In just five years, Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten (BNG) has reinvented itself as an issuer. Its funding programme has doubled in size and its investor base, once almost exclusively retail, is now mostly institutional. These phenomena are closely connected.
BNG was set up around the start of the First World War by Dutch municipalities to handle their funding in the capital markets. It is still a public sector creature, 50% owned by the Dutch government and 50% by local authorities, provinces and a water board. Its clients come from the public sector – municipalities, housing and healthcare institutions, public utilities and the like, for whom it provides loans, banking, consultancy and investment services. It is a AAA borrower and second-largest in the Netherlands after the state.
