Things are not looking good for the Dutch economy. The Dutch statistics agency on Thursday said the euro zone’s fifth-largest economy contracted 1.1% in the third quarter. It was one of the European Union’s worst third-quarter GDP outcomes and much worse than the flat growth for the quarter that the European Commission forecast just last week, The Wall Street Journal Brussels Beat blog reported. Were there any bright spots? No. Consumption fell 1.8% compared to the quarter a year ago. Investment was down a whopping 6.4%. Export growth slowed substantially.

Banks in the Netherlands are suffering rising losses on their domestic real-estate loan books, and warn that the pain isn't over as the industry struggles with structural overcapacity and a weak economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Financial services company SNS Reaal NV on Thursday said nonperforming loans in its Dutch property loan book rose 38% to €1.33 billion ($1.63 billion) in the first half, representing 42% of its total outstanding loans.

A far-left-wing party is emerging as a front-runner in next month's elections in the Netherlands, as it benefits from growing voter resentment toward the German-led austerity drive and euro-zone bailouts, The Wall Street Journal reported. A win by the anti-austerity Socialist Party could threaten to unravel a cost-cutting plan agreed under the current government in April, and also could derail stringent budget targets for 2013 set by the European Commission and fiercely advocated by Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Spyker NV, the owner of Swedish car maker Saab Automobile AB before its financial collapse late last year, Monday said it has filed a $3 billion lawsuit against General Motors Co. claiming the U.S. car giant drove the Swedish company into bankruptcy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Spyker filed the claim in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan. Saab Automobile declared itself bankrupt last December, ending a long struggle for survival by the auto maker after attempts by Spyker to revive and then sell the company failed.

Spyker NV, the owner of Swedish car maker Saab Automobile AB before its financial collapse late last year, Monday said it has filed a $3 billion lawsuit against General Motors Co. claiming the U.S. car giant drove the Swedish company into bankruptcy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Spyker filed the claim in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan. Saab Automobile declared itself bankrupt last December, ending a long struggle for survival by the auto maker after attempts by Spyker to revive and then sell the company failed.

Air France-KLM said Monday its net loss ballooned to nearly €900 million ($1.1 billion) in the second quarter after it took a hefty charge to pay for restructuring that will see it shed about 10 percent of the airline's workforce, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on an Associated Press story. The Franco-Dutch airline operator said its net loss grew to €895 million in the three months to June 30, compared to a loss of €197 million a year earlier.

A Dutch sludge-processing firm said it was in talks with Deutsche Bank and others about a 270 million euro ($331 million) derivatives deal, in which it effectively guaranteed loans the German bank made to other firms. Slibverwerking Noord-Brabant (SNB), owned by Dutch public water management bodies, is now sitting on a loss on the deal which it agreed in 2007, before the global credit crisis. SNB is talking to Deutsche Bank, its shareholders and other stakeholders about changing the terms of the loan guarantees, Chief Financial Officer Silvester Bombeeck told Reuters.

Finland and the Netherlands, the euro zone's most hardline creditor states, cast the first doubts on Monday on a European summit deal designed to save Spain and Italy from being engulfed by the currency bloc's debt crisis, Reuters reported. The Finnish government told parliament that Helsinki and its Dutch allies would block the euro zone's permanent bailout fund buying bonds in secondary markets. Euro zone leaders agreed last Friday that rescue funds could be used in a "flexible and efficient manner" to lower government borrowing costs. Their statement gave no further detail.

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, fuel distribution firm Greenergy and storage company Vopak are putting together a joint bid to buy the Coryton refinery as a storage terminal, a union official said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The union said it would fight the move, which would put the vast majority of the 900 workforce out of a job, and will step up protests to encourage the government to support a bid to keep it operational. "We're hearing it's a tripartate agreement," said Russ Ball, regional representative for Unite the Union.

Parts of bankrupt Dutch aluminium producer ZALCO will be bought by a Dutch and a U.S. company, which will continue casting and anode production but smelting operations will cease, the Dutch buyer and an administrator said on Monday, Reuters reported. ZALCO, which had a production capacity of 275,000 tonnes per year of aluminium, filed for bankruptcy in mid-December. Its plant at the port of Vlissingen in the southwest of the Netherlands, which employed 600 people, was shut a few days later due to a lack of funds to pay energy suppliers.