Two Dutch startups, Tykn and LoCoMoGo, have declared bankruptcy this month, Silicon Canals reported. Tykn, The Hague-headquartered blockchain-based digital identity management platform, was declared bankrupt by the court in The Hague on July 14. That same day, Locomogo Holding BV, under the name Kipkemoi Enterprise BV in Amsterdam (Noord-Holland), was declared bankrupt by the court in Overijssel. Bankruptcy filings are expected to rise in 2022 as governments withdraw measures adopted to help companies stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, reports trade credit insurer Euler Hermes.
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SAS and pilots unions reached a wage deal on Monday, ending a strike over a new collective bargaining agreement that has grounded hundreds of flights and thrown the airline's future into doubt, Reuters reported. A majority of SAS pilots in Sweden, Denmark and Norway walked out on July 4, triggering a strike that SAS has said cost it between $94 million and $123 million a day. "What I'm hearing from the negotiation room is that we have a deal," a spokesperson for Dansk Metal, one of the unions representing SAS pilots, told Reuters, adding the agreement was not yet finalised.
A Dutch court ruled that Microsoft Corp. must allow bankruptcy trustees appointed to the Russia-linked Amsterdam Trade Bank to access to its data or face fines, Bloomberg News reported. The technology giant risks daily fines of 10 million euros ($10.5 million), with a maximum penalty of 100 million euros, if it doesn’t comply with the ruling, court-appointed trustee Job van Hooff said by phone late Tuesday. ATB, a lender linked to Russia’s Alfa Group, was declared bankrupt last month in the Netherlands after U.S. and U.K. sanctions paralyzed its payment systems.
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Amsterdam's Schiphol airport has asked airlines to cancel flights over the weekend to avoid chaos due to overcrowding at Europe's third busiest airport, it said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The airport said that it had taken the action due to staff shortages. An unannounced strike among baggage handlers aggravated major delays and cancellations at the airport on April 23.
Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB), a subsidiary of Russia's Alfa Bank, has been declared bankrupt, the Dutch central bank (DNB) said on Friday, citing an Amsterdam District Court Ruling, Reuters reported. A statement on the DNB website said ATB depositors would be covered up to 100,000 euros ($108,000) each under the Netherlands' deposit guarantee system. The bank had around 23,000 customers, of whom most are Dutch but 6,000 are German, the DNB said.
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The Netherlands’ data protection watchdog imposed a record 3.7 million euro ($4 million) fine Tuesday on the country’s tax office for unlawfully processing and storing personal information in a “black list” used to detect fraud, the Associated Press reported. Data Protection Authority’s Chairman Aleid Wolfsen said that the government’s Taxation Service “violated the rights of the 270,000 people on that list in an unprecedented way.” “For over 6 years, people were often wrongly labeled as fraudsters, with dire consequences,” said Wolfsen.
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The Dutch government announced Tuesday that it will scrap virtually all its remaining coronavirus restrictions by the end of the month as infection rates begin to decline and pressure on health care services eases, the Associated Press reported. “The country is opening up again,” Health Minister Ernst Kuipers said. The Dutch are following neighboring Belgium and other European nations in easing restrictions as the continent increasingly looks for ways of co-existing with the virus without the economic and social damage wreaked by lockdown measures.
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Prime Minister Mark Rutte further eased the Netherlands’ coronavirus lockdown, allowing bars, restaurants, museums, theaters and other venues to reopen from Wednesday for the first time this year, the Associated Press reported. But Rutte warned that the move wasn’t without risks. “We are taking a big step today to unlock the Netherlands while the infections numbers are really going through the roof,” Rutte said Tuesday.
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According to Statistics Netherlands, 1,536 companies were declared bankrupt in 2021, the NL Times reported. That number was only slightly lower in 1990 at 1,527. The stats office has been keeping track of this data since 1981. The number of bankruptcies fell in almost all sectors of industry. Most bankruptcies happened in trade, but that is also the sector with the most companies. The number of bankruptcies in the catering industry more than halved last year compared to a year earlier.
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The Netherlands will go into a strict lockdown over the Christmas and New Year period to try to contain the highly- contagious Omicron coronavirus variant, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Saturday, Reuters reported. All non-essential shops and services, including restaurants, hairdressers, museums and gyms will be closed from Sunday until Jan. 14. All schools will be shut until at least Jan. 9. "The Netherlands is again shutting down. That is unavoidable because of the fifth wave that is coming at us with the Omicron variant," Rutte told a televised news conference.
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