Last week was awfully hectic, as I'm preparing for this Thursday's event. Now that most of the thinking and writing is done, here's some catching up on my part.
1. In the coming three weeks, an investigative committee composed of politicians - the Committee De Wit - that is diving into the reasons why the financial crisis emerged the way it did and what should be done to prevent such a crisis from happening again, will begin with sessions in which persons will be heard re the credit crunch. These are not witness hearings taken under oath, in view of the powers granted to the committee. If the committee does want to hear people under oath, it will have to have it's status changed to inquiry committee, which is a different species.
Some of the persons that will show up are ABN Amro CEO Gerrit Zalm, president of De Nederlandsche Bank Nout Wellink, GroenLinks politician Kees Vendrik and Rabobank director Bert Bruggink. One of the persons who will not show up - because he refuses to appear - is former Fortis director Maurice Lippens, who played a big role in the 2007 take-over battle re ABN Amro (in which Fortis was part of a consortium, together with RBS and Banco Santander). The Islandic financial watch-dog - Icesave anybody? - apparently also refuses to send representative to the hearings. The committee will present its findings this March.
The second part of the committee's activities covers the initiatives taken by the cabinet to tackle the crisis, especially the actions taken by the Minister of Finance, including the financial support given to ING and Aegon, the nationalisation of Fortis/ABN Amro and the whole Icesave breakdown. The committee wil present its findings of the second tranche late 2010.
As a starter, a nice retrospective on the financial crisis can be found here, starting in 1999 (the Interne Bubble), touching on the whole mortgage business and explaining the course of events in 2007 and 2008. More background footage is available in this video.
De Wit is part of the party that proposed recently (i) to add 'financial mismanagement' to the Dutch Criminal Code (apparently with a maximum prison penalty of six years) and (ii) to increase personal liability for bankers when their business judgments don't pan out. I'm very sceptical about these initiatives, as explained here. If only for this reason, the findings of the Committee De Wit will be of interest.
2. Last week the full text of the Bill on Private Company Law Reform was published, as sent to the First Chamber of parliament (the last step in the legislation process). Essential parts of the bill were discussed on TDT, e.g., here and here. In view of legislation technicalities, July 1 2010 as introduction date of this bill may be a bit on the optimistic side.
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