ING beckons to Italian bank

Good morning! For years, Dutch banks were relatively cautious when it comes to the acquisitions of European banks, now it seems to be changing. ABN AMRO said earlier that he was looking abroad, now ING is considering making an offer on the Italian Banca Popolare di Sondrio. The Dutch Bank would have appointed legal and financial advisers for this, reports the Italian newspaper La Stampa. Carlo Cimbri, chairman of a large investor in Banca Popolare, said on Friday during a press conference that a potential bidder had the color « of the tie of a journalist ». It was orange, the house color of ING. Last month it was announced that the Italian competitor Bper made a bid of 4.3 billion euros. That was considered too low and was also entirely in shares. ING refused to respond to the Bloomberg news agency.

This keeps us busy this morning:

• Last weekend was mainly about the news about the earthquake in Myanmar. Minister of Defense Ruben Brekelmans (VVD) and his State Secretary Gijs Tuinman (BBB) ​​also visited KYIV last weekend. There they announced where part of the promised 3.5 billion euros for help to Ukraine is going. The Netherlands spends 500 million euros on the development and purchase of drones for that country. The flying machines are important, among other things, for switching off Russian weaponry that is fired on Ukraine. It is not yet known where the drones will come from. Earlier this month, the Ministry and VDL announced that they would use the factory of the former Nedcar in Born in Limburg for the defense industry, but what will be made there, they kept secret.

• The world is awaiting what Donald Trump will announce this Wednesday, a day that the American president has renamed ‘Liberation Day’. When he took office, he ordered the Ministries of Finance and Van Handel to investigate which activities of other countries are detrimental to the US. The deadline for that is Tuesday 1 April and the next day Trump says he wants to introduce ‘reciprocal levies’. Last night he once again emphasized that they were going to have introduced import duties on American products for all countries. It is once again feeding the fear that there is a global trade war. Do you want to know what is waiting for on Wednesday? Reading this piece from colleagues Egbert Kalse and Daan van Lent.

• The words immediately had an effect: the Asian stock exchanges started poorly this week. The Japanese degree meter, the Nikkei-225, lost almost 4 percent. Also the futuresFinancial products with which investors can ‘gamble’ at the opening of a stock market, are in red for the American Index S&P 500 and the European Eurostoxx 50 in red. So also expect a red opening of the Amsterdam AEX this morning. Last week the American stock exchanges already ended in red after a sudden announcement of Trump of 25 percent levies on all cars and car parts that are not produced in the US. Asian automakers is hard on that decision.

• Is there any music in it? It will not many Dutch people say something, but a name known among music lovers is over falling: Bax Music. The Zeeland company is one of the largest online suppliers of musical instruments and has six physical branches – including in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The company behind the web shops applied for a postponement of payment on Friday, usually the porch of a bankruptcy. As a result, the stores remained closed on Saturday. At Bax Music, which has been struggling with financial problems for some time, about three hundred people work.