italian UniCredit was working on a takeover bid for Commerzbank and would like to merge the financial group with its own German subsidiary HypoVereinsbank.
Other European banks, such as the French bank BNP Paribas, the Spanish Santander and ING, are also said to be interested in Commerzbank. In 2020, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined the bank more than 42 million euros for inadequate supervision of money laundering practices from 2012 to 2017. On 13 March, the share price collapsed by 11.6% after the SVB in the US went bankrupt. In Italian government circles, irritation is growing over the great resistance in Germany to a possible takeover by the Italian UniCredit.
UniCredit acquired a 9 percent stake in early September 2024 and recently increased this to 21 percent. This makes UniCredit the largest shareholder in Germany’s second-largest bank, and there is therefore speculation about a full takeover. UniCredit has recently increased its stake in the German industry peer and has stated that it is considering a full takeover. The works council of Commerzbank and trade unions oppose this. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was also previously critical of the Italian bank’s actions when it increased its stake in September.
Credit Suisse (Switzerland)
In 1856, the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA) was founded in Zurich and focused on financing the Swiss railways and industry. The bank grew into the top 3 in the country, alongside Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation. Swiss banks siphoned off Nazi wealth during World War II. After the war, they continued to exert an international attraction on companies and wealthy individuals who wanted to hide their wealth or income from the tax authorities in their own country.
The bank was fined $2.5 billion for tax evasion in the US and $5.3 billion there for reselling subprime mortgages. The bank was also fined €238 million for money laundering in France, accusations of price manipulation and a loss of €4.8 billion in the collapse of the hedge fund Archegos. The bank was involved in an espionage case, in which one of the top executives moved to UBS, followed by private investigators. Credit Suisse was once a reliable asset manager, derivatives trader and facilitator of mergers, acquisitions and IPOs , but now customers are leaving en masse.
Credit Suisse announced it would delay the publication of its annual report. The delay came after the US SEC requested more information on the restatements of its results for the 2020 and 2019 financial years. Credit Suisse avoided a fine for money laundering compliance failures after the Swiss bank made significant improvements to its anti-money laundering compliance. It is also increasing its asset management efforts and winding down its investment arm. The bank, like Deutsche Bank, settled with the US Department of Justice for around $5.3 billion for selling risky mortgage investments in the run-up to the financial crisis, of which $2.8 billion will go to homeowners and communities hit by the collapse in housing prices.
Credit Suisse had previously rejected a proposal of $5-7 billion. The bank suffered another billion-dollar loss in the fourth quarter of 2016 (almost 2.2 billion euros). Credit Suisse also settled its price manipulation for $135 million in November 2017. Directors are said to have maintained the manipulation from 2008 to 2015 and some high-ranking managers are said to have encouraged the currency traders to participate. Leaked data has exposed 18,000 accounts of customers who are said to have been involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes . The data relates to accounts from the 1940s to well into the 2010s, but does not concern the bank’s current activities. The accounts contained a total of more than 100 billion Swiss francs (approximately 96 billion euros).
The cause is a lack of due diligence in client checks, despite repeated commitments over decades to remove dubious clients and illicit funds. These include a human trafficker in the Philippines, a Hong Kong stock exchange executive convicted of bribery, a billionaire who ordered the murder of his Lebanese girlfriend and executives who plundered Venezuela’s state oil company. Corrupt politicians from Egypt to Ukraine also banked with Credit Suisse. The bank lost 5.5 billion in the bankruptcy of hedge fund Archegos and the bankruptcy of Greensil Netherlands.
CEO Thomas Gottstein had to leave and investors have lost confidence in the bank The share price has fallen by 60% in 2022 and the bank is in danger of collapsing. The appointment of a new CEO Ulrich Korner on August 1 has not been able to turn the tide. To reassure investors, Credit Suisse will buy back up to 3 billion Swiss francs ($3 billion) in bonds. The Qatari sovereign wealth fund is placing a stake in Credit Suisse by subscribing to the capital increase. The Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund, wants to subscribe to the 4 billion Swiss francs (4.05 billion euros) capital increase that Credit Suisse wants to carry out. It would use this to increase its stake in the major bank. The Qataris already financially bailed out Credit Suisse during the banking crisis of 2008 and have owned a 5 percent stake since then.
They are the second largest shareholder, after the American investment fund Harris Associates, part of the French banking group BPCE (Banque Populaire, Caisse d’Épargne), which holds 10 percent. Qatar seems to be responding to the intention of the Saudis to participate in the capital increase of Credit Suisse for 1.5 billion Swiss francs via the Saudi National Bank. Saudi Arabia already has a 4.9 percent stake in the Swiss major bank via another vehicle. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are neighbouring countries, but relations between the two are tense. If both the Qataris and the Saudis put fresh money into Credit Suisse, 20 to 25 percent of the bank’s capital will be in the hands of investors from the Middle East. The credit rating agency S&P Global Ratings lowered the credit rating for the long-term debt of Credit Suisse Group from BBB to BBB-.
The new rating is just one step away from BB, the so-called junk rating. With the tenth consecutive price drop at the end of November 2022, the 166-year-old bank has lost more than a quarter of its value. Compared to the beginning of this year, Credit Suisse has already lost two-thirds of its market value. On average, European banks are losing less than 5% this year. Investors now value the bank at ZFr 9.4 billion. The last time Credit Suisse was this cheap was in the early 1990s. The bank warned of a loss over the last three months of the year of up to ZFr 1.5 billion. That would be the fifth quarterly loss in a row. In the third quarter, there was a negative balance of ZFr 4 billion. Credit Suisse expected to suffer further losses in asset management, but above all in its investment banking activities.
The Australian-British finance company Greensill Capital went bankrupt in March 2022, while two years earlier it was valued at 3.5 billion dollars. The New York Times called the bankruptcy of Greensill one of the most spectacular collapses of the last decade. Biggest victims: the Japanese Softbank, the British steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta and Credit Suisse.
They believed the story of an Australian farmer who said he had found a gap in the market. Companies want to pay for their stock as late as possible, while suppliers want to be paid as soon as possible. Supply chain financing. A frequently used form of pre-financing to which Greensill added something. He bundled the receivables of suppliers into an attractive package, into a short-term asset that investors could buy. Just as Lehman stumbled over the similarly packaged junk mortgages, Greensill stumbled over the invoice packages. The risk managers at Credit Suisse ignored all the warning signs and clients to whom they sold Greensill’s debt paper, including the Norwegian state oil fund, demanded billions back.
Things also went wrong with the proposition of investment company Archegos Capital Management of the American-Korean billionaire Bill Hwang. When the equity fund Archegos started to suffer losses in the spring of 2021 and Hwang unexpectedly proved unable to compensate for the losses, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Credit Suisse had to pay for it. Credit Suisse, a systemic bank that was in fact ’too big to fail’, fell over. In the meantime, the bank underwent a major renovation, with which the ailing bank hoped to get back on its feet.
The plan was to reduce the workforce by around nine thousand by 2025. The investment bank will be split up with more focus on private banking. Apollo Global Management has bought the debt securitisation department. Credit Suisse itself is providing a loan to the investment company for this. In order to further finance the restructuring of the company, the bank has asked the shareholders for a capital increase of ZFr 4 billion. Credit Suisse wanted to raise ZFr 2.2 billion through a rights issue and in addition it wanted to privately place ZFr 1.8 billion worth of shares with major investors from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Credit Suisse share has plummeted by more than 22% since the debacle with SVB.
The bank’s results are said to be unreliable, which is why the largest shareholder Saudi National Bank no longer wants to provide additional financial support. Trading in Credit Suisse shares was halted several times, despite a balance sheet of 500 billion. Credit Suisse lost up to 30% of its share price. In order not to collapse, 50 billion Swiss francs (over 50 billion euros) were borrowed from the central bank. Credit Suisse was taken over by UBS on 19 March for approximately three billion euros. The Swiss central bank (SNB) also announced that it would guarantee a loan of up to 100 billion Swiss francs (over 101 billion euros) for the sake of liquidity, but UBS already withdrew from this at the beginning of August 2023.
The takeover means that UBS will pay only a fraction of the market value at which Credit Suisse closed on Friday. That was around 7.5 billion Swiss francs. With the takeover, Credit Suisse will not avoid possible prosecution or fines for its possible role in tax fraud by Dutch black-savers. Minister Keller Sutter states that without the solution, payment transactions with Credit Suisse in Switzerland would have been significantly disrupted and possibly even collapsed. According to Keller-Sutter, the other options around Credit Suisse were much riskier.
The impact of a bankruptcy on the Swiss economy would have been enormous. According to her, a temporary nationalization was also risky. After 167 years, Credit Suisse’s history as an independent bank came to an end. The largest takeover in banking since the financial crisis of 2008 was completely axed in June 2023. The takeover made UBS one of the largest asset managers in the world.
After 167 years, Credit Suisse is history. Credit Suisse lent 463 million euros to Rituals, which was used to buy out minority shareholders in the chain in 2021. This made Cloosterman the sole shareholder of the luxury brand with more than a thousand stores and many more sales outlets. An investigation showed that the Swiss financial supervisor Finma was not effective in tackling the scandals at Credit Suisse.
Crelan (Belgium)
Crelan has acquired AXA Bank and is one of the largest banks in Belgium. With a successful issue of bonds for large investors, the bank has passed its first major test on the financial markets since it acquired AXA Bank Belgium last year. Since Crelan received permission to acquire AXA Bank Belgium at the end of last year, the bank has been fully engaged in integrating that group. In order to complete that process by the end of 2024, the bank must adapt its IT infrastructure and adjust its product range. The bank is also adjusting its financial buffers to comply with European regulations.
This stipulates that banks must maintain an additional cushion of both equity and debt that they can use in emergency situations to avoid the need for a bailout with taxpayers’ money. With that goal in mind, Crelan raised 300 million euros on Tuesday by issuing debt securities to major investors. A first, because it was the first time that the cooperative bank approached institutional parties for such a capital operation.
Demand for the bonds, which offer an annual return of 5.4 percent over a three-year term, proved to be greater than supply. Major parties had subscribed to the offer for 350 million euros, fifty million euros more than what was possible. Crelan plans to launch similar capital operations at regular intervals to strengthen its buffers.
The bank has the ability to issue around 3 billion euros of the type of bonds that were sold to major investors on Tuesday in the coming years. In the first six months of 2022, the bank posted a net profit of 55.9 million euros. In the same period a year earlier, that was 12.7 million euros, but that excludes the takeover of AXA Bank. Crelan had an accounting windfall of 3.7 million euros because it had to pay slightly less than expected for AXA after a revision of the takeover valuation.
DNB (The Dutch Bank)
De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) is the supervisor of banks, insurers and other financial institutions that are active in the Netherlands. DNB’s mission is to create financial stability and sustainable prosperity. DNB also ensures that there are sufficient clean and undamaged euro banknotes and coins. DNB also manages the Dutch gold reserves. The president is the chairman of the board of directors of DNB. This consists of four directors, who supervise banks, insurers and pension funds, among other things. Traditionally, the DNB president was also responsible for monetary policy in the Netherlands, such as interest rates. But since the Netherlands exchanged the guilder for the euro, this falls under the responsibility of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. Although a central bank can never go bankrupt and can continue to operate with negative equity, the situation is precarious. DNB expects a loss of 3.2 billion euros for 2024 and that loss could increase to 10 billion in the coming years. The loss is mainly due to the high ECB interest rate, the deteriorating economic conditions, the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the pandemic . Banks are required to deposit part of their money with DNB and received 4 percent interest on this for a total amount of 7.5 billion euros. The losses will increase considerably. In 2022, 51 integrity incidents were reported to DNB because staff made mistakes with private investments. Former CEO and Commissioner Peter Blom left for DNB but had to resign in September 2023 thanks to Pieter Lakeman. Blom had already had to resign in November 2022 due to the commotion about the certificates. The rising interest rate has a significant impact on DNB’s financial management. By taking 460 million euros from the reserves (which contain more than eleven billion), the net result for 2022 could still come to zero, but the state cannot expect a dividend. Since 1999, the State has received more than 16 billion euros in dividends. The chance that DNB will end up with negative financial assets is certainly present and if the current buffer of 11 billion euros proves insufficient, the Dutch State will have to provide financial support. Knot leaves the bank in a deplorable state.
Blom was appointed by Wobke Hoekstra of the CDA. Lakeman, together with hundreds of victims, filed a personal claim for damages against Blom and three other directors. Investors of Triodos who had been unable to access their money for almost three years, because Triodos suspended trading in certificates shortly after the outbreak of the corona crisis. In total, the almost three thousand certificate holders have approximately 1 billion euros in investments outstanding with the bank. Triodos has 43,000 certificate holders. An investigation would not be in the interest of the bank and the certificate holders. At the beginning of 2024, board member and chair Else Bos also resigned after 5 years.
The Dutch DNB president is one of the members of the General Council of the ECB. In this council, all national central banks affiliated with the ECB discuss the ECB’s interest rate policy several times a year. The DNB president also attends meetings of other international bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Although DNB is owned by the Dutch State, it is an independent institution. DNB regularly makes estimates of the economy and advises the government. This advice is, however, without obligation.
Because the Ministry of Finance, as owner, appoints each new president of DNB, it is usually considered a kind of political choice . For example, fourteen years ago, then Minister Jan-Kees de Jager pushed Lex Hoogduin aside as DNB’s preferred candidate. He then chose top civil servant Klaas Knot.
Olaf Sleijpen (54) will be the new president of De Nederlandsche Bank as of 1 July 2025. Sleijpen has been a member of the DNB board since 2020.
Limburg (Wijlre) Sleijpen studied economics in Maastricht and Groningen. He started at DNB in 1993 as an economist. From 2001, Sleijpen was an advisor to Wim Duisenberg for four years during his period as president of the European Central Bank. He then worked for pension fund ABP and pension provider APG .
Sleijpen succeeds Klaas Knot (58) from Groningen (the eighteenth president of DNB). Knot succeeded Nout Wellink in 2011. Since 2010, a DNB president may not serve more than two terms, or no more than fourteen years. Knot’s term is up. He was promoted in 2011 from the Ministry of Finance, where he had worked as a senior civil servant for two years. He previously worked as an economist at the International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) in Washington.
It is the first time since 1931 that DNB has suffered a ‘significant loss’. At that time, DNB unexpectedly ended up 30 million guilders in the red (converted and adjusted for inflation: 330 million euros). This was because the British central bank abandoned the gold standard and DNB was left with worthless British pounds. It cost bank president Klaas Henderikus Willem (Klaas) Knot’s predecessor Nout Wellink his job in 2017.
By taking 460 million euros from the reserves (which currently still contain more than eleven billion), the net result could still be zero, but the Dutch State can no longer expect a dividend for the time being. Billions in losses are expected for the coming years and last year DNB had a loss of almost half a billion euros for the first time since 1931. In 2024, the loss was 3.2 billion euros. DNB itself expects the losses to continue until 2028. There is certainly a chance that DNB will end up with negative financial assets and if the current buffer of 11 billion euros proves insufficient, the Dutch State will have to provide financial support. DNB itself believes that the expected loss in the coming years could amount to as much as 10 billion.
The European Central Bank is going to announce an interest rate cut to turn the tide due to the disappointing figures of the European economy. DNB does not expect to make a profit again until 2028.
DSB
The bankruptcy of the deliberately destroyed DSB was settled in 2022. After all creditors got their money back, there was even 650 million left, with which interest claims can also be partly paid. 280,000 DB customers can claim their lost interest. The curators sold the last mortgage loan portfolio for 1.6 billion to the Hague bank NIBC.
A total of 12.5 billion was received and paid out to creditors and approximately 90% of the dismissed employees have already found work elsewhere. Liquidator Rudy Douma will pay out the remaining 650 million to the creditors who did not receive interest on their claims during the bankruptcy. The Dutch banks that had to top up with approximately 3.7 billion in 2009 due to the deposit guarantee scheme will also be partially compensated. However, there is not enough to settle the 785 million in its entirety. De Nederlandsche Bank has the largest interest claim of approximately 700 million on behalf of the banks. Dirk Scheringa paid 1 million euros to the administrators and himself waived approximately 10 million euros in claims.
In 2012, he was held liable by the trustees, and two of his houses were seized. Scheringa invested in players for football club AZ, the Dirk Scheringa museum, a skating team and two business jets. Former operational director Hans van Goor had to relinquish his claim of over 270,000 euros. The estate of DSB still had outstanding loans, under the trade name Finqus. Scheringa now wants to go public with his company CS Factoring and the empty stock market shell Lavide. Former financial director Gerrit Zalm was ultimately not held liable. Gerrit Zalm was chief economist at DSB from 2007 to 2008. The ruling on Dirk Scheringa Bank was severely criticised for the far-reaching intertwining between DSB Bank and DSB Beheer, and a remarkable lack of continuity in filling key positions within DSB. Accountant Ernst & Young made major mistakes during the audit and has been banned from practicing law for six months by the Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal (CBB) because the accountant failed on several points.
By having officials from the Ministry of Finance and officials from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) testify under oath, Scheringa hopes to prove that his DSB was deliberately destroyed nine years ago. The National Criminal Investigation Department previously concluded in an investigation that it cannot be determined whether, and if so by whom, the information was leaked to the media. More than 500 people were aware of the bankruptcy application. Scheringa wants to claim 830 million euros in damages if it turns out that De Nederlandsche Bank deliberately leaked to the press in 2009 that DSB Bank would be liquidated. The curators and their advisors earned more than 67 million euros from the settlement of the bankruptcy of DSB Bank, which lasted twelve years. The curators Rutger Schimmelpenninck and Ben Knüppe have invoiced 31.8 million euros in costs.
Other advisors wrote invoices for another 18 million euros. The administrators want to recover the costs from the supervisor DNB and expect it to pay all creditors. The settlement will take five to ten years. Gerrit Zalm was financial director at DSB between 2007 and 2008 and tried to prevent the publication of a critical report on the demise of the bank and the role he played in it. The report stated, among other things, that DSB had violated its duty of care. The administrators decided to pay out the full claim of approximately 8,000 victims of the bankruptcy, provided they waived interest and other claims. 500 suppliers of DSB and 22,000 policy customers for whom the bank had charged far too much commission at the time were also allowed to file a claim for damages. Most creditors received around three quarters of their claim and can now expect the remaining 90 million euros.
More than 300 subordinated deposit holders will also get their money back. The DSB estate still has some 77,000 loans outstanding worth approximately 3.9 billion euros. Scheringa then stopped and started CS Factoring in order to be able to bring it to the stock exchange, but that fell through at the last moment. Scheringa then wanted a political career, but was expelled from Hero Brinkman’s Ondernemerspartij in March 2016 because he had not paid his membership fee. He then became the face of ICO Headstart, a company that helps entrepreneurs launch cryptocurrencies. The collaboration between ICO HeadStart and Dirk Scheringa was short-lived. Scheringa allegedly did not have enough knowledge of the subject and his English was also poor. In 2017 he started Nationale Bedrijvencheck (NBC), with which he would provide health checks for employees of companies.
By having these performed by general practitioners, the company thought it could have the examinations reimbursed under the basic health insurance. But the Dutch Healthcare Authority did not fall for that. Supplier Convins then did not receive payment of the invoices and went to court. The court ruled that Scheringa’s company had indeed to pay the invoices of more than 100,000 euros. But because this did not happen even after the verdict, Convins filed for bankruptcy. According to Convins owner Nikos van der Laan, it is likely that the receiver will now investigate the actions of the former directors Scheringa and Paul Vlaanderen. The receiver is investigating the causes of the bankruptcy and any directors’ liability. The bankruptcy settlement took a total of 12 years. In 2021, the last loan portfolio was sold and the remaining 200 creditors were repaid for an amount of 838 million euros.
Hundreds of thousands of former customers of the bank can expect some extra money, mainly interest on funds from after the bankruptcy of more than twelve years ago. As soon as the distribution is completed, DSB will really cease to exist. For a large number of people, it will probably be less than 10 euros extra compensation, but for others it could also be higher amounts. Former customers who had a savings account at the bank of entrepreneur Dirk Scheringa when it went bankrupt, can see on a special website whether they can expect some money. Savers who had to wait a few months for their money after the bankruptcy on 19 October 2009, are entitled to interest over this period.
The fact that the bankruptcy settlement took so long was partly due to the fact that a solution was also needed for claims from former customers who accused DSB of, for example, over-crediting. The Bank’s administrators are still looking for some 173,000 account holders who are entitled to lost interest. Letters were sent, but much of the mail was returned. The bank’s bankruptcy was completed in December 2022. It then turned out that 283,000 account holders of the former bank are still entitled to a total of 48 million euros in lost interest. 110,000 customers did come forward. They were paid 25 million euros. Dirk Scheringa says he is once again preparing a huge claim for damages and tried to obtain secret documents from the Ministry of Finance via the court on 29 August.
According to his lawyer, the ministry is doing everything it can to delay the publication of the documents that should help Scheringa with his claim for millions. Two years after he filed a request under the Open Government Act (Woo), he still does not have all the documents from the Ministry of Finance that concern the bankruptcy of the DSB Bank in 2009. Documents that, 15 years after the fact, should provide evidence of what Scheringa has been saying since the bankruptcy, namely that his company was wrongly destroyed and that bankruptcy was unnecessary. In 2009, the bank came under fire for providing excessively high loans to customers and also overpriced insurance products. A television appeal by Pieter Lakeman led to many customers withdrawing money en masse and the bank getting into trouble.
When it leaks out that the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) wants to take over the management of the DSB, another bank run follows and bankruptcy is a fact not much later. No one from the Ministry of Finance was present in court. There has been no official cancellation, but in a statement of defense from June they state that they will make the last documents public by the end of September at the latest and that they will accept them regardless of the judge’s ruling. But Scheringa no longer trusts that. “We have been waiting for 804 days,” he tells the judge. They have been working on it for 2 years and 2 months, while a Woo request should actually be processed in 6 weeks. In 2023, the ministry was already forced to make documents public.
But even paying a penalty did not help. “What is happening is unacceptable. My client is being strung along by the ministry,” says Scheringa’s lawyer. They also think this is deliberate. “It does indeed seem as if they are doing everything they can to delay.” Some of the documents have now been made public. But probably not the most sensitive ones. Scheringa demands that all documents be made public within two weeks. Otherwise, a penalty of 500 euros per day must be paid, with a maximum of 75,000 euros. Much higher than normal. “The previous penalty did not provide sufficient incentive. But it has become apparent that the ministry needs a strong incentive,” the lawyer explains the amount of the requested penalty.
After the hearing, Scheringa responds to the case. “After the bankruptcy was finalized, there was 650 million euros left and that went to De Nederlandsche Bank. That proves to me that bankruptcy was not necessary. And we want that back. The documents that he already has, and still has to receive, will ultimately be used for a procedure that the Spanbroeker wants to start against De Nederlandsche Bank. “It is not just about the 650 million that is left. But the museum (Scheringamuseum) and the club (AZ) have also been destroyed,” says Scheringa.
In 2021, he also announced that he would file a claim of 830 million euros, but that never happened. “It is not yet possible to say how much money it will be. We will calculate that properly again.” Despite Scheringa’s request, the judge did not want to make an immediate ruling. That will follow in six weeks at the latest.
DZ Bank
DZ Bank is the fifth largest bank in Germany, with more than 24,000 employees. Its headquarters are located in Frankfurt am Main and it is the second largest bank in Germany in terms of balance sheet. Within the financial network Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken Coöperatieve, one of Germany’s largest private sector financial service providers, DZ Bank functions both as a central institution and as a corporate and investment bank. It is the central organisation under which some 700 local cooperative banks fall.
A subsidiary of one of Germany’s largest banks, DZ Bank, has been hit by a cyberattack . As a result, personal data of tens of thousands of customers may have fallen into the wrong hands. The data in question concerns investors in funds of DZ Bank’s real estate subsidiary, DG Immobilien Management. Cybercriminals have not only gained access to address details and dates of birth, but also to information about invested amounts, VAT numbers and customer correspondence. DZ Bank’s real estate subsidiary warns that malicious parties could use this information for fraud.
Danish Bank (Denmark)
Danske bank is located in the Estonian capital Tallinn AFP. The CEO of the largest bank in Denmark, Thomas Borgen, had to leave just like the CEO of ING after identical money laundering practices were discovered there. Between 2007 and 2015, 200 billion euros of money from Russian criminals and others was laundered via the bank offices in Estonia through hundreds of transactions. Thomas Borgen was responsible for the misused bank accounts in Estonia. Law firm Bruun & Hjejle concluded again in 2018
Credit Suisse is going through the biggest crisis in its 166-year history. The reputation of the internationally active investment bank has been tarnished by a series of scandals and losses. In order to strengthen its balance sheet and regain the confidence of the financial markets, Credit Suisse is looking for 4 billion Swiss francs of fresh capital.
At the same time, the bank announced a major restructuring, with 9,000 of its 52,000 jobs disappearing over the next three years. Furthermore, the focus is shifting from investment banking to less volatile asset management. Credit rating agency S&P Global Ratings lowered the credit rating for Credit Suisse Group’s long-term debt from BBB to BBB-.
The new rating is just one step away from BB, the so-called junk rating. S&P believes that the announced restructuring entails serious execution risks in the current volatile financial and economic climate. Because the bulk of the suspicious money flows at Danske appear to have an illegal origin and mainly flowed from ex-Soviet states to the West. Danske has to admit that around 200 billion euros of dubious money flowed through the small Estonian branch. Until 2015, Russians, Moldovans and Azerbaijanis could bank without problems.
Tens of thousands of suspicious transactions were allowed through without checking. Deutsche Bank broke off the relationship with Danske Bank Estonia in 2015 because it was already clear who the clientele were. The Moldovan clients in particular aroused distrust. After a whistleblower in 2013 made the money laundering practices public, the bank started a brief investigation of its own that was also not shared with the bank’s top management. The Public Prosecution Service started its own criminal investigation in August 2018. The bank can expect a fine that is equal to or close to the fine that ING Netherlands received, namely 650 to 750 million euros. The bank can also expect retaliatory measures from the American regulators.
The stock market price of Danske Bank shares lost a third of their market value. Many, especially smaller, transactions also went via the Trade Bank to Dutch banks such as ABN AMRO ING and RABO and the business community. The practices took place between 2007 and 2015 when Rehe was head of the Estonian department. He resigned in 2015 and became a witness in the money laundering investigation. Criminal investigations into the bank are now underway in several countries. The financial group has already announced that it will withdraw completely from the Baltic States and Russia in connection with the scandal. Rehe was found dead after he disappeared from his home in the capital Tallinn. There are indications that it was suicide.
Share Private Bank
Delen Private Bank is a Belgian niche player in asset management and asset planning from Antwerp that is also active in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Luxembourg with plans for France and Germany. Delen has acquired Puur Beleggen. Puur Beleggen has existed since 2015. It is a regional asset manager, active in North and South Holland and managed by two partners from Noordwijk. In 2022, Delen also acquired Groenstate Asset Management in Twente and before that asset manager Oyens & Van Eeghen and Nobel Asset Management. The total assets under management are over 51 billion euros, including a Belgian share of 35 billion and a Dutch share of almost 1.5 billion. The bank is 80% owned by the Antwerp holding company Ackermans & van Haaren and 20% owned by the Flemish Delen family. Delen is taking over the Utrecht asset manager Petram & Co.
Deutsche Bank (Germany)
The bank has been in the red for years and has suffered billions in losses. Two years ago, CEO Christian Sewing began a radical restructuring that has now returned the company to a somewhat profitable position. However, the unrest surrounding Credit Suisse was again the reason for the share price of Deutsch Bank to plummet by 7%. The costs of insuring the bonds have risen sharply after the debacle with Credit Suise. These costs have always been somewhat higher. The risk premiums for all its bonds are increasing compared to the fifteen largest other banks. The share price fell by no less than 12% on 24 March.
Deutsche Bank poses the greatest threat to the banking system and should have been saved by a merger with Commerzbank, but this was called off. After CEO John Cryan was pushed aside, COO Kim Hammonds also had to leave. She is said to have said at an internal event in March that Deutsche Bank is the most dysfunctional company she has ever worked for. Germany’s largest bank was hit with heavy fines, resulting in a net loss of 6.8 billion euros in 2018. Christian Sewing became the new CEO and succeeded the poorly performing John Cryan. Sewing (47) was until now the vice-chairman of the board of directors together with Marcus Schenck and has been employed by Deutsche Bank his entire working life. Sewing worked for the bank in Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Tokyo and Toronto, among other places, and is already the third CEO in six years. Annual turnover fell by no less than 9 percent after the reorganization. Sewing received a salary of 8.9 million euros in 2022.
Six current and former Deutsche Bank managers were charged and sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years for the derivatives scandal at the Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Former top executives of the Japanese bank Nomura and Monte dei Paschi di Siena were also convicted. In total, thirteen bankers were involved. The Italian bank allegedly concealed losses between 2008 and 2012 through complex financial constructions. In 2011, the bank sold Italian government bonds in order to manipulate their value. Justice raided the Italian headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Milan and seized e-mails and documents.
The bank had around 8 billion euros in bonds on which it suffered heavy losses. They sold 7 billion in government bonds and misinformed customers about this. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating an alleged fraud in which the value of packaged mortgage loans was artificially inflated to hide losses in 2013. Losses on the loans were spread out over a longer period than allowed, causing hundreds of millions in losses to go unnoticed. By recording losses on the loans with a delay, the bank’s profits were flattered. The former directors must contribute to the fines imposed. Before current CEO John Cryan took over in 2015, Deutsche Bank was led by Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen. Before that, Josef Ackermann was the top boss for ten years. Cryan has previously said that his predecessors placed too much emphasis on short-term profits and made the bank unnecessarily complex and inefficient.
In 2009, bank employees earned $37 million by investing their own money in a controversial construction without permission via an external hedge fund. The investment had been set up for the bank itself in 2009. One of the managers invested $1 million in the construction and quickly earned $9 million. Deutsche Bank is investigating the transaction and has already suspended all bonuses of those involved. In 2015, the bank was fined €2.2 billion because of the Libor affair.
Seven former managers of the bank were convicted of tax evasion in the trading of carbon credits. One of them was sentenced to three years in prison and the others were given suspended sentences or fines and settled out of court. The involvement of fifteen other employees and former employees is still under investigation. The bank stopped trading in carbon credits in 2010 and has repaid 220 million euros in unlawful tax breaks. Russian clients are said to have laundered 6 billion euros through the bank.
In 2015, a total loss after tax of 6.7 billion euros was incurred and in 2016 1.4 billion. A British banker from Deutsche Bank was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison in London on 12 May 2016 for insider trading. Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Scotiabank and Société Générale were summoned to court in mid-April 2015 for manipulating gold prices. While they were discussing the new gold price, insider trading was taking place on the gold market.
In October 2017, the bank settled the Libor affair again for more than 186 million euros with 45 American states. The bank sold financial products that were linked to the interest rate manipulated by the bank, which charged high costs. Deutsche Bank had previously had to pay more than 2.5 billion dollars in fines for this. Banker Christian Bittar was sentenced to five years and four months in prison for the Euribor fraud. Bittar agreed to a fine of $4.3 million
Deutsche Bank has been slimming down its Dutch branch since 2013 and of the original 18,000 mostly loss-making SME clients, it now has around 4,500 clients with long-term loans. Deutsche Bank is still suffering an annual loss of 94 million euros in the Netherlands, with no prospects for improvement. A takeover of ABN Amro could be a welcome expansion and a takeover is already being informally considered. Deutsche Bank Nederland had an annual turnover of over 330 million euros last year.
With a reorganization and the elimination of almost 3000 jobs, the bank is trying to get things back on track. In Germany, the number of branches is being reduced by a quarter from 723 to 535. The American division failed the Fed’s stress test for the second time in a row. Deutsche Bank suffered a loss of 6.7 billion euros in 2015. The IMF called the bank the greatest threat to the stability of the banking system. The bank is trying to save itself from collapse by merging with Commerzbank. Wall Street dropped the bank hard on September 30. The Bank has sold the Mexican division to InvestaBank in a hurry.
A settlement was reached with the SEC for almost 14.5 million euros, because the American anti-corruption law was violated by hiring relatives of theirs in China and Russia at the request of local officials. The strict application system of the bank was circumvented, which resulted in less qualified people being hired. The corrupt application procedures were not recorded to avoid detection.
Previously, a settlement was reached for approximately 3 billion euros due to the provision of incorrect mortgages in the past. In addition, the bank made an amount of 4.1 billion dollars available for relief from these mortgages to American customers. The Justice Department had previously made a settlement proposal of approximately 12.5 billion euros, but the bank had rejected it. Deutsche Bank also has lawsuits pending due to the substandard mortgages it provided and had previously reserved 5.5 billion euros for settlements. On January 5, 2017, it was decided to settle 95 million dollars (91 million euros) with the American Justice Department due to tax evasion in 2000 via a network of shell companies.
In Italy, the judiciary has initiated criminal proceedings against an employee and five former directors. The bank’s share price has been falling since the summer of 2015. At the beginning of August 2015, the share price was still around 32 euros and is now around 10.75 euros. The British insurance branch Abbey Life Assurance, which was acquired in 2007, is being sold for around 1.1 billion euros. Last week, Deutsche’s share price fell to 6.43 euros. Just over a year ago, the price was still 28 euros, and before the financial crisis it was even more than 100 euros. The royal family of Qatar is reportedly considering increasing its stake from around 10 to possibly 25 percent. Bonuses for top directors have been scrapped for the time being.
Despite the malaise in 2017, Deutsche Bank’s staff will be allowed to distribute a bonus of 2.2 billion euros. The bank’s board of directors is waiving variable compensation for the third year in a row and is considering laying off one in five employees in the US. The final decision on this will be made shortly. The American division currently employs around 10,300 people. That is about one tenth of the bank’s total workforce.
Deutsche Bank settled with housing corporation Vestia for 175 million euros because of the derivatives scandal that almost brought Vestia down. With the settlement, all claims of the Rotterdam corporation on the German bank are off the table. The Rotterdam housing corporation filed a claim for damages of approximately €830 million against Deutsche at the British High Court three years ago, because of the supply of ’toxic derivatives’. Between 2005 and 2011, the Germans sold interest rate derivatives worth hundreds of millions of euros to Vestia from their London branch, originally intended as protection against interest rate increases.
The trade was conducted via a fraudulent construction of intermediary Arjan Greeven and Vestia cash manager Marcel de Vries. Vestia, together with Arjan Greeven, argued in the British proceedings that managers at Deutsche were aware of the fraud but nevertheless continued to sell derivatives. In doing so, the bank allegedly facilitated the corruption. In total, Deutsche allegedly earned around €114 million from this derivatives sale to Vestia.
International institutional investors, including Renaissance Technologies (Ren Tec), one of the world’s best-performing hedge funds, have been withdrawing around $1 billion of investments from the bank every day since early July, after it announced that 18,000 of its 91,500 employees would be laid off and $74 billion in bad loans would be transferred to a ‘bad bank’.
Deutsche Bank is also under fire from the US Justice Department, because of its ties to the Malaysian investment fund 1MDB. The Justice Department is investigating to what extent the German bank violated US law when it helped the investment fund with a capital increase of 1.2 billion dollars in 2014. Money laundering may have been involved.
Deutsche Bank is the second bank whose role is being investigated, after the American investment bank Goldman Sachs. A former Goldman executive went to work for Deutsche Bank. Tim Leissner, a former Goldman Sachs employee who pleaded guilty in the 1MDB corruption scandal, is said to have informed the authorities about Deutsche Bank’s involvement. The German authorities raided the bank at the end of 2018. No fewer than 170 employees of the police, the public prosecutor’s office and the tax authorities searched six different buildings in Frankfurt, looking for evidence of money laundering based on information in the Panama Papers and Offshore Leaks. The bank is said to have helped clients set up companies in tax havens, in particular the British Virgin Islands.
Money earned from criminal activities would have been laundered through these companies, possibly with the knowledge of the bank or its employees. According to the authorities, 311 million euros were laundered for more than 900 customers in 2016 alone, without the bank reporting this to the authorities. It also appears that the financial advisor of a member of the Saudi royal family received bribes
Employees of the bank paid the advisor $1.1 million (around 1 million euros). Deutsche Bank discovered the payments, which took place between 2011 and 2012, after an internal investigation. It turned out that bank employees in the asset management department also appeased the financial advisor by offering his niece an internship in the legal department in London and inviting her to an exclusive conference in the Swiss ski resort of St. Moritz.FGH.
Deutsche Bank wants to settle for 26 million euros in the case with the deceased billionaire and child abuser Jeffrey Epstein. The amount is in addition to the 150 million dollar fine that was previously paid to the DFS. Due to the poor supervision, the bank’s share price is said to have plummeted after the Epstein scandal. The case revolves around the so-called Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures. In 2013, Epstein was brought in as a client, despite having previously been convicted of child abuse in Florida. Six years later, he was arrested on suspicion of abusing numerous underage women. He committed suicide in his cell while waiting for the extensive case.
Deutsche Bank failed to adequately oversee hundreds of transactions worth millions of dollars that Epstein made through the bank, DFS said. Given Epstein’s past and the amount of information it had, the bank should have been much more vigilant and conducted further investigations, the agency said. Deutsche Bank was aware of Epstein’s reputation but did far too little about it. The transactions included settlements with law firms, payments to Russian models and payments to people alleged to have been involved in the sexual abuse of young women. Deutsche Bank, as usual, denies the allegations and tried to convince a U.S. judge to dismiss the complaint. But the judge did not grant that request. The latest fiasco involved the bankruptcy of Archegos in 2022, forcing it to sell blocks of shares in ViacomCBS and Discovery at rock-bottom prices.
The hedge fund made extensive use of borrowed money and equity derivatives, such as swaps. The bank settled with victims of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for $75 million. The bank allegedly facilitated Epstein’s abusive practices by continuing to provide him with financial services. From 2013 to 2018, Epstein was a client of Deutsche Bank. The account was used to pay settlements with law firms, transfer money to women in Eastern Europe and withdraw approximately $800,000 during that time.
With prohibited agreements (cartel), Rabo and Deutsche Bank violated European competition rules. Deutsche Bank avoided a fine of almost 156 million euros, because it went to the Commission and confessed to the cartel. Both banks initially aimed for a settlement, but only Rabobank received a fine of 26.6 million euros.
Deutsche Bank plans to file for bankruptcy for Shimao , which is struggling with debts of almost 12 billion dollars. Deutsche Bank has rejected the submitted rescue plan, which was drawn up after 18 months of negotiations. Shimao was once one of the 20 largest real estate groups in China. Earlier this year, Chinese property developer Evergrande, which was struggling with debts of more than 300 billion dollars, was declared bankrupt by a court in Hong Kong. The bankruptcy filings come as Beijing is doing everything it can to revive the real estate sector, one of the pillars of the Chinese economy.
RusKhimAlians sued Deutsche Bank, resulting in the seizure of 239 million euros in assets. The court decision came at the request of RusKhimAlians, which planned to build a large gas processing and liquefaction plant in cooperation with German company Linde, which withdrew from the project due to sanctions. It began preliminary talks on a sale last year, but the talks yielded no results.
For the first time in four years, the quarterly figures were again in the red. The loss is partly due to a legal conflict during the takeover of a German bank whose shareholders went to court. Deutsche Bank had to set aside 1.3 billion euros for this. The bank had actually planned a second share buyback for 2024. But due to the loss of 143 million euros, the bank is now canceling the gift for the shareholders. The only positive note is that analysts had taken into account a higher loss, which should have amounted to around 280 million euros.
A year earlier, Deutsche Bank booked a profit of 763 million euros. Despite the fact that the loss was lower than expected, the bank’s share is being punished severely by investors. On the German stock exchange, the share opened almost 7 percent lower and a large euro was lost from the share price. Without taxes, Deutsche Bank did book a profit of 411 million euros in total. Without the provision that the bank made due to the legal conflict, that profit before tax would have amounted to no less than 1.7 billion euros. A year earlier, it was 1.4 billion euros. Despite the setback, Deutsche Bank wants to continue buying back its own shares in the long term.
The bank aims to use at least 8 billion euros for the share buyback. This must be done by achieving at least 30 billion euros in turnover this year. Deutsche Bank’s net profit fell by 36% in 2024 (€2.7 billion). Turnover rose by 4% to 30.1 billion. The falling profit was due to the 1.7 billion euros in costs for legal proceedings for subsidiary Postbank, where customers were unable to access their assets for a long time in 2022 and 2023 due to IT problems. Money also had to be set aside for the settlement of disputes in Poland.
There, financial institutions such as Deutsche, but also Commerzbank subsidiary MBank and ING Polska, offered customers mortgages in Swiss francs in the first decade of this century. When the franc rose sharply in value, many Poles got into financial trouble. They are demanding compensation from the banks because they believe they were not properly informed at the time. Partly due to the legal costs, Deutsche’s cost-income ratio came to 76%, one percentage point higher than in 2023. The bank wants to pay a dividend of €0.68 per share and buy back €750 million of its own shares this year. The decision on the dividend will be made at the annual meeting in May. In 2023, it was €0.45 per share. The bank wants to increase turnover to €32 billion this year. Deutsche has now implemented 75% of a plan set out in 2024 to cut costs by €2.5 billion. The bank cut 3,500 FTEs, while another 1,800 temporary workers left. The bank has almost 90,000 employees worldwide.
According to recent reports, Deutsche Bank is planning to launch Bitcoin and crypto custody services in 2026, partnering with Bitpanda Technology Solutions, the technology arm of Austrian crypto exchange Bitpanda, and Taurus SA, a Swiss fintech previously backed by Deutsche Bank. The move follows previous announcements made by the bank in 2022 and is part of a broader strategy to integrate digital assets, driven by growing institutional demand and favorable regulations in Europe and the US. The custody services will target institutional and potentially retail clients, with secure storage of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and tokenized assets. The move reflects the growing adoption of crypto in the traditional financial sector, with Deutsche Bank competing with other major banks such as JPMorgan and Standard Chartered
First Citizens Bank (US)
First Citizens Bank acquired First Citizens Bank on March 27, 2023. After the bankruptcy, the assets of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) were first acquired by the US government, which sold them on. FCB’s headquarters are in the state of North Carolina. FCB received a discount of $16.5 billion on SVB’s assets, which were worth $72 billion on the balance sheet. SVB’s seventeen branches will now be called First Citizens Bank.
First Republic Bank (US)
A somewhat smaller private bank in the American state of California and asset manager from San Francisco and mainly active in the state of California and in New York. The bank, founded in 1995, mainly managed a lot of savings and mortgages for wealthy Americans. The bank fell at the same time as the Pacific Western Bank on March 13, 2023, respectively more than 50 percent and almost 30 percent in pre-market trading on Wall Street. The bank had to borrow money urgently from the Federal Reserve and the investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. The bank was faced with a bank run, in which more than 100 billion dollars were withdrawn by customers.
Eleven of the largest American banks, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, had to invest 30 billion dollars (28 billion euros) to prevent the bank from collapsing. The banks each invested an amount of 1 to 5 billion and promised to keep the deposits for at least 120 days. The Federal Reserve and the American government were involved in the rescue. Just a few hours before the stock exchange in New York opened on 1 May, it was announced that JPMorgan Chase would take over the savings. The financial regulator of the state of California guarantees the depositors that their money will remain safe and is still discussing the takeover of the loans from First Republic Bank. The bank got into trouble because of rising interest rates and customers who lost confidence.
This also happened at Silicon Valley Bank, a start-up bank focused on the tech industry, which got into trouble last month. Customers withdrew their savings en masse. In March, this already amounted to more than 100 billion dollars, causing the bank’s stock price to drop by 95 percent. Shareholders and the bank itself saw their assets disappear. The bank’s market value is now only 1.15 billion dollars, compared to 22 billion dollars at the beginning of March. During the final rescue attempt, only a handful of bidders remained on Sunday, including major bank JPMorgan Chase. With the deal, JPMorgan Chase would manage more than 10 percent of American savings. That is why it was agreed that JPMorgan Chase would take over the 103.9 billion dollars in savings from First Republic Bank, but that the California regulator would continue to guarantee this. Discussions are still ongoing about how and in what way JPMorgan would also take over the loans and mortgage portfolio. The Fed admitted in a report on Friday that rules for medium-sized banks are not strict enough.
Fortis
Fortis helped thousands of clients avoid taxes by setting up accounts in their names for offshore companies that were mainly located in the British Virgin Islands, the Seychelles and Niue. The Intertrust Group was part of Fortis from 2002 until the end of 2008 and acted as a “back office” for the thousands of offshore structures for Fortis clients, mainly managed from Luxembourg. Intertrust managed the offshore system until the collapse of Fortis at the end of 2008. After the separation from Fortis in 2009, Fortus Intertrust divested 98 percent of these clients. In 2007, Fortis took over the Dutch parts of ABN AMRO. In October 2008, the Dutch parts were nationalised and the Belgian banking activities were sold to BNP Paribas. Investors who were misled in 2008 will receive compensation of 1.3 billion euros.
The Amsterdam Court of Appeal has given its approval for the second settlement agreement on this matter between the Belgian insurer Aegeas, the heir of Fortis and the claims organisations. Active investors who had joined a claims organisation will receive compensation that is a quarter higher than that of inactive investors. The Court of Appeal does not consider the higher compensation reasonable for shareholders who were represented by the Vereniging Effectenbezitters (VEB). The judges find that the members of the VEB did not incur any additional costs, because they only paid their normal contributions. Fortis investors who do not wish to be covered by the settlement have five months to report their objection.
Investors who accept the settlement will receive 70 percent of the settlement amount before the end of the year. An estimated 200,000 victims are eligible for compensation. Fortis took over the Dutch parts of ABN AMRO in 2007. The capital position of the Belgian-Dutch banking and insurance group was weakened to such an extent that the company went under in the credit crisis that broke out shortly afterwards. The Dutch parts were nationalized at the end of 2008, the Belgian banking activities were sold. As a result, shareholders saw the value of their assets decrease significantly in a short period of time. After ten years of investigation, the Belgian justice system has decided not to prosecute any directors. Former Fortis chairman Maurice Count Lippens and former CEO Jean-Paul Votron also escaped punishment.
The investigation focused on the period from September 2007 to April 2008. At that time, Fortis increased its capital, but the prospectus gave an overly optimistic estimate of the impact of the American real estate crisis. Following the investigation, the judiciary decided in 2013 to prosecute former chairman Maurice Lippens, former top executives Jean-Paul Votron and Herman Verwilst and former financial director Gilbert Mittler of Fortis for forgery, fraud and violating a banking law that sets out various information obligations. Fortis was in danger of going under at the end of 2008 and was rescued by the Dutch and Belgian states.
They pumped €11.2 billion into Fortis. Earlier this year, the Belgian insurer Ageas, the legal successor of Fortis, reached a settlement with shareholders. They will receive €1.3 billion to distribute. There are an estimated 200,000 affected investors. Fortis, which once had banks and insurers in 50 countries and a market value of €40 billion, has now become an insurer that is active in 15 countries with a market value of over €9 billion.
Friesland Bank NV
Until 13 December 2013, the bank was a service provider focused on the northern half of the Netherlands with branches in the provinces of Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, North Holland, South Holland and Utrecht. The bank had approximately 900 employees. In 2012, Rabobank Nederland and Friesland Bank announced that Friesland Bank would become a 100% subsidiary of Rabobank Nederland. In December 2013, all Friesland Bank logos were removed from the buildings. This brought an end to the era of a 100-year-old regional bank for the Northern Netherlands.
In connection with the withdrawal of the banking license of Friesland Bank NV as of 15 December 2014, the name of Friesland Bank NV has been changed to Friesland Zekerheden Maatschappij NV. The first office was opened in 1913 under the name Coöperatieve Zuivelbank. For a while, it was affiliated with the Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisenbank. After 1963, the bank became independent and in 1970 the name was changed to Friesland Bank.
In 1991 the Bank merged with the Friese Bondsspaarbanken in 1995 the bank changed from a cooperative company with members to a public limited company with shareholders. The shares were fully owned by Friesland Bank Holding NV. On 1 April 2011 the latter was transferred to Stichting Friesland Bank. In 2006 Bercoop (formerly: Voorschotbank) was acquired. The head office of this bank in Oldeberkoop then became the regional office for the Stellingwerven. Friesland Bank built up interests in Van Lanschot, Triodos Bank and Optimix.
At the end of 2010, the bank had shareholdings of 23%, 5% and 70% respectively in these three companies. In December 2012, Friesland Bank sold its stake in Optimix. In 2011, the bank ran into serious trouble, suffering a loss of €350 million partly as a result of an additional write-down on the stake in Van Lanschot and credit losses. The planned sale plans of Van Lanschot were not realised and the bank was taken over by Rabobank . Part of the art collection, the Oranjewoud Estate, €25 million in cash and an 11% shareholding in Van Lanschot were managed by the Friesland Bank Foundation. The name of the foundation was changed to the Fryslan Boppe Oranjewoud Foundation. The foundation has now become the main owner of the NDC Media Group (51%).
Garanti Bank
Garanti BBVA International is a relatively small general Dutch bank with its head office in Amsterdam. At Garanti BBVA International they work in small teams. With short lines and high savings interest
GoDutch
Since May 2024, there has been a new bank for small entrepreneurs. GoDutch actively focuses on social and sustainable initiatives. The ambition is to build a database of 10,000 companies in the Netherlands within one year. GoDutch has various business banking packages aimed at SMEs, self-employed people, associations and foundations. The Dutch startup uses the banking license of the French financial service provider Swann. For example, one can choose a free account where 10 percent of the bank’s income is shared with the customer or a paid package where that goes up to 70 percent. The higher the fee, the more extensive the functionalities are, and the higher the shared percentage.
Users receive their share of the income every quarter. By making income and costs transparent and sharing the income with users, they set a new standard. Instead of banking as a cost item, users will earn money from their checking account. GoDutch wants to give users the choice to donate their income from the app to social and sustainable projects. The bank offers regular business banking functionalities such as worldwide transfers, bulk payments via upload, SEPA direct debits and additional payment cards for staff. The new bank works together with the French payment service provider Swann for transaction processing, compliance and risk management. Furthermore, funds on Swan’s business accounts fall under the European deposit guarantee scheme , which offers protection up to 100,000 euros.
Goldman Sachs (US)
One scandal at Goldman is not over yet, and the next one is just around the corner. The Federal Reserve has found that confidential information from the umbrella organization of American central banks has been improperly misused for personal gain. Goldman is now being fined 36.3 million dollars for this. A former employee of the Fed still had access to secret data and passed it on to employees of Goldman Sachs. A former director was fined 337,500 dollars and may never work in the financial sector again because he misused the data. Goldman Sachs had already paid a fine of 50 million dollars to the financial sector regulator in New York.
Goldman Sachs had to set aside almost 1.5 billion dollars in connection with lawsuits last year and was taken to court by the ABP in 2012 for misleading information about subprime mortgages that were sold to the pension funds between 2005 and 2007. The case was settled two years ago, with Goldman initially stipulating confidentiality about both the amount and nature of the charge.
Goldman was accused of fraud and mismanagement and eight high-ranking investment bankers were personally prosecuted. Due to the poor quality of the certificates, the ABP suffered substantial losses. Goldman Sachs lost 3.5 percent on the stock exchange after it turned out that 1.5 billion dollars had indeed been deducted from the profit in the fourth quarter. The Transport Pension Fund had 5.4 billion euros managed by Goldman and suffered 250 million euros in damages because Goldman speculated on the price drop of financial products sold by the bank itself. Both the ABP and the Transport Pension Fund did not report criminal offences to the Ministry of Justice because this is not customary in the pension world.
Goldman got a taste of its own medicine when Yue Han, a Chinese compliance officer, made off with $640,000. The employee traded outside the bank on his own behalf and fled to his native country with the proceeds. Yue Han profited from inside stock data. His role as auditor allowed him to operate for months.
Goldman Sachs settled in April 2016 for over 4.4 billion euros in a case that revolved around the sale of repackaged residential mortgages. Goldman Sachs announced the settlement in January. The settlement itself is almost 2.4 billion dollars, damages to affected homeowners 1.8 billion dollars and financial settlements with other institutions 875 million dollars.
Goldman Sachs is now involved in a new lawsuit. With the help of hired prostitutes, an asset manager of a Libyan multi-billion dollar fund was allegedly lured and persuaded to invest money in risky derivatives. The prostitute had to entertain the asset manager for 600 dollars a night and get him excited about the deal. The representatives of the Libyan fund were allowed to fly to Dubai at the bank’s expense and stay at the Ritz Carlton. The aggrieved Libyan fund has filed 1 billion in claims with Goldman Sachs because Goldman allegedly exploited the inexperienced Libyan employees in this way. Despite all the scandals and the past, José Manuel Barroso, former prime minister of Portugal and ex-president of the European Commission, appeared willing to accept an advisory position at the bank.
Barroso had secret contacts with the bank during his presidency and is said to have brought about changes in EU policy on a confidential basis. Barroso denies the allegations. Barroso was President of the European Commission from 2004 to 2014 and almost immediately after his departure he started working as an advisor at Goldman Sachs. Jean-Claude Juncker succeeded Barroso and instructed the Commission’s ethics committee to investigate the move.
Goldman Sachs is also involved in a major embezzlement scandal in Malaysia. Two Abu Dhabi investment funds have filed a lawsuit in New York against the bank, holding it liable for the damages they suffered. The International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) accuses Goldman Sachs of bribing its officials in a “vast, global conspiracy.” IPIC, like Goldman Sachs, was involved in issuing bonds for the Malaysian investment fund 1MDB, which raised $6.5 billion in 2012 and 2013. Since then, 1MDB has been looted. In a few years, $4.5 billion has been siphoned off.
The money was used to buy American real estate, art, jewelry, an airplane and a Dutch yacht. Goldman Sachs settled with the US justice department for the malpractices surrounding the sovereign wealth fund. The bank has pleaded guilty and will pay a fine of 2.3 billion dollars and will also repay approximately 600 million dollars. The Malaysian government set up investment fund 1MDB in 2009 but has been under suspicion since 2015. Goldman Sachs closed billions of dollars in deals for 1MDB and previously settled with Malaysia for 3.9 billion dollars.
The Asian division was also fined $350 million in Hong Kong and the authorities in Singapore are also considering a fine. Goldman Sachs is claiming back a total of $174 million in compensation and bonuses from top executives such as David Solomon, Lloyd Blankfein and several other top executives. Golman also dragged Deutsche Bank into the fraud debacle and settled out of reputation. The bank will have to reorganize in 2022 due to disappointing .
HSBC (UK)
HSBC is the largest financial services group and the seventh largest company in the world. HSBC Holdings plc is a financial services group based in the United Kingdom since 1991. Its predecessor was The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which was founded in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 1865 by Scotsman Thomas Sutherland to finance British trade in the Far East. In 1951, HSBC acquired a majority stake in Hang Seng Bank. Following the completion of the acquisition of the British Midland Bank in 1992 and the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, HSBC moved its headquarters to London. Despite the move, the bank still derives a large proportion of its revenues from China.
In mid-2015, HSBC decided to restructure, cutting 25,000 jobs. and again in 2020 with a further reduction of 35,000 jobs by 2023. HSBC wants to expand its activities in China because of Brexit and possibly move back. HSBC operates in more than 70 countries with a balance sheet of around $2,700 billion. HSBC employs around 250,000 people.
In 2012, the bank had to pay a fine of 1.9 billion dollars for money laundering. Investigations revealed that HSBC laundered billions of dollars from Mexican drug cartels and evaded trade embargoes for Iran. In November 2014, the bank, together with four other banks, had to pay a fine of 618 million dollars to joint regulators in three countries for currency manipulation. In 2015, the major black money affair in Switzerland came into the spotlight again. It concerned stolen customer data as early as 2007. The stolen data had previously played a role in the so-called Lagarde list of Greek tax evaders. In 2015, the Swiss authorities opened an investigation into the affairs of the Swiss branch of HSBC. CEO Stuart Gulliver made the news as a possible tax evader via his Swiss branch. France offered HSBC a settlement proposal of 1.4 billion euros. When the bank refused, the French government started preparing a trial.
In Switzerland, the bank did settle for 38 million euros. British whistleblower Nicholas Wilson has been trying for 12 years to bring a mega fraud by the British bank HSBC to the attention of British regulators. According to Wilson, the British bank has been illegally charging costs to private individuals who had debts on mortgages, personal loans, shopping cards and credit cards for years. Hundreds of thousands of customers are said to have been duped by around 1 billion. A former trader of the bank has been found guilty of malpractice in a transaction of 3.5 billion dollars for a customer. Together with colleagues, the trader ensured that the exchange rate of the British pound rose in a short time, just before the transaction took place. By buying billions of pounds for the customer at the higher rate, he earned millions for his bank in one go. The Thema International Fund from Dublin will pay victims of the Madoff affair 687 million dollars.
The Irish investment fund helped Bernard Madoff’s notorious pyramid scheme, which duped thousands of investors in the early 1990s. The Irish fund was part of a network of offshore companies linked to Austrian banker Sonja Kohn and the Swiss Benbassat family of investors. They provided Bernard Madoff with around $1.9 billion before his notorious pyramid scheme in the United States began to dry up. Madoff’s clients were defrauded of around $17.5 billion. Madoff himself was arrested in 2008 and is serving a 150-year prison sentence. Five of his associates were convicted in 2014. Kohn and the Benbassat family, who set up and registered several European funds in tax havens, walked free. The Irish fund always blamed Madoff and HSBC Bank in London. In 2013, HSBC settled with the Thema International Fund for $62 million. In total, HSBC had to write off around 6.7 billion euros in 2019, halving profits to 6 billion dollars with sales rising by more than 2 billion dollars to 55.4 billion dollars.
HSBC was hit hard by the Sino-American trade conflict and the protests in Hong Kong, but the coronavirus is also putting pressure on the results. HSBC thinks that costs need to be reduced by a total of 4.5 billion dollars. There are currently around 235,000 employees. Since the departure of John Flint in August 2019, a successor has been sought. Quinn is one of the candidates. HSBC took over the British banking division of SVB after it suddenly went bankrupt in March 2023. The bank is going to scale down some of its investment banking activities in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. This specifically concerns activities around mergers and acquisitions and facilitating IPOs and share issues.
The bank will still complete its current deals and assignments. The decision is part of a broader restructuring plan led by CEO Georges Elhedery, who has been at the helm since September last year. The director says that a reorganization will make the bank more competitive and thus improve its competitive position. While the activities in Europe, the US and the UK are being scaled down, those same activities in Asia and the Middle East will receive extra attention. With the restructuring, the bank hopes to save at least 3 billion dollars in costs.
HSBC wants to wind down some of its investment banking activities in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. This specifically concerns the activities around mergers and acquisitions and the facilitation of IPOs and share issues. The decision is part of the restructuring plan led by CEO Georges Elhedery, who has been at the helm since September last year. With the restructuring, Elhedery wants to make the bank more competitive and improve its competitive position.
While its operations in Europe, the US and the UK are being scaled down, its operations in Asia and the Middle East are receiving extra attention. HSBC hopes to save at least $3 billion with the restructuring and employees will receive lower bonuses this year. This has already led to the departure of a number of top executives, including Nuno Matos, who was responsible for wealth management and personal banking.
Halkbank (Turkey)
From around 2012 through around 2016, Turkey’s Halkbank was majority-owned by the Turkish government. Halkbank is suspected of helping to circumvent sanctions against Iran and allegedly facilitating and participating in fraudulent transactions to defraud the U.S. High-ranking government officials in Iran and Turkey are alleged to have participated. Some officials received bribes worth tens of millions of dollars.
The proceeds from Iran’s oil and gas sales to the Turkish National Oil Company and Gas Company were deposited, among other things, in Halkbank, in accounts held in the names of the Central Bank of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Company (“NIOC”), and the National Iranian Gas Company. During the relevant period, Halkbank was the sole repository of proceeds from NIOC’s sale of Iranian oil to Turkey. Due to U.S. sanctions against Iran and the anti-money laundering policies of U.S. banks, it was difficult for Iran to access these funds to transfer them back to Iran or to use them for international financial transfers for the benefit of Iranian government institutions and banks.
Beginning in or around 2012, billions of dollars were accumulated in NIOC and the Central Bank of Iran’s accounts at Halkbank. Halkbank’s top brass allegedly concealed the true nature of these transactions from U.S. Treasury Department officials so that Halkbank could provide billions of dollars in services to the Iranian government without risking U.S. sanctions and losing its ability to maintain correspondent accounts with U.S. financial institutions. Halkbank was and is being charged with conspiracy, bank fraud, and money laundering.
Hypo Alpe Adria Bank (Austria)
The Austrian Hypo Alpe Adria Bank is the first bank with the dubious honour of collapsing with a deficit of over 8 billion euros under the new SRM rules, which means that creditors have lost their money and the Netherlands has to pay 63 million via write-downs at Staatsbank BNG. On behalf of the supervisor, 54% of the debts are being written off and the repayment term for the remaining debt is being extended until the end of December 2023. The bank is also no longer paying interest to bondholders. Heta Asset Resolution is a bank that was created six years ago with the nationalisation of the Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International. The bank was given the status of a ‘bad bank’. Its creditors include German banks, insurers, hedge and investment funds. The bank was ruined by money laundering, boiler rooms, financing of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs and trading in swaps. The Bayerische Landesbank pumped billions into the bank in vain, after which the bank was sold to the Austrian state for one euro in mid-2009 and subsequently nationalised.
ING
ING had to reorganize extensively and lay off seven thousand employees in order to pay the settlement of 775 million euros due to shortcomings in supervision of money laundering practices. In addition to thousands of jobs in the Netherlands and Belgium, the branches in other countries were also affected. Director Patrick Flynn is leaving (CFO) and Wilfred Nagel (CFO) is retiring in August. Former CRO Koos Timmermans followed. Steven van Rijswijk, head of Client Coverage at ING Wholesale Bank, will succeed Nagel as risk director. Nick Jue, CEO of ING Netherlands, will succeed Roland Boekhout as director of ING Germany. Boekhout himself will then become director of the Benelux branches. ING Germany will be merged with Austria, which will then have 8.2 million customers. Ralph Hamers (CEO) has been the top boss of ING since October 2013.
Steven van Rijswijk will succeed him on 1 July 2020. Ralph Hamers left for the Swiss bank UBS, only to leave again after two years. ING Bank left its current head office in Amsterdam South East ( het Zandkasteel ). The building was sold by the German investment fund Fünfzigste Sachwert Rendite-Fonds Holland (formerly the ailing Hanzevast) for just 16.1 million euros to project developers OVG and G&S, who want to build five hundred homes there in close cooperation with the Municipality of Amsterdam. ING Group sold the head office in 2004 via Hanzevast Beleggingen to MPC Capital (now Cairn Real) and leased the building back via Hanzevast for a period of 15 years.
The purchase price was 125,275,000 euros. ING helped the German investors with the sale by paying the remaining rent of between 50 and 60 million euros in one go up to and including mid-2019. OVG and G&S were simultaneously awarded the construction of the new ING head office in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, the ING Campus. ING bought the new site from housing corporation Rochdale for just 11.5 million euros, while Rochdale had paid 46.5 million euros for it in 2008. ING had reportedly previously taken an option on the same building for eighteen million euros. Due to the Russian invasion, ING will no longer accept new Russian customers as of 1 March 2022, but will remain in Moscow.
The lease agreement for the location at Kroonpark 6 in Arnhem-Zuid was extended and expanded with two floors of office space in the Parktoren, at Arnhem Central Station (1,100 m2 of office space and 24 parking spaces of Chalet Group). In 2015, the accommodation on Velperweg was also sold to Borghese for redevelopment into homes. In Arnhem-Zuid, the bank rents 2,250 m2 of office space and 45 parking spaces from the German real estate fund SEB ImmoInvest.
The American asset manager Artisan Investments GP acquired a 3% stake in early December. ING has a lobby department of seventeen employees, is a member of 38 financial lobby organisations and spends around 3 million euros annually on membership of the banking association NVB, which spends around 400,000 euros annually on representation in Brussels. In North Dakota, construction of a pipeline on the territory of an Indian tribe, which was financed by seventeen banks, is being halted. ING had provided a direct loan of €120 million for the pipeline and ABN AMRO has lent 45 million dollars to companies involved. After consultation with the Indian tribe and pressure from outside, ING withdrew from the project in mid-March.
ING Luxembourg has decided to exit the unprofitable retail market in the Grand Duchy. The bank wants to focus on growth in the wholesale and private banking segment. The bank confirmed this after customers of the Luxembourg branch of ING shared screenshots of a message in recent weeks in which the bank announced that they would close their accounts. It is expected that 50,000 to 80,000 accounts will be closed.
Banking
At Inbank, they offer hassle-free financing solutions for retail in all shapes and sizes. From physical to advanced business models and services, online and offline. This way, financing happens exactly where and when it is needed. By making financing an integral part of a product or service, they help over 5,400 trading partners.
Indover bank
Indover was a Dutch-based commercial subsidiary of the Indonesian central bank Bank Indonesia, which was mainly active in the professional and interbank market and which went bankrupt in 2008. The trustees have been working on the winding-up since then and in November 2017 lost an appeal against the parent company to be allowed to offset mutual claims that the trustees and Bank Indonesia believed they had against each other.
Bank Indonesia was still owed more than 43 million euros from the bankrupt estate, but that claim would have to be cancelled out by a much larger amount that Bank Indonesia allegedly owed the estate. In total, the counterclaim of the trustees amounted to some 70 million euros. The judges did not find that Bank Indonesia had guaranteed to keep Bank Indover afloat at all costs.
JPMorgan Chase (US)
Two former employees plundered approximately 400,000 euros from, among other things, eight accounts of deceased clients. Cards were created from the dormant accounts and they used them to empty the accounts with 350 transactions. JPMorgan Chase JP Morgan Chase settled again for 150 million dollars with investors in the ‘London Whale’ scandal. Pension funds from the US and Sweden went to court because of deception. Frenchman Bruno Iksil worked at the Chief Investment Office (CIO) of JP Morgan in London and caused a loss of 6.2 billion dollars in derivatives trading. JP Morgan is said to have concealed the increased risks. JP Morgan previously paid more than 1 billion in settlements in the US and Great Britain.
In 2013, there was also a settlement of 13 billion dollars with American regulators. According to the regulator FHFA, the bank has clearly cheated. French prosecutors are still investigating whether a branch of JP Morgan Chase & Co. is complicit in tax fraud. According to the prosecutors, JP Morgan Chase Bank National Association is said to have financed transactions that evaded taxes. JPMorgan Chase is the weakest bank in the US and must strengthen its capital by 4.5 percent in order to meet new capital requirements from the Federal Reserve.
The bank also had to settle for $1.4 billion in a 2008 bankruptcy case involving Lehman Brothers, from which billions of dollars were embezzled. The bank cooperated with law enforcement in the investigation into currency manipulation after previously reaching a settlement that required cooperation. The bank also charged black people and Latinos higher mortgage rates for years and reportedly settled with law enforcement for $55 million to avoid prosecution. In addition to higher interest rates, an average of more than $1,000 was charged in surcharges. Between 2006 and 2009, at least 53,000 people reportedly suffered tens of millions in damages.
A victim accused Maxwell and Epstein of directing her to have sex with several of their high-profile acquaintances, most notably Britain’s Prince Andrew, between 2000 and 2002. The lawsuit was settled in May 2017, just before a trial was set to begin. Maxwell was convicted in New York in December 2021 of trafficking underage girls for sex with Epstein. Last year, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Epstein was accused of raping young girls.
His suicide in 2019 ended his prosecution. JPMorgan Chase, which had ties to Epstein, says it regrets this. Epstein allegedly flew teenage girls to his private island in the Virgin Islands for years to abuse them. JPMorgan also reached a $290 million settlement with alleged victims of Epstein in June. JPMorgan Chase has reached a $75 million settlement with the US Virgin Islands in a lawsuit over former client Jeffrey Epstein.
Cash bank
Securities service provider Kas Bank saw its profit fall by almost 90 percent to 0.9 million euros in the first half of 2016. Shares in Kas Bank were under considerable pressure on Thursday 25 August and were listed some 11 percent lower at 8.66 euros.
Klarna
The Swedish Fintech company Klarna, owned by Adyen, was founded in Stockholm in 2005 to simplify payments. They do this by allowing consumers to receive purchases before they pay for them. At the same time, they take over the potential credit and fraud risks of the online retailer. Klarna is currently one of the fastest growing companies in Europe. In 2014, Klarna and SOFORT joined forces and formed the Klarna Group, the European market leader in online payments. The Klarna Group has more than 5,000 employees and is active in 45 markets.
They serve over 150 million active users and work with 500,000+ online stores. 150,000 active users, 500,000 active online stores connected, 2 million transactions per day. Klarna was fined €670,000 in March 2024 for breaching the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) between March and June 2020, as users were not sufficiently informed about the storage and processing of their personal data. The Swedish court found that the information provided was unclear or difficult to access. Klarna launches Wikipink: the credit industry’s first data hub with data on how Dutch consumers use Klarna’s credit products. In response to growing criticism of lenders’ practices in the Netherlands (such as Buy Now Pay Later), Klarna is offering insight into detailed data on repayment rates, collections, defaults and consumer demographics.
Klarna makes a new credit decision for every transaction. This ensures that only consumers who can actually repay their loan can continue to use Klarna’s payment solutions. In 2022, Klarna received 35 million applications in the Netherlands, of which 15 percent were rejected. In addition, Klarna always makes it ‘absolutely clear’ that BNPL purchases must be repaid on time. In recent customer research, 95 percent of respondents stated that they are aware of what a BNPL loan entails and that it must be repaid on time. Klarna’s default rate is below 0.5 percent, which means that 99.5 percent of loans are repaid.
Knab/BAWAG
Knab was founded in 2012 as part of insurer Aegon. In June 2023, Aegon’s Dutch activities, including Knab, were acquired by ASR. They immediately sold the bank to the Austrian BAWAG. Since its foundation, Knab Zakelijk has been named the most advantageous business account for self-employed persons by MoneyView every year. They also work with companies that offer relevant products and services such as mortgages or credit cards. The bank was founded in 2012 by René Frijters in the aftermath of the banking crisis of 2008-2011.
At that time, Dutch banks were kept afloat with state support and consumers no longer trusted banks. Knab, the opposite of the word bank, would do everything differently. DNB forced Knab to divest hundreds of millions of euros in credits because risk management and the credit portfolio were not in order, despite repeated warnings and reminders. Knab has issued many loans via all kinds of digital credit platforms at home and abroad. Knab has reduced lending via platforms to less than 2 percent of the total balance sheet.
The bank initially operated under the wings of bank insurer Aegon and on its banking license. Knab has approximately 346,000 customers. Profit in 2022 halved due to the large write-down in the credit portfolio, leaving 32 million euros at the bottom line. On July 4, 2023, Knab became part of insurer ASR . Because asr and Aegon Nederland merged, ASR became the new parent company. BAWAG took over Knab from ASR in January 2024 for 510 million euros. Another 80 million extra will be paid in the second half of 2024 once the management of the mortgages has also been transferred.
Knab was founded in 2012 by René Frijters and has issued many loans via various digital credit platforms at home and abroad. Knab has reduced lending via platforms to less than 2 percent of the total balance sheet. Knab has approximately 346,000 customers and profiles itself as a bank for self-employed persons. At the end of 2023, the bank had a net profit of 32.2 million euros. The bank was fined 2,968,750 euros by the supervisory authority De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) for the period 2019 to 2022 because the risks of loans taken out by customers were not properly managed.
Konvers bank (see also Snoras bank) (Russia)
Konvers bank belongs to the Russian MDM group, which in turn belongs to Andrei Melnichenko and Sergei Popov. More than 1.3 million leaked bank transactions, emails and contracts from the now closed banks Snoras AB and Ukio Bankas showed that Troika Bank channeled billions of Russian money via Lithuania to banks in Western Europe.
Bank accounts of ING and ABN AMRO were also used for transactions amounting to over 190 million euros. The money came from major fraud cases that were mixed by the Troika with private assets of prominent Russian politicians and oligarchs. The Snoras bank is partly owned by Antonov, who made a big splash as a stockbroker in 1998 with the ruble crisis. Alexander, Vladimir’s father, was shot in Moscow in March 2009.
He survived the attack. The gunman had driven to his house and fired eighteen bullets at Alexander when he came out. Five bullets hit him in the stomach and he lost a piece of his finger. His bodyguard was wounded in the leg. The Russian newspaper Kommersant speculated that it was a mafia-related attack in connection with the sale of Kaliningrad Seaport, in which both father and son were involved. The Snoras bank in Lithuania is part of the Konvers bank, in addition to the Antonovs.
Labouchere Dexia and Aegon
The highest Dutch court ruled on 2 September 2016 that approximately 10,000 share lease customers of the acquired Labouchere/Legio Lease still had to be fully compensated if they had concluded their share lease contract through an intermediary who did not have the correct papers. However, this had to be proven per individual customer and determined in court. Dexia assumes that some cases have now expired. Dexia had already settled earlier, but some of the victims decided to continue the proceedings because not all damages were compensated. During the legal proceedings, it was overlooked that Labouchere/Legio Lease did not purchase any shares for the customers at all, as was contractually agreed, but secretly set up derivatives and option constructions for this purpose, which not only disadvantaged the customers but also the tax authorities by millions.
The hundreds of thousands of share leasing contracts concluded between 1996 and 2000 turned out to be mainly a wealth shift of around 4 billion euros in total, with Aegon being the largest market player. Luxembourg consultancy Experta, a former subsidiary of Dexia, set up a record of 1,600 offshore companies with which clients were able to hide their bank accounts in Luxembourg, Switzerland and Jersey between 2002 and 2011. The constructions started in the nineties and continued even after the dismantling of the Dexia Group at the end of 2011.
Dexia, which had to be rescued in 2008 with 3 billion euros of tax money, helped others to avoid taxes via Panama. Dexia Nederland is the legal successor of Bank Labouchere, taken over from Aegon by the Dexia Group in 2000.
In the legal proceedings against Aegon/Spaarbeleg (Aegon Bank NV) by affected members who at the time concluded a hopeless “Sprintplan”, Koersplan (of Aegon subsidiary Spaarbeleg), Vermogensplan and Fundplan, Aegon seems to be losing out. Some 120,000 participants suffered financial damage totalling around 700 million euros, of which Aegon earned around 700 million euros.
The court in The Hague recently ruled that Aegon had indeed fallen short on many points and that Aegon must compensate a large number of its usurious policyholders. For Koersplan and Vermogensplan, the judge ruled that the customers were not properly informed about the costs associated with the investments and the level of the death risk premium. Aegon must compensate customers for these costs, even if they have already been partially compensated and even if they have achieved a positive result with their investments. Because even then damage has been suffered. An exception applies to Fundplan policyholders. Because the compensation does not apply if a guarantee product is involved.
According to Aegon, this concerns 80 percent of the cases. Aegon takes the position that many costs have already been adjusted and that the insurer has therefore already met the requirements of the court and seems satisfied with the ruling. The Kifid recently also made an irrevocable ruling in a case of a victim against Nationale Nederlanden that was important for more than half a million policyholders of NN. Woekerpolis.nl and Woekerpolisproces.nl have reached a settlement with insurer Allianz.
The case against Aegon has been going on since March 2014. With 1.3 million policies, Aegon was one of the largest providers of high-interest policies. Dexia has now come up with an escape route. With a BKR registration, it is difficult or impossible to get a mortgage, for example. “When people contact Dexia, the bank says: you can get rid of that BKR registration, but then you have to refrain from taking legal action against us to recover your damages. So people have to give up their rights. That is blackmail. You have to go along with it, otherwise you won’t get the mortgage or loan.”
That has been a reason for some people to agree with Dexia. Sometimes it concerns a small residual debt of 1000 euros, but there is also a case of someone who is still 55,000 euros in the red. Radar interviewed a taxi driver who has been having major problems for years to get a lease contract for a new car. Another is stuck because a mortgage application is stuck due to the BKR registration. These people are wrongly registered with the BKR. Victims can report to the foundation for wrongful BKR registration. Dexia denies this and emphasizes that it is obliged to report outstanding debts to the BKR.
Requests to delete BKR registrations are handled carefully, the company says. B KR reports that there is no reason to delete all registrations of Dexia customers. According to the BKR, these are all individual cases and it must be assessed on a case-by-case basis whether the registration is correct.
Van Lanschot Kempen
ING has acquired an additional 17.6 percent stake in Van Lanschot Kempen/investor Reggeborgh. The value of the stake is said to be around 350 million euros. Van Lanschot Kempen is a listed, well-capitalized and profitable asset manager with a strong specialist position in the Netherlands and Belgium, among other countries, and acquiring the substantial stake is an ‘attractive financial opportunity’ for ING to grow in asset management. The bank already held 2.7 percent of shares in Van Lanschot, which means that the total participation will increase to more than 20 percent after this deal. According to the terms of the agreement, ING has immediately acquired a 7.2 percent stake, which means that the stake in Van Lanschot Kempen now amounts to 9.9 percent. The remainder of the transaction is still subject to approval from regulators.
According to ING, this will probably take a few months. Van Lanschot Kempen, listed on Euronext Amsterdam, is the oldest independent financial institution in the Netherlands with a history dating back to 1737. ING sees its investment as a long-term investment. Van Rijswijk also indicates that he supports the current management of the asset manager. An ING spokesperson does not want to say whether the bank is also considering a full takeover in the long term. In 2022, an additional 13.7 billion euros in assets were created. Savings and deposits increased by 8% to €12.7 billion. Net profit fell from 143.8 million euros to 84.3 million euros.
A decline caused by high results on investments in 2021 and one-off charges related to the accelerated acquisition of a remaining 30% stake in the Belgian Mercier Vanderlinden at the end of last year. Due to the capital requirements, Van Lanschot sold part of its portfolio of commercial real estate loans for 400 billion to a subsidiary of Cerberus Capital Management at a loss of 23 million euros. Van Lanschot Kempen acquired UBS Wealth Management Nederland. Earlier, Staalbankiers, with €1.7 billion in assets under management and more than €300 million in savings, was also acquired from Achmea for €16 million. Partly as a result of this, the assets under management at Van Lanschot Kempen increased to €75.8 billion. On 15 May 2018, the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD) and the Public Prosecution Service (OM) raided Lanschot subsidiary Kempen & Co in a criminal investigation into fraud by real estate trader Coen R. who made use of the bank’s leasehold structures.
Real estate investor Rob Ebbers has filed a summons against him with the Land Registry and holds the directors and supervisors of Van Lanschot Kempen civilly liable for 1.5 million in damages that he allegedly suffered due to leasehold constructions between R. and the bank. The 42-year-old Coen R. of Aemstel Business Management and his real estate companies such as Aemstel Wonen concluded leasehold constructions with Grondvermogen, a subsidiary of Van Lanschot Kempen. Grondvermogen purchased the land under the homes of homeowners from 2008 and received a monthly fee for this, which was collected by Kempen Dutch Inflation Fund of Van Lanschot. The investment fund was supposed to be placed with institutional investors and pension funds, but there appeared to be no interest, which meant that Van Lanschot ultimately had to finance the leasehold portfolio itself in 2013.
Grondvermogen has 123 million euros of leasehold land on its balance sheet and entered into a total of 700 leasehold contracts between 2008 and 2013, for more than a thousand real estate objects. Neither Grondvermogen nor the investment fund Kempen Dutch Inflation Fund were listed on the bank’s website or annual report. Coen R. was arrested on 15 May and his villa in Zandvoort was seized. The Public Prosecution Service suspects R. of money laundering and misuse of third-party products or services.
Liberbank (Spain)
The CNMW has banned short selling on Liberbank for a month after it lost 41 percent of its market value in the first week of June 2017. Spain’s smallest listed bank has a relatively high number of loans that are not repaid or only partially repaid and high financial liabilities. Liberbank was formed in 2011 from a merger of three smaller banks and was listed on the stock exchange two years later. The bank has around 900 branches and 4,000 employees and does business mainly in areas such as Asturias, Extremadura and Cantabria. Liberbank was a Spanish financial services company, created through the merger of Group Cajastur, Caja de Extremadura and Caja Cantabria. Created from the consolidation of the assets and liabilities of the banking business.
Lloyds Bank (Scotland)
Lloyds Bank is a trading name of Bank of Scotland plc, part of Lloyds Banking Group. The group was formed in 2009 from a merger between a number of well-known British financial institutions, including Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland. Their shared history goes back centuries and began in 1695 with the founding of Bank of Scotland. Today, they are the largest consumer bank in Great Britain. Lloyds Banking Group has been active in the Netherlands since 1966 with banking products and services for consumers and businesses.
Lloyds Banking Group is large and active in 6 countries. In Great Britain they have more than 30 million customers. There they are the largest in current and savings accounts, mortgages, personal loans and credit cards. One in four Britons banks with Lloyds. Lloyds Bank is a trading name of Lloyds Bank GmbH and part of Lloyds Banking Group . A group that was created in 2009 from a merger between a number of well-known British financial institutions, including Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland. Our shared history goes back centuries and began in 1695 with the founding of Bank of Scotland. It is the largest consumer bank in Great Britain.
Mambu (Germany)
Fintech Mambu raised two investments in 2021, worth 235 and 110 million euros respectively. Mambu is a Berlin-based group with headquarters in Amsterdam.
Mediobank
Mediobanca, Siena-based Mediobanca is keen to be the linchpin of what is set to become Italy’s third banking arm. The asset manager and investment bank has rejected a takeover bid from Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Monte dei Paschi made a share offer that represented an implicit premium of around 5% on the previous day’s closing prices. Subsequently, the Siena-based institution’s share price fell while Mediobanca’s rose. The latter’s market capitalisation stood at €13.4bn at the end of trading on Monday, while the value of Monte dei Paschi’s bid had fallen to €12.2bn. ‘So it destroys value’. Measured by total assets, the new entity would be ‘among the top three institutions’ in Italy. The problem was that the deal would be financed to a large extent by an uncertain deferred tax credit of €2.9 billion, while there is also a €3.3 billion in costs for potential legal disputes related to the 2017 bailout by the Italian state. Then there are the overly optimistic cost savings and the lack of synergies.
Monte dei Paschi is a lending bank for SMEs and families, and Mediobanca is primarily an asset manager and investment bank. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni initially wanted the country’s number three, Banco BPM, to become a competitor to Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit. However, after Banco BPM made a bid for asset manager Anima in November, UniCredit launched a bid for Banco BPM. This takeover may be difficult to prevent, which is why Meloni has shifted his attention to Monte dei Paschi, in which the Italian state still has a stake of almost 12%. Mediobanca has made a bid for Banca Generali for 6.3 billion euros.
Mediobanca plans to finance the acquisition by selling a 13 percent stake in insurer Assicurazioni Generali. The bid is worth 54.17 euros per share, representing an 11 percent premium to Banca Generali’s closing price in Milan on Friday. Mediobanca expects the share swap to be completed by the end of October. The bank expects the proposed merger to generate synergies worth around 300 million euros. Mediobanca is itself a takeover target and is trying to fend off a bid from Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, while UniCredit wants to buy smaller rival Banco BPM, which has also rejected the takeover and is currently in the process of acquiring asset manager Anima Holding.
Metropolitan Bank
The bank is on the verge of collapse, along with New York Community Bank, New York Community Bank, Valley National Bank, Harbor One, Comerica Vank and Metropolitan Bank
Mollie
Monte dei Paschi di Siena (Italy)
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena has existed since 1472 and is the oldest financial institution in the world that is still active. The bank has been struggling to survive for years and in 2017 the Italian State had to rescue the bank and since then has had a 64 percent stake as controlling shareholder. In recent months, further interventions were necessary, such as a capital increase of 2.5 billion euros in November 2022 and a new strategic plan with savings such as the elimination of 4,000 jobs. The capital increase and the implementation of some actions from the strategic plan would suggest that the doubts about the continued existence are behind us for the time being. MPS decided to sell subsidiary Antoneveneta.
The MPS bank is not only the oldest bank in the world, but also the weakest bank in Europe. In a macroeconomic disaster scenario, MPS’s capital buffer would fall below zero. In the period up to 2021, 5,500 jobs will be lost and the number of branches will be reduced from 2,000 to 1,400. The European Commission has given the Italian government permission to provide 5.4 billion euros in emergency aid. The European Commission has reached an agreement in principle with the Italian Minister of Finance Pier Carlo Padoan. The condition is that MPS sells all 26 billion euros in problem loans on the balance sheet. Shareholders and bondholders must also contribute to the improvement of the capital position. Capital providers Fortress and Fondiario are said to be prepared to take over all of MPS’s bad loans with the emergency fund Atlante.
MPS actually needed almost 9 billion. The Italian government confirms that private parties will take over the bad loans portfolio. The European banking directive BRRD was supposed to ensure that taxpayers no longer have to save banks, but the Resolution Board (SRB) must actually deal with the bad bank. On 21 December, MPS shares were hit by a new 12% drop on the Rome stock exchange and trading in the share was again temporarily halted. The Italian bank’s share trading was also halted on 21 November shortly after trading started after the share price had fallen by more than 5%. After resumption, the share was down 4.2% at €0.22.
Monte dei Paschi di Siena also fell 14% on the stock exchange on July 4, plummeting from 1.169 euros to 0.329 euros. MPS still had €10.6 billion in cash this month. The bank was required by the ECB to pay billions in additional funds to meet European requirements. At the end of 2015, Monte dei Paschi di Siena already had 24.2 billion euros in bad loans outstanding, and in 2018, these may only amount to 14.6 billion euros. That is why the bank wants to sell subsidiary Antoneveneta, which it bought at the time, for 9 billion euros, sell its own shares for five billion euros and sell packages with barely repaid loans to the Atlante 2 fund to cover a capital shortage. The bank would like to dispose of a total of 9.2 billion euros in problematic loans to Atlante2, the new Italian fund from which the ECB can then easily buy bonds as part of the monetary easing. This represents only a third of the 27.7 billion euros outstanding in loans. Monte Pashi asked the ECB until 20 January to complete the 5 billion euro capital injection, but by the end of December, less than half of this amount had been achieved.
The State bought shares in the bank for 6.49 euros each, thus investing a total of 3.85 billion euros in the bank. The entire rescue plan yields MPS an amount of 8 billion euros. The bank will also issue 4.47 billion euros in new shares to creditors. The government will then buy another 1.5 billion euros in new shares from smaller creditors. The Italian state’s stake increased from 55 percent to 70 percent. CEO Fabrizio Viola and the chairman of the supervisory board Massimo Tononi have resigned. Four anonymous investors from Qatar were said to have wanted to buy 250 million euros in shares in the bank each, but later changed their minds. The bank warned that problems had arisen with the move to sell on €1.5 billion in bad loans to the emergency fund Atlante. The attempt to persuade holders of bonds and subordinated debt to convert their shares into new shares also failed and yielded less than 200 million euros.
Six current and former Deutsche Bank executives were formally charged over the Monte dei Paschi di Siena derivatives scandal and were sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years in November 2019. Former top executives of Japanese bank Nomura and Monte dei Paschi di Siena were also convicted. The total number of bankers was 13. Monte dei Paschi di Siena laid off 2,600 employees and closed 500 branches, but in the meantime made a bid for Mediobanca, Italy’s third banking arm. However, the asset manager and investment bank rejected the takeover bid. Monte dei Paschi made a share offer that represented an implicit premium of around 5% on the previous day’s closing prices. Subsequently, the Sienese institution’s share price fell and Mediobanca’s rose. The latter’s market capitalization stood at €13.4 billion at the end of trading on Monday, while the value of Monte dei Paschi’s bid had fallen to €12.2 billion. ‘So it destroys value’.
In terms of total assets, the new entity would be among the “top three institutions” in Italy. The problem was that the deal would be financed to a large extent by an uncertain deferred tax credit of €2.9 billion, while there is also €3.3 billion in costs for potential legal disputes related to the 2017 bailout by the Italian state. Then there are the overly optimistic cost savings and the lack of synergies. Monte dei Paschi is a lending bank for SMEs and households, while Mediobanca is primarily an asset manager and investment bank. The Italian state still holds a stake of almost 12% in the bank. The shareholders had previously agreed to a rescue plan for the bank.
Monte dei Paschi di Siena, UniCredit and Banco Popolare are burdened with hundreds of billions in loans that it is questionable whether they will ever be repaid
Morgan Stanley
The American Morgan Stanley paid fines of 249 million dollars for leaking information about sales orders of large clients for years to profit from it. The fraud took place in the department that executed so-called block transactions. In this case, a large, usually institutional investor wants to get rid of a large package of shares in one go. However, such a large sale can depress the price of a share.
An investment bank therefore acts as an intermediary and buys the shares at a discount to the stock market price and then sells them on later. Morgan Stanley promised its clients to keep sell orders secret, but passed the information on to hedge fund managers who could quickly take advantageous positions. The deal was advantageous for Morgan Stanley, because the bank secured buyers for the shares. Morgan Stanley is investigating the possibilities of offering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to its clients. It is also considering adding crypto to its E-Trade trading platform.
The Public Prosecution Service has announced that it will summon the bank on suspicion of evading 124 million euros in dividend tax. It concerns the American bank Morgan Stanley. ABN AMRO will receive a fine of millions from the Public Prosecution Service for assisting in tax evasion.
Morgan Stanley has been at odds with the tax authorities for years over millions of euros in dividend tax due, due to ‘dividend stripping’.
The Public Prosecution Service states that a Dutch subsidiary of the bank received a large number of shares at the exact moment of the dividend payment. As a result, this Dutch subsidiary was able to offset the dividend tax against other taxes.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, this was purely a trick for illegal tax evasion and the shares were returned abroad after the dividend was paid out. This allegedly happened between 2009 and 2013.
Morgan Stanley already reached a settlement with the Dutch Tax Authorities last year about the matter, according to the bank’s annual report. In doing so, the investment bank repaid the disputed amount of taxes plus interest.
This ended a legal battle between the tax authorities and the bank. But at the same time, public prosecutors investigated whether the tax returns of Morgan Stanley’s Dutch subsidiary were correct. The trial between the Public Prosecution Service and the American bank is expected to start around the end of the year.
NIBC
NIBC is a bank for businesses and individuals and finances residential and rental housing, commercial real estate, ships, infrastructure, cars and equipment. NIBC employs approximately 700 people and is headquartered in The Hague and serves clients internationally with a focus on Europe. Blackstone has acquired NIBC for 1.45 billion euros after a 9 million euro reorganization and will take it private.
Blackstone offered 9.85 euros per share. NIBC’s largest shareholders, JC Flowers & Co and Reggeborgh Invest, accepted Blackstone’s bid. They have interests of 60.6 percent and 14.6 percent respectively. Approximately fifty employees lost their jobs. They received a social plan that was coordinated with the works council. NIBC made a profit of 251 million euros in the first half of 2019 and in 2018 the operating result was 551 million . In 2022, it was named the best mortgage provider in the Netherlands.
NWB
On 1 February 1953, the Netherlands was shocked by the flood disaster. The material damage amounted to more than 5% of the national income. In order to help the water boards with the enormous investment task to protect our country against the water, the Dutch Water Board Bank was founded on 5 May 1954. However, the formation of the bank is in fact separate from the disaster.
The plan to establish a Water Board Bank already existed in 1939. The board of the Union of Water Boards took the decisive decision to establish it in December 1952. The founders of the bank wanted to provide risk-free capital to water boards and initially wanted to help them at the most favourable rates possible. The founders also explicitly opened the bank to other public and semi-public organisations. Quite soon after its start, the bank started financing municipalities and social housing, for example.
Over the years, the bank has grown into an essential financier within the public domain. Since 2009, the trade name has been NWB Bank. The statutory name remains: Nederlandse Waterschapsbank NV In 2014, the bank came under direct supervision of the European Central Bank as a significant bank.
National Netherlands Bank
Nationale Nederlanden NN (see also Delta LLoyd and Laka)
NN Group is now also starting as an online bank with its own current accounts and debit cards. NN has 79.9 percent of the shares in Delta Lloyd and is one of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands, founded in 1962 after the merger between the Assurantie Maatschappij tegen Brandschade De Nederlanden van 1845 (De Nederlanden) and the Nationale Levensverzekering-Bank (De Nationale).
Falling market shares and threatened takeovers caused the two companies to merge in April 1963 to form Nationale-Nederlanden. Nationale-Nederlanden has been a financial service provider for 175 years, offering products and services in the field of insurance , pensions and banking activities to over 6 million private and business customers in the Netherlands. Nationale-Nederlanden is part of NN Group, an international financial service provider active in 11 countries and leading in a number of European countries and Japan.
NN Group NV is listed on Euronext Amsterdam (NN). Nationale-Nederlanden Bank is part of NN Group, an international financial services provider active in 11 countries and leading in a number of European countries and Japan. Its roots go back more than 175 years. Nationale-Nederlanden Bank offers its customers in the Netherlands financial services in the areas of Savings , Bank Savings , Investments , Mortgages and Loans . Due to the “changed market conditions”, Nationale-Nederlanden Bank has decided to stop offering consumer credit as of 8 March. The financial services provider has announced that the decision will not affect customers who already have a current credit.
National Westminster Bank Plc (UK)
National Westminster Bank Plc or NatWest for short is a commercial bank in the United Kingdom that has been part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc since 2000. NatWest has an extensive network of 1,600 branches and 3,400 ATMs spread across England and Wales. The share price of NatWest fell 5.8 percent in London on April 28, 2023 after the publication of the quarterly figures. Customers withdrew 20 billion pounds (almost 23 billion euros) in deposits from the British bank in the past quarter.
NatWest Group/National Westminster Bank/RBS Royal bank of Scotland
The NatWest Group , formerly Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), is a bank and insurer headquartered in Edinburgh. The bank was founded in 1727 by decree of George I of Great Britain. By opening banks throughout the country, it established a good network of branches in Scotland. RBS opened its first branch in London in 1874. English banks were opposed to the arrival of additional competitors and asked the government to take action. An agreement was reached, English banks would not open branches in Scotland and Scottish banks would not open branches in England outside London.
This agreement remained in force until the 1960s, but takeovers remained possible. RBS bought London’s Drummonds Bank in 1924, followed by Williams Deacon’s Bank, active in the north-west of England, in 1930. In 1939, Glyn, Mills & Co. was incorporated, and these last two banks were merged in 1970 to form Williams & Glyn’s Bank. In 1988, the first major takeover in the United States followed, when Citizens Bank became part of RBS. In 2000, it acquired National Westminster Bank (Natwest), taking over subsidiaries Ulster Bank, Isle of Man Bank, Lombard North Central and Coutts & Co. The Bank of Scotland also had its sights set on Natwest, but lost the takeover battle to RBS, which had raised its bid to almost £25 billion at the last minute.Natwest was much larger than RBS at that time.
Natwest had a balance sheet of £186bn, 64,400 staff and 1,730 branches, while RBS was stuck at £75bn, 22,000 staff and 650 branches. The bank did not report a profit from 2008 to 2016. The bank has survived with government support and the government owns almost all the shares.
In addition to its own name, the bank operates the brands NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Drummonds, Coutts, Lombard, Ulster Bank (Ireland), Child & Co, Isle of Man Bank (UK)
New York Community Bank
A mid-sized regional bank with a balance sheet total of $116 billion, which last year acquired part of the assets of the collapsed Signature Bank, is going down, just like other regional banks on the stock exchange. Shares of New York Community Bank plummeted by almost 38% and lost another 16% on February 1, 2024. The regional bank has had to take a provision of $552 million on real estate loans. In the US, real estate vacancies have risen sharply. Credit rating agency Moody’s warns that the bank’s rating is under immediate review. If the situation does not improve, the credit rating could be downgraded to junk status within 90 days. The bank will suffer significant losses if debtors default.
Parties in trouble will have to get through this year. The interest rate cuts would then work through to market recovery and lower financing costs. The situation at New York Community Bank is quite serious now that the bank has been given junk status and intervention by regulators is inevitable. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently said that he expects that several smaller banks will not survive the problems in the office market. Valley National Bank is also suffering the same fate.
Nordax Bank (NOBA) (Sweden)
A Swedish digital bank of banks that operates primarily in the Nordic countries and Germany. They have been operating under the Nordax brand since 2003. They employ approximately 450 professionals with the Nordax brand, all working in one office in Stockholm. Nordax savings accounts are covered by the government deposit guarantee. Under the Nordax brand they offer consumer loans, savings products and mortgages and currently serve approximately 300,000 customers.
Nordea Bank (Denmark)
Novo Banco (Portugal)
Portugal’s Novo Banco is on the verge of collapse and may have found a last-minute buyer in US-based Lone Star. Existing investors including BlackRock and Aethel Partners are trying to block the deal in the hope of limiting their losses. As a state-owned bank, Novo Banco managed the healthy assets of Banco Espirito Santo, which went bankrupt in 2014. The new entity, which received a large capital injection of €4.90 billion (€3.90 billion from the state and the rest of the banks operating in Portugal), is to be sold on the instructions of the European Commission. Apart from Lone Star, there were a number of other candidates in the running, including US funds Apollo and Centerbridge (which made a joint bid), Chinese fund Misheng Financial and Spain’s CaixaBank.
Novum Bank
Novum Bank Limited is a private credit institution of investment vehicle Ramphastos of Marcel Boekhoorn and is regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) to operate outside Malta. The bank mainly offers the loans for the Dutch market from an office in Berkel en Rodenrijs. Novum Bank Limited, established in Malta, was imposed an administrative fine of € 1.75 million by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) on 18 October 2018. The fine was imposed because Novum Bank offered short-term loans (flash loans) to Dutch consumers from September 2013 to June 2016 without the required AFM license.
Open bench
Europe’s largest 100% digital bank with customers in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Argentina
Optima bench
In 2013, Optima still had a credit portfolio of 150 million euros, a bond portfolio of 500 million euros and 600 million euros in savings accounts. The profit at that time was still 1.75 million euros. But after the license of the Belgian Optima bank was withdrawn due to mismanagement, bad governance and aggressive marketing and shady real estate investments, the bank of founder Jeroen Piqueur went bankrupt in mid-June.
The Belgian central bank blocked the bank accounts to prevent a bank run. The bank spent a fortune on sponsoring the football team KV Oostende and the annual tennis tournament Optima Open in Knokke. A bank manager drove an extra large Rolls Royce Phantom. The bank got into trouble after an inspection by the Financial Services and Markets Authority revealed that the balance sheet total had shrunk considerably. On 8 June 2016, the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) blocked all accounts. The Belgian guarantee fund must repay some 10,000 customers up to 100,000 euros per customer, for a total of 60 million euros.
The total size of the deposits is 90 million euros. Customers with accounts with more than 100,000 euros should be repaid from the settlement of the bank’s bankruptcy. The bank employed 170 people on a permanent basis, in addition to a group of freelancers. Most employees are employed in Ghent, the rest in Waterloo. In 2014, various criminal complaints were filed due to heavy losses on an investment in a branch 23 construction with the Luxembourg insurance company Lombard Assurance International. Optima used personalized funds (fonds dédiés) in Luxembourg, whereby the customer fully authorizes the bank for at least 250,000 euros.
A number of less wealthy clients suffered large losses because toxic assets such as life settlements ended up in their portfolios. This led to a series of criminal complaints, but most of the people involved were recently acquitted by the public prosecutor. Optima Financial Planners in turn filed a complaint for defamatory reporting with a claim for damages.
The financial loss on insurance policies would not be abnormal given the crisis. Optima was previously a specialist in personal financial planning and active in real estate. At the end of 2011, the company obtained a banking license through the acquisition of Ethias Bank with just 30,000 customers. In September 2014, under pressure from the National Bank, Optima announced that it wanted to relinquish its banking license. The real estate promotion activities were split off and placed in the sister company Optima Global Estate.
Herman Verwilst (ex-Fortis Bank) left as chairman of the board of directors and Jeroen Piqueur took his place. Former politician Luc Van den Bossche also left and became chairman of Optima Global Estate. Former CEO Jeroen Piqeur is being prosecuted for large-scale tax fraud, because he allegedly hid foreign accounts from the tax authorities between 2007 and 2013 and failed to file a tax return for income on accounts in Luxembourg and Monaco that were registered in the name of offshore companies.
The Public Prosecution Service wants to seize 2.2 million euros and is demanding a professional ban of ten years. Piqeur failed to declare around 22 million euros in income and evaded 3 to 4 million euros in taxes. Jeroen Piqueur was sentenced in Ghent on 19 May 2017 to four months unconditional imprisonment and a fine of 1.5 million euros for large-scale tax fraud. The Ghent court also imposed a ban on being a director of a company for three years and declared the almost 2.3 million euros he earned forfeited. Piqueur may appeal. The judicial investigation into the bankruptcy of Optima Bank itself, in which he was also involved, is still ongoing.
Pacific Western Bank (US)
Pacific Western Bank, a Beverly Hills-based regional bank and commercial real estate lender, is on the verge of collapse. PacWest’s stock price plummeted more than 25 percent on May 2, a day after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized First Republic Bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase. The drop was worse than that of other regional banks. The small 20-year-old U.S.-based PacWest bank fell nearly 30 percent in premarket trading on Wall Street on March 13, 2023, and it went down again badly on May 2.
At PacWest BanCorp, customers have been withdrawing their money in droves. The unrest has sent the California bank’s stock down more than 30 percent. PacWest is smaller than First Republic Bank, with about $41 billion in assets. But nearly 80 percent of its loan portfolio is in commercial real estate-backed loans and residential mortgages. PacWest is looking to sell some of its assets to boost liquidity and has already put its $2.7 billion financing division up for sale. Western Alliance Bank, in Phoenix, also suffered steep losses in stock Tuesday, falling about 14 percent by market close. The bank ended the day at $31.45 per share.
Paypal
Founded in 2010 in Stockholm, Fintech and payment terminal company iZettle has been acquired by PayPal as of October 1, 2020. From that date, the iZettle services will be transferred from iZettle AB to PayPal (Europe) S.à rl et Cie, SCA (“PayPal Europe”). PayPal Europe is licensed as a credit institution and operates an online payment system, which at its inception was originally intended for payments between personal digital assistants. The system acts as an intermediary for online and mobile payments between individuals, online merchants and web shops. Only an email address is required to make a payment.
At the moment you can pay with PayPal at KLM , HEMA, Vakantieveilingen, Thuisbezorgd, Pathé, Hunkemöller, Greetz, Transavia, van Haren, CheapTickets, Mycom, Mexx, CenterParcs, Albelli, TomTom, FreeRecordShop, C&A, Esprit, Philips and many other brands. In addition to online via your PC, you can also shop and make payments with PayPal on your phone or tablet. PayPal (Europe) S.à.rl & Cie, SCA is licensed as a Luxembourg credit institution, as defined in article 2 of the Financial Sector Act, and is supervised by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, with registered office in L-1150 Luxembourg.
Since the service is limited to e-money, which does not qualify as a deposit or investment service under this legislation, PayPal customers are not protected by the deposit guarantee plans of the Association pour la Garantie des Dépôts Luxembourg (AGDL). PayPal Inc. (the parent company of PayPal (Europe) S.à.rl et Cie, SCA) is based in California, USA.
Pictett
RBS (UK) Lloyds Banking Group) see also NatWest Group
The bank will pay dividends (2 pence) again after a long time. The intention is to eventually bring the bank, which is still largely owned by the British government, to the stock exchange. The name change was announced in February 2020 and from 22 July 2022 the bank will continue under the name NatWest Group plc.Bank branches continued to use the Royal Bank of Scotland name.
In May 2018, a settlement was reached with US regulators over the settlement of bad mortgages. Royal Bank of Scotland was rescued by the state eight years ago and is 73% state-owned. In the United States, RBS received a claim of billions for the improper sale of mortgage bonds and this was provisionally settled for 4.9 billion dollars. The British regulator FCA started an investigation into the bank three years ago because smaller entrepreneurs were said to have been severely disadvantaged around the credit crisis and had deliberately caused them to get into financial difficulties. The bank is said to have restricted current loans in order to solve its own problems. The real estate department is said to have received data about the companies that were in ‘special management’ and to have steered them towards their bankruptcy.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has banned former trader Paul White from nationalised RBS for life over Libor rate fiddling. White was responsible for the Libor rate fiddling. The lawsuits have cost the bank £1.1 billion in losses over the past three months. The bank failed the latest Bank of England (BoE) stress test. Thousands of jobs are still at risk. RBS must cut costs, divest assets, lay off staff and lower its risk profile. Some 15,000 jobs are at risk. The bank has been fined by antitrust authorities in Turkey for breaching competition rules. RBS will cut around 792 jobs in 2018 following a review of its operations in England and Wales.
Rabobank
After a ruling by the court in Den Bosch, Rabobank must repay more than 1 million euros to ceiling manufacturer Plameco, a business customer who was duped by such an interest rate swap in 2008. Plameco covered a loan of 5 million for a renovation on the advice of Rabobank with an interest rate swap. Because no permit was granted for the renovation, Plameco wanted to get rid of the credit but was left with the swap and paid approximately 1.8 million euros in interest on it. The new sponsorship amount for sports and culture will amount to approximately thirty million euros this year.
At Rabobank, 2,000 jobs disappeared in the past six months and another 10,000 will disappear in 2018. The bank is selling 600 million euros worth of mortgages to the French bank La Banque Postale. This concerns 3,600 loans with National Mortgage Guarantee. Rabobank has a total mortgage portfolio of 194.5 billion euros. Rabobank will continue to provide the mortgage services.
Rabo lowered the interest rate on savings accounts to 0.1% in November 2019. Rabobank’s real estate financing activities, including approximately 60 employees, a credit portfolio worth 1.7 billion euros and the customer portfolio of more than 9,000 loans from RNHB Hypotheekbank, are being sold to CarVal Investors and Vesting Finance. The Turkish subsidiary is being sold to the Turkish Liberyum Bank. In 2021, a gross profit of 19 million euros was achieved with 53 employees. Rabobank has had a banking license from the Turkish central bank since 2013 and wanted to grow to at least five offices with 100 to 150 employees.
However, Turkish inflation has recently surged to 83.5% year-on-year, the highest level since 1998. In some parts of the country, including Istanbul, consumer prices have more than doubled compared to last year. The series of interest rate cuts implemented by central bank governor Sahap Kavcioglu this year is shaking up the business model of commercial banks. Rabobank was the first to raise the savings interest rate to 1.5 percent in July 2023. From July 1, customers will have to pay significantly more in bank fees for their payment packages, despite the huge profits.
Raiffeisen Bank International (Austria)
Raiffeisen (since 2017 Raiffeisen Bank International AG in full) is a cooperative, international bank based in Austria. The company was founded in 1927 and is one of the largest banks in Austria. The company is named after Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, who developed the idea of the cooperative movement and founded the first credit union in 1864. Raiffeisenbank has branches in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Hungary, Kosovo, Croatia, Moldova, Montenegro, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Belarus. The shares of these so-called network banks are held by the subsidiary Raiffeisen International Bank-Holding AG, which is listed on the Vienna Stock Market.
Raiffeisenbank is one of the founders of the Unico Banking Group, an organization of related cooperative banks. The Dutch Rabobank is also affiliated with this organization. Raiffeisen Bank International still does business with one of Russia’s most influential oligarchs, much to the chagrin of the US. In a written ultimatum handed over to the bank, its supervisor the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Austrian government on May 8, Washington threatened to restrict Raiffeisen’s access to the dollar.
It was seen as a potential death sentence for Russia’s largest Western lender. Pressure on the bank to cut ties with Russia has been mounting from both Washington and the ECB. Raiffeisen remains under direct international pressure to pull out of Russia despite ending a deal to acquire a stake in Austrian construction company Strabag, which the US Treasury said in May was owned by sanctioned Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska.
Washington has the power to fine or cut off dollar-denominated banks that violate sanctions. For example, French bank BNP Paribas was fined $9 billion in 2014 for violating U.S. sanctions on Sudan, Iran and Cuba. Raiffeisen said the bank has reduced the volume of its loans and payments in Russia and is taking steps to reduce deposits, of which the bank holds 14 billion euros ($15 billion) there.
Record bank
ING Belgium is closing most of the Record Bank branches, leaving around fifty of the 536. ING previously announced that it wanted to reduce the number of branches from 1245 to 650. Record Bank was created in January 2001 after the merger of Record Bank (formerly SEFB), Dipo Spaarbank, De Vaderlandsche Spaarbank (formerly a subsidiary of De Vaderlandsche Verzekeringen) and Sodefina, a credit company that was also a subsidiary of De Vaderlandsche Verzekeringen. Record Bank is a 100% subsidiary of ING Belgium with offices in Evere, Ghent and Liège. In April 2003, Record Bank took over the savings bank Westkrediet. In May 2004, AGF Belgium Bank and in 2005, Mercator Bank.
Eural was also acquired from Dexia. Record Bank is the third largest retail bank in Belgium with over 800,000 customers, 650 branches and a network of 500 independent bank agents and the same number of independent credit brokers. In October 2016, ING announced the reorganization. Record Bank merges with ING Belgium.
Regional Bank
On 1 July 2007, RegioBank was officially acquired from ING Bank by SNS REAAL. Since then, RegioBank has continued together with another branch of SNS REAAL, CVB Bank, under the name SNS Regio Bank. Together they serve 538 independent advisors in small villages and towns. As of 1 December 2010, RegioBank is the new name of this bank. The SNS subsidiary Regiobank focuses on small entrepreneurs and consumers in the region (places with up to 20,000 inhabitants). Since January 2017 (and not a hundred years as they claim themselves), the bank has been one of the brands of de Volksbank , just like ASN Bank and BLG Wonen. RegioBank distinguishes itself from other banks by working together with local Independent Advisors throughout the Netherlands.
The company was created on 1 July 2007 through the merger of an older SNS subsidiary, CVB Bank , with Regio Bank (note the extra space), which had been part of the ING Group until then . CVB Bank and Regio Bank were approximately equal in size. Although CVB Bank formally acted as the acquiring company, the name of the new bank was inspired by the other merger partner. Initially, the name was SNS Regio Bank NV , but on 1 December 2010 it was shortened to RegioBank NV
Renaultbank
RCI Banque SA, a subsidiary of Groupe Renault, is a French bank specialising in automotive financing and services for the customers and dealer networks of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. With 3,800 employees in 36 countries, the Group financed more than 1.5 million new contracts and sold more than 4.6 million services in 2020. Since 2012, RCI Banque SA has been attracting savings with high interest rates in 7 countries. At the end of December 2020, the total amount of savings attracted amounted to €20.5 billion, or 43% of net assets. Under the trading name Renault Bank, RCI Banque SA offers
Revolut UAB
Revolut Bank UAB is an online app-based banking alternative, licensed and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania and the European Central Bank and supervised by the Dutch Central Bank and the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets for conducting business in the Netherlands. Founders Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko launched Revolut in 2015 in response to high fees charged by traditional banks for cross-border payments and has around 3 million customers.
Revolut will offer customers an e-SIM. Customers can purchase mobile data credit via the app. Customers with a Revolut Ultra subscription will receive 3 GB of data per month as standard. Revolut states that its e-SIM can be used in more than a hundred countries, including outside Europe. As a result, users should not have to incur ‘unexpected roaming costs’. Revolut is working with telecom provider 1GLOBAL for the service. European customers who request an e-SIM before 1 May will receive access to 100 MB of data at no extra cost. Revolut has launched a Robo-Advisor for its Dutch customers. With this new technology, customers can save time and automate investments according to their needs.
Revolut’s Robo-Advisor helps customers invest in a diversified portfolio and takes a lot of work off their hands. The new product is therefore mainly intended for customers who do not have the time to actively invest, or who have limited or no trading experience. The automated investment advisor recommends a fully diversified and personalized portfolio to the customer. This is done based on the customer’s answers to questions that map out, for example, their risk tolerance and financial goals. As soon as a customer deposits money into his or her portfolio, Robo-Advisor automatically invests it in the market.
SNS
On 27 September 2016, SNS Bank NV announced that it would continue under the name Volksbank as of 1 January 2017 , a name that was more fitting because SNS was tainted by the many abuses in the past . SNS Holding BV was renamed Volksholding. At the same time, the structure was adjusted: the independent subsidiaries ASN Bank and RegioBank surrendered their banking licenses and continued as part of Volksbank. The Dutch State sold its stake in the insurance group Reaal for 1 euro. Initially, the government thought it could still get 150 million euros for the company. Minister Dijsselbloem acknowledged that the sale price was a financial setback compared to the market value.
This was partly because there appeared to be 700 million euros less capital than had been booked. The difference arose due to an “incorrectly booked” old internal loan within the group, from the bank to the insurer. This was wrongly included in the solvency over many years. Neither De Nederlandsche Bank nor the accountants had noticed the error. The nationalisation of SNS REAAL in 2013 involved 3.8 billion euros of taxpayers’ money. The net profit of SNS Bank fell to 181 million euros, mainly due to incidental setbacks.
The state wants to get rid of Volksbank. NLFI , which manages the bank for the Dutch state, wants to get rid of the bank for 2.7 billion euros and the minister has indicated to the House of Representatives that he wants to comply with this. In 2023, Volksbank had a net profit of around 431 million euros. That is more than twice as much as the 191 million euros profit of 2022. SNS Bank, ASN Bank and RegioBank announced that customers will have to pay 50 cents more per month. That is 6 euros more per year and that is 16 to almost 19 percent more than before.
In the case of an IPO, the preparation for this is expected to take five to seven years. In the case of a private sale, the preparation time is estimated at one to three years. In 2025, DNB imposed a fine of €5 million for shortcomings in money laundering supervision. This concerns shortcomings in the period 2020 to 2023. For inadequate risk management, the fine is €15 million. This concerns the period 2018 to 2023.
J. Safra Sarasin
The Danish Saxo will be held for approximately 70%. These shares were previously held by the Chinese Geely and the Finnish Mandatum. The Saxobank, formerly known as BinckBank, saw its trading activity decline sharply and also received 150 claims for a total of approximately 3.8 million euros from Alex customers who suffered losses on investments.
BinckBank was fined 500,000 euros by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) for failing to timely report ‘over the counter’ transactions in Luxembourg in the period from 2010 to 2014 and from 2011 to 2014 on XBRD, a derivatives exchange in Brussels, and XMON, a derivatives exchange in Paris. Despite the financial setback, BinckBank acquired the fast-growing online asset manager Pritle for €12.5 million.
Of this, €7.5 million in cash and an amount of €5 million in shares of Dutch online bank Binck. The purchase includes €60 million under the management of 6,500 customers and 28 employees who will now be employed by BinckBank. The bank changed the tainted name to Saxo.
Santander
The new online Openbank is offering a 6-month savings interest rate of 2% under the same conditions and guarantees as “normal” banks, including guarantees up to 100,000 euros.
Saxo see Binck bank
The relatively small bank with its high savings interest was for sale and several potential buyers had already come forward. The Danish investment bank is now owned for approximately 70% by the Swiss private bank J. Safra Sarasin. Those shares were previously owned by the Chinese Geely and the Finnish Mandatum. The Saxobank, formerly known as BinckBank, saw its trading activity decline sharply and also received 150 claims for a total of approximately 3.8 million euros from customers of Alex who suffered losses on investments.
BinckBank was fined 500,000 euros by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) for failing to timely report ‘over the counter’ transactions in Luxembourg in the period from 2010 to 2014 and from 2011 to 2014 on XBRD, a derivatives exchange in Brussels, and XMON, a derivatives exchange in Paris. Despite the financial setback, BinckBank acquired the fast-growing online asset manager Pritle for €12.5 million.
Of this, €7.5 million in cash and an amount of €5 million in shares of Dutch online bank Binck. The purchase includes €60 million under the management of 6,500 customers and 28 employees who will now be employed by BinckBank. The bank changed the tainted name to Saxo.
Sberbank (Croatia)
In February 2023, the ECB ruled that Sberbank (English) Europe AG and its two subsidiaries in the Banking Union, Sberbank dd in Croatia and Sberbank banka dd in Slovenia, were failing or likely to fail due to a deterioration of their liquidity situation. Sberbank’s subsidiaries in Europe were wound down by the ECB’s SRB.
Austria’s Sberbank Europe AG has gone bankrupt and two subsidiary banks in Croatia and Slovenia have been acquired. Croatian state bank Hrvatska Postanska Banka took over Sberbank’s Croatian branch, while Nova Ljubljanska Banka did the same with its Slovenian part. The bank plans to open branches in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in December 2024, said Alexander Vedyakhin, first deputy chairman of the Sberbank board.
Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in September 2022, following what Ukraine says were sham referendums. Russian forces do not fully control any of the four regions, but are close to gaining control in Luhansk. Sberbank opened partner offices in Kherson and Zaporizhia in July 2024. Vedyakhin said the first full-size offices would open in December and begin serving clients, including businesses, in the first quarter of 2025.
After that, Sberbank and other major Russian banks were cut off from the SWIFT communications system in 2022. That system, with the full name ‘Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication’, was founded in 1973 by a number of American and European banks. The communications system ensures that international payments can be made faster and easier.
Since Sberbank is no longer allowed to use the system, it is much more difficult to make international payments. But it seems that Sberbank has now found a way around this. The Bell, which has also tested the method itself, reports that Sberbank customers can send rubles via the mobile app to European cardholders at Revolut or N26.
Silicon Valley bank (US)
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th largest bank in the US, with 209 billion in equity, suddenly got into trouble in March 2023 and that had an effect on all other banks worldwide. SVB is a source of money for many tech companies in Silicon Valley and had to sell its government bonds in a hurry because customers were making losses and wanted to withdraw money, which the bank did not have in cash.
The bank invested 91 billion dollars in mortgage loans and US government bonds, among other things. Due to the official interest rate increases by the Fed, the US central bank, the value of those loans fell, making them 15 billion less valuable than when SVB bought them. A loss of 1.8 billion dollars was incurred on the sale of the bonds. SVB then wanted to issue new shares of its own, which diluted the existing share package, which in turn had an effect on SVB’s customers, who decided en masse to withdraw their money. (bank run)
Those clients also received that advice from financial experts, including Venture Capital funds. These are investment funds focused on risky investments in innovative companies. Because other banks also generally spend more money than they have on paper in cash, a bank run can be disastrous and that caused so much unrest that bank shares were dumped en masse. The share of SVB on the American Nasdaq stock exchange fell by 60 percent and trading even had to be halted. The panic spread to shareholders of all other banks and insurers.
Because the banks are intertwined and also lend money to each other, this can have a snowball effect. This also caused the share prices of ABN AMRO, ING Group and Aegon to fall sharply, which were at their highest level. De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) assumes that the Dutch banks are well capitalized and resilient. The American government stands surety and gave customers access to their deposits again on March 13. This should prevent the system from collapsing. The shareholders filed a complaint with a court in the American state of California on March 13.
They accuse CEO Greg Becker and CFO Daniel Beck of not informing them well about the problems that arose from the rising interest rate hikes. The bank was acquired by First Citizens Bank
on March 27, 2023. Ammar al-Khudairy, the chairman of Saudi National Bank (SNB), was replaced by Saeed Mohammed al-Ghamdi after the debacle. Ammar al-Khudairy had been chairman of SNB since 2021 and said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on March 15 that they had absolutely no intention of investing additionally in Credit Suisse and that this was not possible due to applicable regulations and that Credit Suisse had not asked for help.
Signature Bank (US)
By taking swift action, the US government prevented the bank from collapsing in mid-March 2023. The bank has been under the control of the New York State government since March 12, 2023. Signature Bank’s board has been removed from office.
Silvergate Bank (US)
The Silvergate bank also had to be taken over by the government in mid-March 2023. It was the 4th American bank that had to be rescued in a week. The bank, like Signature Bank, had come to the rescue in siphoning off assets from the bankrupt Cryptobroker FTX
Snoras AB (Russia)
More than 1.3 million leaked bank transactions, e-mails and contracts from the now closed banks Snoras AB and Ukio Bankas showed that Troika Bank channeled billions of Russian money via Lithuania to banks in Western Europe. Bank accounts of ING and ABN AMRO were also used for transactions amounting to more than 190 million euros. The money came from major fraud cases that were mixed by Troika with the private assets of prominent Russian politicians and oligarchs. Snoras Bank is partly owned by Antonov, who made a big splash as a stockbroker in 1998 during the ruble crisis. Vladimir’s father Alexander was shot in Moscow in March 2009.
He survived the attack. The gunman had driven to his house and fired eighteen bullets at Alexander when he came out. Five bullets hit him in the stomach and he lost a piece of his finger. His bodyguard was wounded in the leg. The Russian newspaper Kommersant speculated that it was a mafia-related attack in connection with the sale of Kaliningrad Seaport, in which both father and son were involved. The Snoras bank in Lithuania is not only owned by the Antonovs, but also by the Konvers bank. The Konvers bank is owned by the Russian MDM group, which in turn belongs to Andrei Melnichenko and Sergei Popov.
Societe Generale (Belgium)
SG, one of France’s largest banks, has settled with the US Department of Justice for 50 million dollars for misrepresenting the value of mortgage investments to investors. As a result, they lost a lot of money. Investigations showed that 40 percent of the loans investigated did not meet government requirements. The French bank floated its car leasing division ALD on the stock exchange.
ALD went public on the Paris stock exchange a few months ago and is currently valued at €5.2 billion. With a fleet of 1.4 million cars in 41 countries, ALD is the largest car leasing company in Europe. Initially, a 20 percent stake was floated on the Paris stock exchange. The bank wants to lay off 900 employees before 2020 and close 15 percent of the local branches. A provision of around €400 million will be made for this reorganization in the fourth quarter. The layoffs are in addition to the 2,550 layoffs announced in 2016.
In total, GS is cutting 3,450 jobs until 2020. The bank’s net income fell by 15% to €932 million in the third quarter. Business is bad at the bank and 1,600 employees have to leave. Vestia settled with the bank in 2021, after the housing association had previously held the bank liable in the derivatives scandal, which cost Vestia billions of euros. Société Générale is paying Vestia an amount of 22.5 million euros without admitting liability. The bank is suspected of cum-cum fraud.
Sparkassen (Germany)
Georg Fahrenschon, the 49-year-old chairman of the Berlin Sparkassen Association, is suspected of tax evasion .
Standard Chartered (UK)
British bank Standard Chartered is set to pay a total of $1 billion in fines to U.S. authorities for violating trade sanctions against Iran. The bank was also reprimanded for violations in 2012. At the time, the bank paid $667 million to settle legal proceedings and promised to tighten controls on customer transactions.
Surinamese Bank (Suriname)
The Surinamese government cannot repay amounts borrowed from De Surinaamsche Bank. The Surinamese government not only borrowed abroad, but also from local banks. De Surinaamsche Bank borrowed approximately half a billion Surinamese dollars (60 million euros). De Surinaamsche Bank has a solvency ratio of 0.67 percent. Former bank director Sigmund Proeve lent the government of President Bouterse unlimited money and had meanwhile built up a very large debt with the Central Bank. Bank director Proeve was suspended by the board of directors. If the government does not repay the half a billion Surinamese dollars in loans, it will be the end of the bank. The Central Bank of Suriname wants the other Surinamese banks to help out.
Svenska Handelbanken AB (Sweden)
Handelsbanken is a 144-year-old bank in Sweden. For the first 120 years it was a Swedish bank, but since the late 1980s the bank has also been active internationally and has opened new offices instead of closing them like other banks. The Swedish deposit guarantee scheme applies to deposits held at Handelsbanken Nederland, whereby private savers receive up to 100,000 euros back if the bank goes under. The bank focuses on customers with freely available assets of more than 500,000 euros.
The only reason the bank was active abroad at first was to be able to serve Swedish customers abroad. In 1989, the bank established itself in the other Scandinavian countries and in 2002, Great Britain was also incorporated. In February 2013, the bank also entered the Netherlands, where there are now 23 branches. Handelsbanken employs 184 people, 72 of whom work at the head office. The director of the Dutch division is Mikael Sørensen, who comes from Denmark, and the head office is at Schiphol in the WTC building.
Sørensen (48) came to the Netherlands in 2007 and has been employed by Handelsbanken since 1994; the first ten years in Denmark, then 3.5 years in Poland as head of the branches there. The Swedish-Finnish Teliasonera and the Russian MTS are suspected of corruption with Takilant. The money flows went via ING, Fortis, ATB and Svenska Handelsbanken. Teliasonera paid 220 million via a third-party account of law firm Houthoff Buruma, who then transferred it to Fortis, who then transferred it to Takilant in Gibraltar. All Handelsbanken customers are customers of one of the offices. There is no wholesale department. An account manager for private customers at a Handelsbanken office will not have more than about 75 customers.
They also don’t have a central marketing department that has to promote products. Handelsbanken used to be very top-down, like most other banks. 45 years ago, the group changed into a very decentralized company. All 840 offices are on the same level and report to the regional heads, who are on the Board of Directors. The secret of the bank is its decentralized structure. They have no bonuses, no budgets and no extensive middle management. The largest part of Handelsbanken is banking, so taking in and lending money.
There is also a business bank, but the result of that is very small. In Norway, Denmark and Finland together they have 160 offices. In recent years they have opened 4 to 5 offices in the Netherlands. The bank is not yet in Nijmegen or Den Bosch. The Dutch division is increasing the interest rate due to the rising market interest rates. The interest on other savings accounts with a balance between €500,000 and €2.5 million is increasing from 1% to 1.2%. For savings accounts above €2.5 million the interest rate is increasing from 1.2% to 1.4%. The income increased by 9% to a total amount of 143.3 million euros.
At the same time, the bank announced that costs had increased by no less than 14% to 78.2 million euros (last year €68.7 million). 2022 ended with an operating result of €57.4 million, 3% lower than in 2021. A decrease due to the absence of an exceptional income as in 2021 and the fact that a higher Swedish bank tax had to be paid last year. Adjusted for these two items, the operating result of Handelsbanken Nederland actually increased considerably by 19%.
The size of the average credit portfolio increased by 20% to 8.177 billion euros and the average total volume of savings and deposits increased by 37% to 3.982 billion euros. The workforce grew from 339 to 369 employees. Despite a volatile and unsettled stock market climate, there was a net inflow of new invested assets at subsidiary Optimix Asset Management.
Swedbank (Sweden)
Swedbank, one of Sweden’s largest banks, is involved in ” systematic money laundering ” that has lasted almost ten years. Some 5.1 billion euros were siphoned off between Swedbank and Danske Bank via suspicious accounts. Of this, 26 million dollars is said to be related to Russian tax fraud that was exposed by whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. Possible money laundering by Danske Bank was also exposed by Russian lawyer and whistleblower Magnitsky.
He died in a Russian prison in 2009 after exposing tax fraud. Swedbank was said to have withheld important information from US authorities. Prosecutors raided the bank’s headquarters in July 2019. Former CEO Birgitte Bonnesen was sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Stockholm District Court. The Swedish ‘Svea Hövratt’ convicted her of gross fraud. Bonnesen led the Swedish bank from 2016 to 2019, when a money laundering scandal via the Baltic subsidiary Swedbank Estonia became public.
The Swedish court concludes that Bonnesen misinformed the bank’s shareholders about the compliance surrounding the scandal. In 2018, the bank denied that there were any suspicions of money laundering via Estonia. In 2019, CEO Bonnesen and chairman of the supervisory board Lars Idermark were dismissed. Accounting firm Deloitte was the ‘auditor’ of Swedbank until 2018. Since 2019, PwC has been auditing the bank’s annual accounts. In early September 2024, former CEO Birgitte Bonnesen was nevertheless sentenced to 15 months in prison in the second instance for providing misleading statements about the anti-money laundering measures at her bank. After being fully acquitted by the Stockholm Court of Appeal in January 2023, she was found guilty on one of the seven charges by the Svea Court of Appeal.
TD bank (Canada/US)
TD Bank is the second-largest bank in Canada and the tenth-largest in the United States. U.S. authorities reportedly began investigating TD Bank’s internal controls after agents discovered a Chinese criminal organization had bribed employees and transported large bags of cash into branches to launder millions of dollars. The North American-based TD Bank has pleaded guilty to a lawsuit alleging failures to combat money laundering and has agreed to pay $3 billion in fines to resolve the charges. TD Bank failed to monitor more than $18 trillion, or $18 trillion, in cash flows over a decade, allowing three money laundering rings to move illicit funds through accounts at the bank unchecked.
Triodos
The bank expects that trading in its share certificates can start on 18 June. The step should make trading in Triodos certificates more accessible and easier for investors. The IPO was already announced in 2024. Triodos Bank, Triodos Investment Funds and Triodos Private Banking acquired 23,000 new customers in the first half of 2016, bringing the total number of customers to 630,000. Triodos made 18.6 million euros less profit, which is 15 percent lower than last year despite the higher turnover. The total assets under management grew by 3 percent to 12.6 billion euros.
Triodos has announced that it wants to go public in Amsterdam on 18 June. With the IPO, Triodos hopes to restart the stalled trade in certificates. The listing also marks the end of the so-called Multilateral Trading Facility, an auction that was supposed to increase the liquidity of certificate holders by bringing buyers and sellers together on a weekly basis.
Slowly but surely, Triodos seems to be able to put an end to the certificate case. The bank previously managed to reach a settlement with the majority of the affected certificate holders. The bank set aside €101 million for this. However, a mass claim is still pending from Stichting Tragedie Triodos on behalf of 1,200 affected parties who believe that the settlement does not offer sufficient compensation.
The bank probably feels supported by some rulings in Spain. In three individual cases it was determined that the bank is not liable for the distribution of certificates, the suspension of trading in 2020 and 2021, and the transition to the new trading platform.
Rijpkema hopes to solve many problems with an IPO. At the annual meeting, the IPO plans were discussed with the certificate holders. In the autumn, they were allowed to vote on the IPO. In addition, they also had to obtain permission from the supervisors and the market conditions had to be good. The stock exchange listing should ensure optimal tradability of the shares, or the certificates of shares in their case. Certificate holders can now offer their shares on an external platform, the Multi Trade Facility (MTF).
There was no investigation into possible mismanagement at Triodos Bank. The Enterprise Chamber of the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam rejected a request to that effect from a group of certificate holders and the VEB investors’ association. Investors had been unable to access their money for almost three years, because Triodos suspended trading in certificates shortly after the outbreak of the corona crisis. These certificates are a kind of shares in Triodos Bank, but without voting rights. In total, the almost three thousand certificate holders have approximately 1 billion euros in investments outstanding in the bank.
Triodos has 43,000 certificate holders. Former CEO and Commissioner Peter Blom left for DNB but had to resign in September 2023 thanks to Pieter Lakeman. Blom was appointed by Wobke Hoekstra of the CDA. In November 2022, Blom had already had to resign due to the commotion about the certificates. Lakeman, together with hundreds of victims, filed a personal claim for damages against Blom and three other directors with the Red Triodos foundation. The certificates mentioned lost 40 euros in value each. Triodos Bank itself is also not immune to claims for damages. Triodos defrauded approximately 43,000 certificate holders of many tens of millions.
Investors had invested 1.2 billion euros in sustainable Triodos certificates in good faith, but these lost up to 75 percent of their value. Triodos advisors offered the certificates to clients as a ‘risk-free’ investment and paid little attention to the losses of their certificate holders, who started hundreds of lawsuits and expressed their anger on consumer programs such as Radar. According to Johan Graafland, a professor of economics at Tilburg University, this rigid attitude may have caused irreparable damage. In a column in Trouw this week, he describes Triodos Bank as morally bankrupt. Triodos Bank booked a net profit of 77.2 million euros in 2023, 55 percent more than a year earlier, mainly because the bank, like other banks, earned a lot from the high interest rates. Triodos Bank lost the case brought by pianist Jan Vayne. According to his lawyer, Vayne should have been protected because of his lack of investment knowledge. The damage is expected to amount to more than one million.
But that trade is not optimal. A stock exchange listing ensures optimal tradability. There is indeed interest from institutional investors in certificates, but investors experience obstacles to getting on the MTF. Triodos will not issue new shares and therefore will not raise money with the IPO. There will only be a listing, which will make it easier for certificate holders to sell their shares and for investors to buy certificates. The price is determined by supply and demand. Triodos never wanted to go public, because the bank wants to remain in control of the price. A sustainable bank, focused on the long term, does not fit in with shareholders who demand quick profits.
The listing applies to share certificates, not to ordinary shares. These certificates offer additional protection for the price and independence of Triodos. Triodos Bank concluded a deal with a group of dissatisfied certificate holders in early January 2025 and wants to prevent further legal action. The bank announced that holders of the alternative shares will have more direct say and 10 euros per certificate, as compensation for the poor tradability of the securities in recent years. During the corona pandemic, trading in Triodos certificates temporarily came to a standstill, because investors wanted to get rid of their certificates en masse. In 2023, trading reopened at a much lower price. A group of investors had previously prepared a mass claim because of the losses they suffered due to the decline in value of the certificates.
The value of a certificate was around 28 euros after trading resumed, while it was more than 80 euros before the shutdown. This led to a joint loss of hundreds of millions of euros. Marcel Zuidam was appointed as the new CEO, succeeding Jeroen Rijpkema, who announced his departure last year. Zuidam currently heads Nationale-Nederlanden Bank. The Triodos Supervisory Board will inform the shareholders’ meeting on 23 May of the intended appointment, which will take effect thereafter. Zuidam will join the sustainable bank as an advisor on 1 April, to ensure a smooth transfer of tasks. De Nederlandsche Bank has approved the intended appointment. Zuidam (1970) has been CEO of NN Bank since 2019. He previously worked as CEO of Delta Lloyd Bank and Quion Group, among others.
He previously made a career at ABN Amro. Pieter Emmen will take over the CEO tasks of Zuidam at NN Bank. Emmen is chief risk officer at this organization. Triodos is leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a global climate alliance for banks. A majority of the collaboration has agreed to a change of strategy with less focus on sustainability. The NZBA will focus more on financing the energy transition and less on combating climate change. The sustainability requirements for banks will therefore become less strict. Two-thirds of the members agreed to this, chairman Shargiil Bashir of the collaboration told Bloomberg news agency. It was a secret ballot.
For Triodos, a less sustainable NZBA is unacceptable, which is why the bank has decided to leave the alliance. ‘Triodos Bank believes that the new guidelines give banks too much leeway, as they only ‘encourage’ members to set and disclose targets that support achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets.
Triodos Bank is considering divesting its German branch after the upcoming IPO. This follows from the prospectus that the sustainability-focused bank published on Thursday. It was previously announced that certificates of Triodos shares will be traded on the Amsterdam stock exchange from 18 June.
Triodos wants to focus more on the Dutch market, where the bank has by far the most customers. There are 392,000. Germany is the smallest market with 33,000 customers. Other countries where the bank is active are Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom.
In the documents for potential investors, Triodos writes that it is reassessing its geographical spread. This could have consequences for the German activities. “This could involve various options, including a sale of the entire German branch or an alternative exit scenario.”
A decision on this has not yet been taken. It is also not yet clear whether this will have consequences for employment at the bank.
Troika Bank (Russia)
More than 1.3 million leaked bank transactions, emails and contracts from the now closed banks Snoras AB and Ukio Bankas showed that the Russian Troika Bank channeled billions of Russian money via Lithuania to banks in Western Europe. Bank accounts of ING and ABN AMRO were also used for transactions amounting to more than 190 million euros. The money came from major fraud cases that were mixed by the Troika with private assets of prominent Russian politicians and oligarchs.
UBS (Switzerland)
A former UBS banker has been charged by Swiss authorities with selling confidential information to Germany in 2012. The former banker is suspected of industrial espionage and violating banking secrecy by selling a CD-ROM containing confidential information about UBS clients to Germany. UBS was ordered to pay $300 million in 2014 for helping wealthy German clients avoid taxes in Germany. French authorities also filed a lawsuit, alleging that the bank was complicit in tax evasion between 2004 and 2012. The investigation into this had been ongoing for some time and talks on a settlement had failed.
UBS denies the allegations. A former employee of Gibaud is demanding €3.5 million from the government after revelations about the abuses. Gibaud was fired and claims she can no longer find work in her old profession. She claims that the government was helped to uncover the tax affair. An advisor to the Paris court says that a compensation of €2,000 should be sufficient, supplemented by more than €1,500 for legal costs. In 2014, UBS was forced by a French court to make a down payment of €1.1 billion as an advance on the €3.7 billion fine imposed in this case in 2019.
UBS has hidden approximately €9.8 billion in assets of French citizens from the tax authorities. Account managers were sent from the head office in Basel to France to convince wealthy French people at receptions, sporting events and cultural events to put their assets in a Swiss safe, out of sight of the French tax authorities. The judge called the actions “criminal and of an exceptionally serious nature”. UBS charges interest if the savings exceed €1 million. The Dutch asset management division (€2.6 billion in assets) is being sold to Van Lanschot Kempen for €28 million. CEO Hamers, as former CEO of ING, still faces criminal prosecution for the failed supervision of money laundering practices at ING bank. He was in charge of the bank when the company was fined €775 million in 2018 for negligence in combating money laundering. Hamers joined the board of UBS in September 2020 and has been in charge since November 1, 2020.
His salary there is approximately 12.7 million euros per year. Ralph Hamers received an EU cartel fine together with two other banks totaling 371 million euros for trading in European government bonds. The highest fine, 172 million euros, is for UBS itself. The cartel practices took place between 2007 and 2011, long before Hamers from Limburg temporarily became CEO of the largest bank in Switzerland. The Japanese Nomura must pay almost 130 million euros to the European Commission and the Italian UniCredit more than 69 million euros. The British NatWest raised the alarm with the Commission about the cartel and therefore avoids a fine. Other banks involved also do not have to pay a fine for various reasons.
The banks’ bond traders shared sensitive information among themselves via chat rooms, for example about prices and strategy when trading European government bonds. This happened during the financial crisis at the time. UBS is considering appealing the fine and states that steps were taken years ago to prevent such practices. UniCredit announced that it will contest the fine and denies being guilty of cartel practices. UBS shares plummeted by as much as 7% on March 15, 2023 after unrest arose at Credit Suisse, which itself also had to surrender 22%. Confidence in Swiss banks has fallen to an all-time low. Credit Suisse was acquired by UBS on March 19, 2023 for approximately three billion euros. The Swiss central bank (SNB) also announced that it would guarantee a loan of up to 101 billion euros, but the bank already reneged on this in early August. UBS paid only a fraction of the market value at which Credit Suisse ended.
That was about 7.5 billion Swiss francs. UBS will then have assets of more than 1511 billion euros due to the merger and will then actually be too big for the country. In the event of problems, the Swiss central bank and the Swiss government will not have enough resources to save the bank. Ralph Hamers, previously CEO of ING, left immediately after the takeover after more than two years and will be succeeded by the Swiss veteran Sergio Ermotti. Credit Suisse will be absorbed in full and thousands of jobs will be lost.
Credit Suise and UBS will continue to exist side by side until 2024, but after that Credit Suisse will be fully absorbed into UBS. All clients will then be transferred and in 2025 the Credit Suisse brand will disappear. UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti wants to save more than 10 billion dollars in costs, including the elimination of three thousand jobs in the next 2.5 years. UBS made a profit of 29 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2023, partly due to the fact that UBS only paid 3 billion dollars for Credit Suisse, while the outstanding loans of the acquired bank were worth much more. In 2024, thousands of employees will be laid off in five rounds as part of a cost-saving plan, starting in June.
Swiss companies have expressed concern that the market power of the enlarged UBS could lead to higher borrowing costs in the future. ‘The price regulator assumes that the merged major bank is aware of its social responsibility and will act accordingly. The regulator FINMA, the competition authority ComCo and the Swiss National Bank have discussed the consequences of the takeover and will exercise extra supervision.
In April, the European Commission fined the banks Credit Suisse, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Crédit Agricole more than 28 million euros for forming a cartel in the trading of government bonds. Deutsche Bank was also involved in that cartel but was not fined because the German bank informed Brussels about the case.
UniCredit
UniCredit’s acquisitions are not directly financed by taxpayers’ money and are not considered state aid, but monetary support for all eurozone banks. They are financed through the ECB’s balance sheet, not by national budgets. But if things go wrong, taxpayers could indirectly be left with the bill, especially if UniCredit’s risks threaten the stability of the sector. That risk is real, given the bank’s size and the political sensitivity of cross-border acquisitions.
UniCredit remains financially strong, with a CET1 ratio of around 14.3%. The bid for Banco BPM was (fortunately) rejected, and the takeover of Commerzbank has been postponed until 2026, reducing the chance of an immediate fiasco. However, the high exposure to economically weaker regions (such as Southern and Eastern Europe) and the complex regulatory hurdles (e.g. Italy’s “golden powers” and the EU’s branch requirement) make the strategy very risky.
The German government’s resistance and the postponed takeover plans reduce the risk of rapid escalation, but a failed takeover could damage UniCredit’s share value and capital position. A failure of UniCredit’s plans – for example due to overvaluation, unexpected losses, or political blockades – could lead to indirect costs, such as ECB interventions or deposit guarantees, which ultimately hit taxpayers.
If UniCredit’s expansion fails, these are possible scenarios that taxpayers will be affected by:
- Bail-In First: Under the BRRD, shareholders and bondholders must bear losses first. This protects taxpayers, but in the event of a systemic crisis, government intervention may be necessary.
- Government intervention: Italy or the EU could be forced to stabilise UniCredit, as with Monte dei Paschi, at a cost to taxpayers.
- Economic Ripple Effects: A weak UniCredit could hurt the Italian economy, leading to indirect costs through government spending on economic support.
The risk of taxpayers footing the bill in the event of failure is real, especially given UniCredit’s systemic importance.
UniCredit is also still in Russia and had €7.8 billion in Russian assets at the end of 2021 (4% of its balance sheet). Including subsidiary UniCredit Bank Russia (top-15 bank there).
In 2022, sales attempts failed due to sanctions and in 2023 €3.5 billion had to be written off. Investors want to write off even more (€2-3 billion extra?), but CEO Andrea Orcel is sticking to residual value. In 2024, the Kremlin demanded a 50% “exit tax” and a departure deal with VTB bank fell through. So there are still 1,900 employees in Russia (forced to) work. UniCredit is technically still profitable (€200 million in 2024), but is not allowed to repatriate money due to capital controls/sanctions.
Valley National Bank
The bank was on the verge of collapse for some time, just like the New York Community Bank. To overcome this crisis, VNB took a number of measures:
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The bank decided to focus on its core activities and cut costs, which meant divesting or downsizing less profitable or risky parts.
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VNB raised additional funds through a private placement of shares. This means that they sold shares to undisclosed investors .
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To make more cash available and clean up the balance sheet, VNB sold non-essential assets.
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Personal and business banking services
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Loans
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Mortgages
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Asset management
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Slow response times
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Account management issues
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Improving Online Banking Services : Introducing Valley Direct , an online savings account with a high interest rate of 3.75% APY .
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Expansion : New branches and upgrades of existing services in the regions where the bank operates.
Veneto Bank
The European Central Bank had lost confidence in the bank because the plans the bank itself had written were not credible and were being liquidated.
People’s Bank
SNS Bank NV will call itself Volksbank NV from 2017. All brands retained their own course and market position. The new logo was unveiled by Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem on 27 September 2016. The name certainly fits in with SNS’s ambition to become a Nutsbank .
The bank can expect a fine from De Nederlandsche Bank because they did not do enough to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. As a government bank managed by NLFI, receiving such an instruction is a certificate of incompetence for the directors. Martijn Gribnau was the responsible chairman of the board and he can leave again in April 2024.
He was still in his first term and will step down before the second term has started. In August 2023, it became known that Volksbank was not doing enough to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) also announced at the time that it wanted to impose a fine if there was no improvement. It is not yet clear how high that fine will be. The supervisor has given Volksbank until April 1 to improve its procedures. Jeroen Dijst, who is ultimately responsible for risk policy, will also leave in April, after eight years.
The ECB has ordered De Volksbank to pay a fine of 4.5 million euros for having underestimated the risks surrounding certain loans for years. These are risks surrounding loans to certain Swiss cantons and regional banks in the Alpine country. De Volksbank underestimated these risks significantly between 2014 and 2021. The fine was announced in July. Analysing and assessing the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing is a necessary first step for banks to take measures to control these risks.
When analysing and assessing, a bank must take into account various risk factors, such as the type of service provided, but also risks arising from the customer base. The intensity of the risk assessment is tailored to the extent to which the risks are foreseeable, and also to the nature and size of the bank. This gives the bank the scope to take measures that are proportionate to the type of banking service provided.
DNB research has shown that the risk assessment of de Volksbank contains serious shortcomings, which means that de Volksbank has insufficient insight into its exposure to potential risks of money laundering and terrorist financing. For example, DNB research has shown that de Volksbank has insufficiently identified and assessed these risks. In addition, the risk assessment was not up to date.
Furthermore, it emerged that de Volksbank had failed to take sufficient account of various risk factors (such as the type of client, product, service, transaction and distribution channel and countries or geographical areas) when determining and assessing its risks. As a result, de Volksbank violated the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act (Wwft).
DNB issued an instruction to Volksbank for this purpose on 12 June 2023. An instruction is an enforcement measure with an order to the institution to follow a certain course of action within a set period, aimed at ending or undoing the violation. The course of action to Volksbank means that Volksbank must determine and assess its risks of money laundering and terrorist financing by 1 April 2024 at the latest.
In doing so, Volksbank must take into account the risk factors mentioned above. Volksbank must record and update the results of determining and assessing its risks. Volksbank must also report to DNB on the progress of following this policy.
Despite pretending to be a Volksbank, SNS earned billions with the savings interest trick and disadvantaged savers. ABN AMRO also closed the third quarter of 2023 with a profit of 759 million euros. The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) is investigating the deliberate low interest rate .
In September 2021, De Volksbank acquired valuation agency Fitrex. Rembrandt Mergers & Acquisitions assisted the sellers in realizing this transaction. Fitrex is an independent valuation agency that can arrange valuations centrally from a single point for both intermediaries (including mortgage providers) and private individuals. Fitrex has more than 350 valuers affiliated with it and can, in addition to valuations, also arrange building inspections and energy labels, as well as valuations for commercial real estate.
Outgoing Minister Sigrid Kaag (Finance) was supposed to make a decision on the possible sale of Volksbank this year, but that has now been postponed to the new minister who must reconsider this in 2024. The parent company of SNS, ASN Bank, RegioBank and BLG Wonen has now been in state hands for ten years via NLFI , the foundation that manages the interests in the various financial institutions on behalf of the Dutch State.
The obligations under the Wwft are aimed, among other things, at combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Banks act as gatekeepers in this. Only if banks identify the risks relevant to them and understand them well in terms of their nature and scope, can they effectively implement procedures and measures.
By having procedures in place regarding compliance with the Wwft and by means of prior and continuous monitoring of their clients, they make an important contribution to combating money laundering from crimes and the financing of terrorism. By the above-mentioned violation, Volksbank jeopardizes the objectives of the Wwft. (source DNB).
In May 2023, ASN Bank, RegioBank and SNS finished in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for the second year in a row in the survey of the most customer-friendly bank in the Netherlands. BLG Wonen continued to focus on expanding its distribution reach and services to independent financial advisors. And in the most recent survey by the Eerlijke Bankwijzer, de Volksbank scored the best, with a score of 9 out of 10 on seven ESG themes.
Net interest income rose sharply. In addition, the fee for Basic Banking introduced in 2022 contributed to a continued increase in income from commissions and management fees. Net profit rose sharply. In 2023, Volksbank made a profit of approximately 431 million euros. That is more than twice as much as the 191 million euros profit in 2022.
Wells Fargo (US)
The American bank Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees because they had created fake accounts in the name of customers. They were charged for credit cards and transactions they had never made. The bank was sentenced to 185 million dollars in fines on September 9, 2016. The responsible CEO refused to leave until politicians also asked him to and tried to shift the blame to the employees.
The resigned CEO John Stumpf (63) will receive a severance payment of 173.1 million dollars. This concerns his total package with securities, bonuses and pension agreements made. Wells Fargo, the second largest bank in the world by market value with a turnover of 86 billion dollars in 2015 and 265,000 employees at the beginning of this year, was fined 185 million dollars for this. Wells Fargo wants to try to recover part of the money with a claw back arrangement.
Western Alliance Bank (US)
Western Alliance Bank, in Phoenix, suffered heavy losses on May 2, 2023, falling about 14 percent at the close of the market. The bank ended the day at $31.45 per share and is on the verge of collapse. Western Alliance holds $11.4 billion in commercial real estate loans and $15 billion in residential mortgages. The bank is reportedly for sale and its problems resemble those of Pacwest, First Republic and Silicon Valley Bank. Here too, a relatively large amount of money is parked that is not insured under the U.S. guarantee scheme, whereby the bank has not adequately hedged itself against the now sharply rising interest rates in recent years.
Westpac US
The 52-year-old CEO of Australian bank Westpac, Brian Hartzer, resigned in November 2019 after the bank was found to be involved in a major money laundering scandal. According to the country’s financial investigation service, the bank, the second largest in Australia, has violated anti-money laundering regulations on a large scale. Westpac is accused of a total of 23 million violations. The bank is even said to have facilitated payments to producers of child pornography. In addition to a lot of political uproar, the issue has also led to a loss of the equivalent of 4.6 billion euros in market value. Hartzer is temporarily succeeded by CFO Peter King. In the meantime, Westpac is looking for a new CEO. In light of the money laundering case, chairman Lindsay Maxsted is also bringing forward his departure to the beginning of this year.
Wise
Fintech company Wise expects lower profit growth in the coming financial year than in the past year, but sees growth stabilizing in the medium term. The company, formerly known as TransferWise, is targeting underlying profit growth of 15 to 20 percent for the coming financial year, which ends on March 31 next year. The company performed above average in the past financial year, which is why it has now cut prices for the new financial year. Adjusted for this, underlying profit growth in the coming year would be 20 to 25 percent, compared to 31 percent last year. Interim CFO Kingsley Kemish is targeting medium-term growth of 15 to 20 percent on average.
The underlying profit margin before tax will be between 13 and 16 percent. The company previously said it was targeting an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20 percent or more in the medium term. Last year this was 40.66 percent and the underlying profit margin before tax was 21 percent. Revenue rose from £846 million to £1.05 billion last year and profit before tax rose by 229 percent to £481 million. The number of customers rose by 29 percent to 12.8 million.
X Money
Elon Musk lets Visa organize new payment options on X. Visa is the first partner for ‘X Money’, as the payment service will be called. Users of X will soon be able to upload their money to a digital wallet via Visa. Visa will link the payment cards of customers so that they can transfer money to each other via a peer-to-peer payment system.
It should also be possible to transfer money via X Money to ’traditional’ bank accounts. X is competing with other payment services such as PayPal’s Venmo and Apple Wallet. Subsidiary X Payments has been working on regulatory approval for payments via the platform for some time. According to Musk, the company has already obtained this approval in 41 American states.
Yapi Kredi Bank Netherlands
Zhongi Enterprise Group
Zhongzhi Enterprise Group has gone bankrupt. The Chinese bank lent billions to real estate companies and could no longer pay its $64.3 billion debt. The collapse of Zhongzhi Bank is one of the largest bankruptcies in China’s history and comes on top of a real estate crisis, weak domestic demand and sluggish trade.
Between 2004 and 2014, more than two thousand companies paid Petrobras some 800 million in bribes. More than thirty Swiss banks are involved in laundering the bribes, using more than three hundred accounts. In total, it amounts to four billion dollars. State-owned Petrobras , the driving force of the Brazilian economy with a production of 2.5 million barrels of oil per day and 87,000 employees, paid the Brazilian Workers’ Party some 200 million dollars for campaigning.
Profits out of proportion
European banks have made €25 billion in profits in tax havens in recent years – an amount that does not correspond to their real economic activities in those countries. Research by the European Central Bank (ECB) shows that large banks such as HSBC, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank in particular use complex structures to minimise taxes. The t in 3 tax havens are Luxembourg, Ireland and Malta.
ING and ABN Amro have subsidiaries in low-tax countries but claim to be “fully compliant”. The Commission is considering punitive tariffs for banks that engage in “unnatural” profit shifting.
Since the ECB introduced stricter capital requirements, banks have shed €1.95 trillion (4% of all European bank assets) of bad loans. Italy and Spain remain vulnerable, with €600 billion of non-performing loans (NPLs).
Dutch banks saw their problem loans increase by €55 billion compared to five years ago.
Debt issuance reached a record high of €1,793 billion, of which more than half consists of problem loans (>90 days past due).
Banks are packaging bad loans into bonds (“securitization”) to get them off their balance sheets.
If the economy slows down, these “bad banks” can become unstable. On the one hand, banks benefit from tax optimization in havens.
On the other hand, they are struggling with a growing mountain of problem loans, which makes the financial system vulnerable.
The ECB wants banks to become less dependent on debt instruments and to build up more buffers. Higher interest rates and economic uncertainty could lead to a new wave of defaults in the coming years – especially in southern Europe.
Bad Loans
At the end of 2014, the six largest European banks collectively had more than €44 billion in bad loans. This problem has not been resolved since then. The level of non-performing loans (NPLs) remains a serious concern within the EU banking sector. Italian banks in particular, such as UniCredit and Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, have historically struggled with hundreds of billions of euros in bad loans.
According to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Financial Stability Review of May 2025, NPLs remain a concern despite efforts to reduce them. Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena announced a rescue plan to raise capital and dispose of NPLs after the 2016 stress test, but the recovery process has been slow.
For UniCredit and other major banks, reports point to improvements, but vulnerabilities remain, particularly in economically weaker regions. The 2014 stress test conducted by the European Banking Authority (EBA) showed that several banks struggled to maintain their capital buffers under adverse macroeconomic scenarios. The 2016 test confirmed these concerns, with banks including Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Raiffeisen-Landesbanken, Banco Popular Español, UniCredit, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Allied Irish Banks reporting weak results.
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena performed worst with a negative Core Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio in the adverse scenario, while UniCredit achieved a CET1 ratio of 7.1% – still on the low side.
The latest EU-wide stress test was launched by the EBA in January 2025, but the results have not yet been published. This test covers 64 banks, representing 75% of total banking assets in the EU and Norway, and simulates severe economic shocks, such as geopolitical tensions and a recession. The results will provide a crucial indication of the current capital coverage and resilience of these banks.
Despite previous problems, the EBA reported that the 70 largest EU banks met stress test requirements in 2014. This suggests that the sector as a whole has achieved some stability, although individual banks remain exposed to risks. The stress tests measure the impact of hypothetical economic conditions on banks’ balance sheets, in particular on the CET1 ratio, which reflects core capital strength.
TLTRO OperationsEuropean banks have been using the ECB’s Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO) to access cheap long-term funding. In an earlier round, banks took out €233.5 billion. The ECB has continued these operations to safeguard liquidity and stimulate lending. ECB reports confirm that this tool is still being actively deployed. The exact size of recent withdrawals will depend on ECB announcements after July 2025.
The European banking sector has been strengthened since 2014 by reforms following the 2008 financial crisis. In 2023, EU leaders and the ECB stressed that banks are well capitalised and liquid. However, according to the ECB’s Financial Stability Review of May 2025, rising operating costs – due to wage increases and investments in IT and cybersecurity – weigh on profitability. In addition, geopolitical tensions, trade frictions and the transition to sustainable finance pose additional risks. The sector thus continues to show a mixed picture: there is progress, but banks with high NPLs and weak capital positions, such as some Italian institutions, remain vulnerable.
The WEKO investigation into banks and price agreements (spreads) in the precious metals trade is now focusing on the Swiss UBS, Julius Bär, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Mitsui. At UBS, six employees who were directly responsible have already been suspended for one to five years. UBS saw its results fall by 64 percent due to all the troubles, from almost 2 billion Swiss francs a year ago to 707 million francs (more than 642 million euros). Banks are still stubbornly refusing to voluntarily cooperate in a further increase of the capital buffers.
After the crisis, the buffers were increased to 4 percent under pressure from supervisors and politicians, but in fact this should be 10 percent, consisting of 5 percent real equity and 5 percent bonds that are converted into shares in the event of financial difficulties.
There are billions in losses at Deutsche Bank and Italian banks and a growing number of defaulted loans. Things aren’t much better in Greece and Portugal. The world’s ten largest banking institutions were fined some €134 billion by regulators between 2009 and 2015 for misleading and failing to communicate with customers.
Fintech
The Fintech market is now taking away more than €1 billion in loans from banks. Fintechs are gaining momentum among consumers. According to a recent McKinsey study, about 73 percent of the world’s interactions with banks now take place via digital channels. They are expanding access to the banking landscape, moving away from the archaic fee structures of traditional banks and creating financial services that are transparent, fair and supportive of the average American.
As fintech reshapes the financial services landscape, they are an example of how banking can be reshaped to truly benefit those it serves. More and more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are turning to fintech, totaling €5.1 billion last year, up 27 percent from 2022. SMEs are also taking out relatively higher loans, with over €11 billion in financing provided in 2023.
That is 1.2 percent more than a year earlier. Of all loans up to an amount of 1 million euros, 64 percent were provided by banks, a decrease from 71 percent in 2022. Fintech is increasingly used for financing up to 1 million euros. The share of non-bank loans under 1 million euros rose from 29 percent in 2022 to 36 percent in 2023. Loans from alternative lenders up to an amount of 250,000 euros in particular are gaining popularity among SMEs.
The state banks also have to contribute tens of millions of euros annually to the construction of the European resolution fund with which the southern European banks are to be saved. Indirectly , the taxpayer still pays for the banks that fail . In addition, the banks have to pay hundreds of millions in Dutch bank tax.
According to two reports by Milieudefensie, ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank are structurally involved in abuses in the palm oil sector, such as land grabbing, human rights violations and the deforestation of rainforest, and are said to have invested at least 4.9 billion euros between 2010 and 2018 in fourteen palm oil companies that are involved in 118 abuses in nine countries.
This year, ABN AMRO bought 10.8 million euros worth of shares in the company POSCO. The parent company of this company owns 85 percent of another company that is responsible for the logging of rainforest in Papua New Guinea. Between 2012 and 2017, that company was involved in the logging of more than 27,000 hectares of rainforest in the country. Rabobank and ABN AMRO also have ties with the palm oil company GAR in Liberia.
In recent years, the banks have provided hundreds of millions of euros in loans to GAR subsidiaries, who in turn cut down large areas of rainforest. ING is also mentioned in the report. For example, the bank lent to a company that intimidated the local population of West Sumatra and drove them off their land. ABN AMRO states that alternatives to palm oil are often even more harmful and that a boycott is therefore not realistic.
iDEAL
iDEAL BV has reached an agreement with European Payments Initiative (EPI) whereby EPI will acquire the Dutch online payment method. EPI announced the acquisition on 25 April 2023 as a first step in the development of a European digital payment solution as an alternative to existing, often non-European, payment solutions. At the same time, EPI reached an agreement to acquire payment technology provider Payconiq International (PQI). Rabobank , ABN AMRO and Belfius will join as shareholders of EPI. iDeal is to become the basis of a European payment system and a new digital wallet. These will be called Wero and will also gradually replace iDeal from the end of June 2024.
EPI is also buying the Luxembourg payment company Payconiq International (PQI). It has now also received permission for this takeover. The amount paid for the takeovers has not been disclosed. EPI wants to develop a single uniform payment standard for Europe. The plan is to start in Belgium, France and Germany, followed by the Netherlands. Together, these countries account for more than half of all non-cash payments in the eurozone. Later, EPI also wants to become active in other European countries. The new payment platform can form a European alternative to the payment solutions of parties such as Apple, Google, PayPal and credit card companies.
EPI is also coming with a digital wallet, which will also be called Wero . EPI also wants to enable different types of transactions, including subscriptions, payment in installments, reservations and payment on delivery. iDeal was previously owned by the three major Dutch banks ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank, who had placed the payment method with Currence.