A modest 10-floor office block on the eastern edge of Amsterdam houses the headquarters of Energyco, Agro Trade International, Banzai Venture Investments and about 2000 other companies. Fully 1942 of those companies list their address as Postbox 990, which one might think would be stuffed with letters. But just one company is responsible for all of them – Intertrust, a trust firm that creates and manages subsidiaries for multinationals, even if some of them have little or no real business activities in the Netherlands.

The Dutch government is taking a more relaxed approach toward austerity and delaying changes in jobless benefits in a bid to restore consumer confidence, revive the economy and make it easier to meet European Union budget targets next year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move is the latest sign that the Netherlands, one of the more fiscally hawkish members in the euro zone and a steadfast ally of Germany, is softening its hard-line stance as it grapples with its own economic woes.

More Dutch companies declared bankruptcy in February than at any time since records began in 1981, the Associated Press reported. The country's Central Bureau for Statistics also says Monday that on a three-month average, bankruptcies are at their highest level on record: around 680 per month, not counting one-person businesses. The Dutch economy is struggling as the government cuts spending and increases taxes to meet European budget rules that require countries to get their budget deficits down to 3 percent of their annual gross domestic product.

At the Netherlands’ highest civil court, lawyers clamoured to block the government’s move to wipe out stakes of shareholders and bondholders when it nationalised lender SNS Reaal earlier this month, the Financial Times reported. Investors at the hearing denounced Jeroen Dijsselbloem, finance minister, for exceeding his authority; one went so far as to accuse him of fraud.

Announcing a €3.7bn bailout of mortgage lender SNS Reaal, Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said in a statement he had “looked at every alternative involving private parties”, but found none that could guarantee the stability of the Dutch banking system, the Financial Times reported. An earlier plan to have ING and ABN Amro, two other bailed-out institutions, rescue SNS had been blocked by the European Commission on state-aid grounds. Under the terms of SNS’s rescue, shareholders and subordinated debt holders will see their stakes wiped out.

Investors in 262 billion euros ($347 billion) of Dutch residential mortgage-backed securities risk being penalized by new bank liquidity rules, even as the securities prove among the safest home-loan bonds globally, Bloomberg reported. The notes won’t be categorized as liquid assets under regulations approved last week by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision because the underlying mortgages have an average loan-to-value ratio of 95 percent, a quirk of the Dutch housing finance system, where borrowers take on more debt because they can use tax deductions in place since the 19th century.

The first ever meeting of The Netherlands' Financial Stability Committee, set up by the government in November last year, has focused on ways of stabilising funding sources for mortgage lending, CentralBanking.com reported. A report from the meeting, published Tuesday, said high mortgage indebtedness was causing banks to rely heavily on market funding, which made banks vulnerable and reduced investment in Dutch banks' mortgage portfolios. This was being passed on to consumers in reduced mortgage lending.

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.