ING bosses co-wrote Dutch law granting banks €350 million in tax breaks

Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem of Finance wrote the Dutch law giving banks a tax deduction on coco's, a type of bond, largely based on advice from ING. This tax deduction has given the entire Dutch banking sector an advantage of 350 million euros per year. BNR reported this on Wednesday, based on information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (Open Government Act). ING CEO Ralph Hamers told the broadcaster that there is nothing strange or new about this. "What we have agreed with the Association of Dutch Banks, the NVB, is that we treat this type of dossier, one of the banks will take the lead. In this case it was ING. And we did.", he said. "Everyone is allowed to know about this. As far as I know, it (the law, ed) went through parliament as usual." On Wednesday morning ING presented a net profit of 1.06 billion euros for the third quarter, compared to 928 million euros in the same quarter last year. After adjustments for non-recurring items, profits came in at 1.09 billion euros.