Sander Duivenstein and Patrick Savalle enlighten us about their opinion on the new digital currency, the Bitcoin. By no means this currency is play money. It rather denotes the end of the monopoly of governments and central banks on monetary transactions.

Maartje and Mark traveled to Utrecht to speak with the CIO of SNS Asset Management, drs. Erik-Jan van Bergen. In addition to interesting questions on Asset Management by SNS, they also spent attention to the nationalization of the bank and what actually happened with the infamous Property Finance portfolio.

Two editors of Faces magazine travelled to the Essent Headquarters in Den Bosch to interview the Chief Financial Officer of the utility. His name is Arjan Blok, holds a Master’s degree and a post-Master’s degree in Accountancy. We asked him about his view on the energy market, the changes in legislation, and how he experiences running an utility company.

Drs. Machiel Jansen Schoonhoven, managing director at NIBC, outlines alternative ways of financing. NIBC focuses mainly on mid-cap companies with an enterprise value of around five hundred million to one billion Euros. The company emphasizes on lending money to these companies in the long run in order to provide them with enough credit. These credits can often not be obtained from the regular banks. Eventually, NIBC hopes to play a crucial role in providing credit.

Asset | Accounting & Finance’s committee, which organizes the yearly iFinance event, summarizes the trending topics going on in the Netherlands concerning its future welfare state. Topics include the pension system, the health insurance policy, and the labor market. Because of the changing structure of society, The Netherlands will not be able to financially support the current systems. For example, the health care system is one of the most expensive in the world. Also, problems with greater outflows than inflows in the pension system cause major concerns