The VSB fund – one of the country’s biggest corporate charitable foundations – has €26m to spend this year, less than half of the €60m it spent on the arts, nature, sport and education in 2008.

Total donations to the arts and culture will be slashed from €31m to €16m and 33 of the fund’s 68 staff will lose their jobs.
Spending on nature and the environment and sports projects will stop altogether, the fund said in a statement.
The VSB fund has seen its assets shrink from €2.5bn at the end of 2006 to €900m, according to the Volkskrant. The fund has some 50 million shares in financial services group Fortis, the paper says.