The expensive hobbies of DSB Bank’s owner and CEO Dirk Scheringa eventually led to the bank’s collapse, says its former financial director Frank de Grave in an interview in Thursday’s Volkskrant.

DSB Bank was declared bankrupt in October. The bank got into financial difficulties after a run on savings prompted by a campaign by angry customers who say they were over-sold mortgages and charged too-high fees on insurance policies.
‘My evaluation is that Scheringa wanted to [save the bank], but couldn’t. He couldn’t let go of his expensive hobbies such as football [he owned the Alkmaar club AZ], art [he had an extensive collection] and ice-skating [sponsorship]. Therefore the bank had to keep on making a big profit and as a result Scheringa couldn’t move away from businesses that were questionable,’ De Grave is quoted by the paper as saying.
De Grave, a former government minister, joined DSB bank in March. ‘Scheringa convinced me that his ambition was to make DSB the best consumer bank in the Netherlands. He’s either the best actor in the Netherlands, in which case he deserves to win seven Oscars, or he was sincere. I believe the latter,’ he is reported as saying.
De Grave left the bank after just eight weeks following a conflict with Scheringa.
In the Volkskrant interview, De Grave says he was not warned about the precarious situation at the DSB Bank by his predecessor, former finance minister and now head of ABN Amro bank, Gerrit Zalm.
Zalm’s role at the DSB, in particular whether he was involved in the sale of questionable financial products, is currently being investigated. ‘As far as I can see, Gerrit did not do anything wrong,’ says De Grave in the Volkskrant.