Mladic arrested

Former general and war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic has been arrested in Serbia. A procedure to deliver Mladic to the Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague has also been put in motion. The Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed that on an inserted press conference on Thursday afternoon. Half an hour earlier the Serbian state television had already confirmed the news. Mladic... Read More »

13-digit bank account number introduced

Anyone having problems remembering his bank account number, will face a nasty challenge from 2013. From that moment, bank account numbers won’t exist out of seven, eight, nine or ten numbers, but eighteen numbers and letters. By maintaining such uniform bank account numbers costs of international payment traffic would significantly drop in Europe. That shows the yearly report from Currence,... Read More »

ABN Amro cuts jobs

ABN AMRO expects to be able to scrap ‘hundreds of jobs a year’ by improving the efficiency and processes. CFO Jan van Rutte stated that this weekend. The majority of the job loss will be solved with attrition and expiring job contracts. ABN AMRO wants to bring down the costs of efficiency, by making it more effective. This should lead... Read More »

‘Successor’ Wellink resigns...

Lex Hoogduin, director at De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) and often mentioned as the successor of president Nout Wellink, resigns at the central bank. DNB stated that on saturday. ‘Hoogduin has decided tot leave DNB by the first of July, because of personal and his own business reasons’ pronounced DNB on their own website. Stakeholders expected that Hoogduin would success Wellink.... Read More »

Volcanic ash keeps planes on the ground

Four airline companies have cancelled their flights to the north of the UK due to the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that is passing by there. Some departing and arriving flights at Schiphol have been cancelled as well. KLM was the first airline that it wouldn’t execute line flights to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh en Newcastle. EasyJet, Aer Lingus, British Airways... Read More »

Number of shopping sundays up to the...

If the number of Shopping Sundays is increased, 55 percent of the en­trepreneurs want to keep the opening hours at the same level. That is the outcome of an investigation by CBW-Mitex amongst 800 entrepreneurs in the residential, fashion and sports bran­ches. Ninety percent of the small and medium-sized enterprises,... Read More »

Bank bonuses held up against the light

Standards the Dutch govern­ment sets for the remunerati­on policy of banks are getting stricter. Where only banks who received big injections of state capital were taken into ac­count before, now bonuses of banks that get small amounts of state aid are also held up against the light. The trouble with bonuses started at ING in March. When the board... Read More »

Dutch optimistic again

For the first time in three years optimism is growing in the Netherlands, says the Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (SCP). Every three months, the organi­sation gauges the state of mind of about a thousand people with questions like ‘do you think the Nether­lands is moving in the right direction?’ Up to now, 25 percent or less answered that question... Read More »

Saab not safe (yet)

The production of Saab cars has halted again. The Swed­ish manufacturer, daughter of Dutch Spyker Cars, is encoun­tering problems in the supply department. It is said that the situation is the result of un­paid bills, worth tens of mil­lions of Euros. Negotiations with the respective suppliers have started. A spokesman of Saab says that the company is doing its... Read More »