By Heleen Mees
The fourth largest bank in the Netherlands, SNS Reaal NV, finds itself in trouble. The banking and insurance group, with €134bn worth of assets on its balance sheet as of the end of June 2012, has suffered €2.3bn in losses on its foreign – mostly Spanish – property investments. SNS Reaal’s capital reserves have fallen below levels allowed under international banking rules, while it still owes the Dutch treasury €750m from a government bailout it received in 2008.
SNS Reaal has been designated a systematically important financial institution, and therefore deemed not allowed to fail, by the Dutch government, mostly because the Dutch financial sector is already overly concentrated. That is also the reason why the European Commission in January apparently thwarted a rescue plan in which Rabobank, ING and ABN Amro would buy SNS Reaal. Read more