Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Dutch competition authority rounds up investigation of Currence

See their press release (in Dutch) to discover that:
* former commissioner Jorritsma and former director van der Veer of Currence had complained about too much bank involvement with Currence, the scheme-owner of collective Dutch bank products such as PIN, e-purse (Chipknip), acceptgiro, direct debit and Ideal.
* the competition authority did not find anything suspicious but was pleased to note that there no more bankers in the board of commissioners of Currence.

So isn't it about time that we slowly let go of the general reservations and preconceptions with respect to anti-competitive behaviour of banks? The Dutch competition authority has done quite some work on this in the last years and only found reason in 2005 to fine the banks for their behaviour until 2002, but not afterwards.