The CEO of banking group Van Lanschot has become the first Dutch banker to apologise in public for the role banks played in the current economic crisis.

‘With the extent of the problems in the banking sector, and from someone who wants to be a decent banker for the rest of his working life, apologies are in order. I hereby offer them,’ Floris Deckers said in an article in the NRC on Monday.
Van Lanschot has not been specifically affected by the crisis because it did not invest in risky products like many US and British banks, he said. But he now realises his responsibility as an experienced bank executive goes beyond his own company.
‘I have had serious concerns over some common practices [in banking] over the past years,’ the paper quoted him as saying.