ECB's Asset-backed bond project is boycotted by Dutch banks (Bloomberg)

A Dutch financial services group said its members are boycotting a European Central Bank project to improve transparency in the 1.9 trillion-euro ($2.4 trillion) asset-backed securities market. Robin Fransman, a director at the Holland Financial Centre in Amsterdam, said a commercial company shouldn’t have been chosen to run the initiative. Dutch banks are the euro region’s biggest sellers of asset-backed securities, according to data compiled by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The European DataWarehouse, tasked by the ECB to collect details of underlying loans in ABS used as collateral for central bank funding, started selling shares in January to finance the project. The Dutch are in a stronger position than other lenders in other euro-region countries because they’re less reliant on collateralized central bank loans.  “We don’t understand why a commercial company has been set up for this purpose, the Dutch sector prefers a non-profit organization or an industry-run foundation to run the project,” Fransman said.