The Dutch central bank did not do its best in the way it granted Dirk Scheringa’s independent bank DSB a licence, central bank president Nout Wellink admitted to MPs on Wednesday evening.

Wellink was being grilled about the official report into the collapse of DSB, which said the bank should never have been licensed, and heavily criticised the central bank’s role.
‘Yes, it could have been done better,’ Wellink was quoted as saying in the Volkskrant. The central bank should not have ‘just’ given a banking licence to DSB he said. ‘Not considering what we knew then and not with what we know now.’
He also admitted that the central bank had been slow to get tough on DSB once problems began to emerge. But he defended his staff for doing what could ‘reasonably’ be expected of them.
And, he said it was doubtful that they would have been able to refuse the licence anyway, Trouw reported.
Improvements
Caretaker finance minister Kees Jan de Jager has told Wellink the bank needs to come up with a plan to drastically improve its operations within one month. Wellink told MPs he was the right person to carry out that process.
‘When I came, the central bank was in the Middle Ages,’ Wellink said. ‘The bank is now more open and more transparent. I am the embodiment of that change.’
MPs will debate the report on Thursday.
Socialist and GroenLinks MPs have already said Wellink should resign. The DSB is the latest in a string of financial scandals in which the central bank has come in for criticism.