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Journal of Behavioral

Public Administration
Vol 1(1), pp. 1-10
DOI: 10.30636/jbpa.11.16
Breaking bad news without breaking trust:
The effects of a press release and newspaper
coverage on perceived trustworthiness
Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen*, Femke de Vries†, Wilte Zijlstra‡

Abstract: Can a government agency mitigate the negative effect of “bad news” on public trust? To answer this
question, we carried out a baseline survey to measure public trust five days before a major press release in-
volving bad news about an error committed by an independent regulatory agency in the Netherlands. Two
days after the agency’s press release, we carried out a survey experiment to test the effects on public trust of
the press release itself as well as related newspaper articles. Results show that the press release had no nega-
tive effect on trustworthiness, which may be because the press release “steals thunder” (i.e. breaks the bad
news before the news media discovered it) and focuses on a “rebuilding strategy” (i.e. offering apologies and
focusing on future improvements). In contrast, the news articles mainly focused on what went wrong, which
affected the competence dimension of trust but not the other dimensions (benevolence and integrity). We con-
clude that strategic communication by an agency can break negative news to people without necessarily break-
ing trust in that agency. And although effects of negative news coverage on trustworthiness were observed,
the magnitude of these effects should not be overstated.

Keywords: Public trust, News media, Regulation, Strategic communication, Survey experiment

M any scholars in public administration and


communication acknowledge the im-
portance of communicating with the public to sus-
Slothuus & De Vreese, 2010) and how crisis com-
munication affects organizational reputations (e.g.
Coombs, 2007; Arpan & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005).
tain citizen trust and legitimacy (Fairbanks, Plow- But there is scarce empirical research directly inves-
man, & Rawlins, 2007; Liu, Horsley, & Blake, 2010; tigating the effect of press releases of public organ-
Liu, Horsley, & Yang, 2012; Ruijer, 2013). One core izations, and particularly independent regulatory agencies
idea behind proactive communication is that it can (IRAs), on citizen trust. Communication for public
be used to counterbalance negative media coverage organizations has some likening with private sector
(Graber, 2003; Liu et al., 2012). But are proactive communication, but there are fundamental differ-
forms of communication by public organizations ences related to unique government functions such
effective for this purpose? as informing the public and raising awareness (Pas-
There is an abundance of research on how quier, 2017). In addition, studies in crisis commu-
media coverage and framing of political issues af- nication have mostly investigated effects in a fairly
fect public opinion (e.g. Chong & Druckman, 2007; controlled setting (e.g. Arpan & Roskos-Ewoldsen,
2005; Coombs & Holladay, 2008; Claes, Cau-
* Utrecht University School of Governance, The berghe,& Vincke, 2010). In contrast, we take our
Netherlands; experiment into the field and study a real-world or-

Department of Constitutional, Administrative law ganization faced with the challenge of communi-
and Public Administration, University of Groningen, cating bad news to the public. Finally, empirical
The Netherlands; &samhoud consultancy; studies from public administration on the effects of
‡ Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), communication are scarce. Some studies have
The Netherlands found positive associations between proactive
Address correspondence to Stephan communication and citizen attitudes, but these
Grimmelikhuijsen at ([email protected]) studies did not rely on experimental data and thus
Copyright: © 2018. The authors license this article have limited causal validity (Liu et al., 2012; Hong,
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2016).
4.0 International License.
Updated with minor corrections on 5/21/2018

1
Grimmelikhuijsen, De Vries, & Zijlstra, 2018

To fill this gap, we carried out an experi- news to the public. Also, even though the newspa-
ment using a real press release and news media ar- per articles were highly critical of the error of the
ticles focusing on errors in supervision made by an AFM, their negative effect on trustworthiness was
independent regulatory agency. Why do we focus limited. These findings suggest that it is possible to
specifically on a mistake by an independent regulatory break bad news without necessarily breaking trust.
agency (IRA)? First, we think that errors, as opposed
to successes, have more influence on public per- The Potential Effects of Press Releases on
ceptions because media coverage tends to focus on Citizen Trust
what went wrong (Liu et al., 2010; Jacobs & Schil-
lemans, 2016) and negative information tends to As mentioned, in this study we investigate the ef-
have a stronger effect on judgments (e.g. Olsen, fects of a negative press release and related news-
2015). Secondly, this kind of communication is im- paper articles on public trust in a Dutch IRA. How
portant because it functions as an informal ac- might such a press release affect the perceived
countability mechanism. Jacobs and Schillemans trustworthiness of an IRA? Research in crisis com-
(2016) have found that public organizations, in an- munication has developed and tested various or-
ticipation of potential media scrutiny, exert “pre- ganizational responses to prevent reputational
emptive self-criticism,” meaning that agencies dis- damage as a result of crises (e.g. Coombs, 2007).
close failure themselves before it is revealed by the Two core elements in crisis communication that
media. Thirdly, we focus on an IRA because these have been found to prevent reputation loss are tim-
agencies face a somewhat less adversarial media en- ing and content of the message. First, self-disclos-
vironment than some other government institu- ing information about a crisis helps to “steal thun-
tions (Maggetti, 2012, p. 400; Van Erp, 2013; Glynn der”. By breaking the news about an internal crisis
& Huge, 2014; Puppis, Maggetti, Gilardi, Biela, & before it is discovered by others, an organization
Papadopoulos, 2014) and therefore citizens may be gains credibility and public trust (Claes & Cau-
more amenable to information coming from a rel- berghe, 2012; Arpan & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005).
atively independent government agency, as op- In our case, the communication strategy by the
posed to organizations less independent from poli- AFM could be qualified as “stealing thunder”; a
tics. press release and press conference provide the
Specifically, we test the effect of a major news before news media can “scoop” the story.
press release by the Dutch Authority for Financial Thus the effect of a pre-emptive press release is ex-
Markets (AFM) and subsequent newspaper cover- pected to be relatively favorable.
age in an experiment.1 The AFM is an IRA regulat- A second reason why we expect the press
ing the financial markets in the Netherlands. We release to have a relatively favorable effect on pub-
had the unique foreknowledge of the release date lic opinion (that is, not a negative effect) is that the
of an upcoming press release and related attention press release, as opposed to the related news cov-
from news organizations. A few days before the erage, focuses on a so-called “rebuild strategy”.
press release came out, we carried out a pre-test to Such a strategy offers apologies for the crisis, which
measure citizen trust in the AFM. Then the agency leads to more effective reputation restoration than,
issued a press release and held a press conference. for instance, denying responsibility (Claeys, Cau-
A week after the pre-test, we carried out a post-test bergh & Vyncke, 2010; Coombs & Holladay, 2008).
survey in which various treatments were embedded In our experiment, the press release is pre-
(the press release, three media articles on the AFM emptive and focuses on how the AFM attempts to
and its supervision error, and a control group). We improve it operations in the future to prevent the
also controlled for natural exposure to news about crisis from happening again. According to the
the failure. Our results show a negative effect of the above-mentioned experiments on crisis communi-
news media articles on perceived competence of cation, this should prevent reputation loss even
the AFM, and a null effect of the press release on though it may not improve reputation either. This
all dimensions of perceived trustworthiness (i.e. means that we propose essentially a null hypothesis
competence, benevolence and integrity). We con- for the press release effect:
clude that the press release was effective in decreas-
ing the potential negative effect of providing bad H1: A press release does not negatively affect the perceived
trustworthiness of an independent regulatory agency.

2
Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 1(1)

whether or not they had read or seen news about


We also take into account that many people will the issue at hand. The experimental set-up is sum-
only hear about the AFM through news media cov- marized in Figure 1.
erage and will not directly read the press release. We All respondents received the same pre-
test the effect of newspaper articles that were in publication survey in which their pretest attitudes
part based on the press release. Since the articles were measured (T0). For the post-publication sur-
had a much more negative tone and did not have a vey, we randomly assigned participants to one of
strong “rebuilding” focus, we expect that this cov- five experimental groups. One week later, their
erage has a negative effect on perceived trustwor- posttest attitudes were measured (T1). The control-
thiness:2 group was not shown any additional information;
their questionnaire was the same as the baseline
H2: News media coverage negatively affects the perceived measurement (T0). The other four groups were
trustworthiness of an independent regulatory agency. shown some sort of information before completing
the questions for trust in the AFM. One group
Experimental Design and Methods (“AFM”) read the full press release by the AFM.
The other three experimental groups read a news
Experimental Design item that had appeared in the nationwide press.
We compared the trust Dutch citizens have in One in Het Financieele Dagblad (“FD”, Dutch Finan-
AFM before and after a press release that would cial Times, circulation 50,000), another group read
likely have (and indeed had) a large media-impact. an article from De Telegraaf (“Telegraaf”, the largest
We employed an experimental design and also ex- Dutch national newspaper with a circulation of
ploited natural variation in our respondents as to 462,000), and another experimental group got to

Figure 1
Overview of Experimental Design

Pre-test (T0) Publications Post-test (T1)


Fri June 24th Wed June 29th 2016 Fri July 1st 2016
2016
Prior No prior
exposure exposure to
to news news total

60 53 Control 113

AFM press 67 45
AFM 112
release

FD 71 42 FD 113
N=819
Telegraaf 59 54 Telegraaf 113

Nu.nl. 66 47 Nu.nl 113

N=323 N=241 N=564


(57%) (43%) (100%)
Publications: FD=Financieel Dagblad (Financial Times), newspaper specialized in financial news (50,000 subscrib-
ers), Telegraaf = largest Dutch newspaper, with right leaning political orientation (462,000 subscribers), Nu.nl =
news website, most-read online news source in the Netherlands (7.1 million unique visitors monthly). To check for
prior exposure we asked if people read any news about this topic in the preceding days. They reported to have read
to following sources: Press release 15%, Nu.nl 28%, FD 17%, Telegraaf 12%.

3
Grimmelikhuijsen, De Vries, & Zijlstra, 2018

read an article on the Dutch news website nu.nl (this “completely disagree” (1) to “completely agree” (5).
website is the largest news website in the Nether- The composite score for trust in the AFM is the
lands, attracting 2.7 million unique visitors per day). average of the averages for Competence, Benevo-
The texts used are all in Dutch and available as Ap- lence and Integrity. Items were presented in a ran-
pendix 2. Each of the five experimental groups dom order. The items are listed below:
consisted of N=112 or N=113 respondents.
In addition, all respondents were asked if
they had read something about the AFM issue Competence (3 items, Cronbach’s alpha at
themselves in the past days. More than half (57%) baseline= .885, at follow-up= .914)
of respondents reported having done so. Thus, be- 1. The AFM is capable.
sides the experimental groups that we randomly as- 2. The AFM is professional.
signed, we can also classify each respondent ac- 3. The AFM carries out its duties effec-
cording to whether or not they had been informed tively.
about the AFM issue in the natural course of their
own reading of the news. Benevolence (3 items, Cronbach’s alpha at
baseline= .855, at follow-up= .875)
1. If consumers need help, the AFM
Data Collection
would do its best to help them.
Our respondents were drawn from the AFM Con-
2. The AFM acts in the interest of citi-
sumer panel. This panel, founded in June 2014, is a
zens.
dedicated, online panel that the AFM uses to survey
3. The AFM is genuinely interested in
consumers and is operated by market research bu-
the wellbeing of citizens, not just its
reau GfK. The panel consists of about 1700 re-
own wellbeing.
spondents and is not representative for the general
population of the Netherlands; respondents are dis-
Integrity (3 items, Cronbach’s alpha at base-
proportionally more male (81% are male), higher
line= .910, at follow-up= .916)
educated, and older (27% are 65 years or older,
1. The AFM is straightforward to citi-
mean age is 61 years). About half of the panel-
zens.
members invest in the stock market, in contrast to
2. The AFM is honest.
less than one in five for the general Dutch popula-
tion.3 Although this is certainly not a representative 3. AFM is sincere.
panel, respondents in the AFM Consumer panel
are, for obvious reasons, more familiar with the
Respondents that only completed the
AFM. This contributes to ecological validity in the
baseline survey (n=255, 31% of initial sample) did
sense that the respondents are a group of people
not differ significantly on the trust scale from re-
who are more likely to read about the AFM than
spondents that did complete the follow up survey a
the average citizen.
week later.4
The baseline-measurement was completed
by n=819 respondents. A week later, after the ex-
ternal publication of the AFM press release and Results
subsequent articles in national newspapers and me-
dia, these respondents were again approached. In To test our hypotheses, we carried out a repeated
total, n=564 (69%) of the baseline respondents measures MANOVA. The analysis included 5
completed the follow-up survey. For each respond- groups (control, press release, and three newspaper
ent, we can compare trust in the AFM before and articles) and included the effect of natural exposure
after publication of the press release. to news about the failure of the AFM (natural ex-
posure v. no natural exposure). Perceived compe-
Variables tence, benevolence and integrity were measured
To measure trust in the AFM, we adapted a vali- prior to and after the treatment (thus repeated
dated 9-item trust scale that consists of three con- measures). The five experimental groups were sta-
structs: Competence, Benevolence, and Integrity tistically equivalent in the terms of their means for:
(Grimmelikhuijsen & Knies, 2017). Items could be competence F(5,559)=0.69, p=.596; benevolence
scored on a five-point Likert-scale ranging from

4
Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 1(1)

F(5,559)=1.65, p=.161; and integrity F(5,559)=0.94, the treatment. To provide more specific infor-
p=.438. mation on which treatment affects which depend-
Table 1 shows the differences between the ent variables, we carried out subsequent repeated
pretest and posttest means for the overall sample, measures ANOVAs. Table 2 provides details of the
which includes both respondents who had and who effects of the press release on perceived compe-
had not been naturally exposed to the news before tence, benevolence and integrity.
they received the treatments in the experiment. Of Perceived competence is most strongly af-
the three dimensions, perceived competence seems fected by the treatment (F(4,554)=5.09, p < .001,
to be affected most strongly by being exposed to partial eta2=.035). Interestingly, we find weaker
information about the failure. For perceived benev- treatment effects on perceived benevolence
olence and integrity the differences are much (F(4,554)=2.40, p=.049) and integrity
smaller than for competence. The decline in the (F(4,554)=3.23, p=.012). From the descriptive re-
control group of -.22 can be explained by the ‘ex- sults in Table 1, this is a positive effect that appears
posed’ respondents in the sample: 241 (43%) re- most pronounced in the “Nu.nl” condition. Upon
spondents indicated they had not been exposed be- further inspection, however, we found no signifi-
fore, 323 (57%) had been exposed. We will take this cant specific group differences between any of the
source of variation into account by controlling for treatment conditions and the control group on the
it in subsequent analyses. benevolence and integrity dimensions.
We found an overall multivariate interac- Furthermore, natural exposure to the
tion effect of our treatment with the difference be- AFM issue, as opposed to experimental exposure,
tween the pretest (T0) and the posttest (T1) also has an effect but only on perceived compe-
(F(4,554)=2.92, p < .001). This means that the tence (F(4,554)=14.95, p = .000, partial eta2=.026).
change in trust between T0 and T1 is affected by This means that people who read about the policy

Table 1
Mean Difference between Pre-test (T0) and Post-test (T1)
on Components of Trust

Control Press release Financial T Telegraaf Nu.nl


Competence -0.224 -0.256 -0.519 -0.478 -0.501
Benevolence 0.086 -0.054 0.062 0.083 0.212
Integrity 0.077 -0.048 0.162 0.038 0.221

Table 2
ANOVA of Treatment Effects

Source Measure F Sig. Partial Eta Squared


T1-T0 Competence 175.34 .000 .240
Benevolence 7.32 .007 .013
Integrity 11.93 .001 .021
T1-T0 * Treatment Competence 5.09 .000 .035
Benevolence 2.40 .049 .017
Integrity 3.23 .012 .023
T1-T0 * Prior exposure Competence 14.95 .000 .026
Benevolence 1.80 .181 .003
Integrity 0.02 .877 .000
T1-T0 * Treatment * Competence 0.39 .819 .003
Prior exposure Benevolence 0.76 .553 .005
Integrity 0.57 .681 .004

5
Grimmelikhuijsen, De Vries, & Zijlstra, 2018

Figure 2
Effects of the Press Release and Newspaper Coverage
on Perceived Competence

5.00

4.50
`Mean competence score (1-5)

4.00

3.50
2.65 2.56
3.00 2.43 2.55 2.52 2.57
2.32
2.50 2.01 2.10 2.08

2.00

1.50

1.00
Control (no text) AFM Financial T Telegraaf Nu.nl

T0 T1

Error bars depict confidence intervals at 95%. Covariates appearing in the model are evaluated at the following
values: natural (prior) exposure = .5727.

failure before the post-test (T1) were significantly a real press release and real newspaper articles, one
less trusting regarding the competence of the AFM, criticism could be that in the survey experiment the
but not regarding benevolence and integrity. This press release and newspaper articles were forced on
effect is visualized in Figure 2. respondents, in a sense, and thus respondents
As we expected, we found the press release might have responded differently had they encoun-
to have no significant negative effects on perceived tered the same information in the ordinary course
competence, benevolence or integrity. of daily life. Therefore, we performed a test using
The newspaper articles indeed negatively only the “natural” exposure to the news about the
affected perceived competence. The exact content policy failure of the AFM. Specifically, in the post-
of the article did not seem to matter that much as test questionnaire, respondents were asked if they
all posttest means were within a range of 2.01 to had heard about the policy failure (thus indicating
2.08. Figure 2 shows clearly that confidence inter- natural exposure). We can use the control group
vals between the pretest and posttest are not over- only to test the association of this natural exposure
lapping, which indicates a significant difference (at to the news about AFM with perceived trustwor-
p < .05). The observed media coverage did not sig- thiness of the agency. Because natural exposure is
nificantly affect perceived benevolence, or per- non-random, there is of course the potential for en-
ceived integrity, which means we only find partial dogeneity bias in this analysis. Therefore, this anal-
support for H2. ysis should be viewed as a supplement to the main,
experimental analysis.
Auxiliary analyses We used participants from the control
One often-heard criticism of survey experiments is group only and divided them into a group who did
that they are artificial and have low generalizability. (n=60) and did not (n=53) report that they were
Although our treatment is highly realistic, as we use

6
Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 1(1)

Figure 3
Effects of Natural Prior Exposure to Negative News on Perceived Trustworthiness
(Analysis of Control Group only, n=113)

5.00

4.50
Competence Benevolence Integrity
4.00
Mean trust score (1-5)

3.50
2.66 2.72
3.00 2.59 2.63 2.53 2.60 2.57
2.48 2.44 2.49
2.27 2.37
2.50

2.00

1.50

1.00
No exposure Exposure No exposure Exposure No exposure Exposure

T0 T1

Error bars depict confidence intervals at 95%.

exposed to the news about AFM prior to the ex- In a final check, it can be seen that partici-
perimental treatment. Figure 3 shows the different pants’ self-reported change in trust aligns with the
plots for each dimension of perceived trustworthi- experimental effects between treatments. The self-
ness. The pretest (T0) means for competence, be- reported change in trust (either negative, neutral or
nevolence, integrity and trust did not differ signifi- positive) correlated much more strongly with com-
cantly between these two groups (Fs < .734, ps petence (Rho=-0.411, p<.001) than with either be-
>.393). The overall multivariate effect of the inter- nevolence or integrity (Rho=.176, p<.001 and
action between natural exposure and the pretest Rho=.162, p<.001).
and posttest measurement was significant and had
a rather large effect size (F(1,109)=3.96, p = 0.01, Conclusion and Discussion
partial eta-squared= .098). This means that people
who read something about the AFM policy failure Because of a collaboration between practitioners
prior to the post-test (T1) responded differently to and academics, we were able to link an experi-
questions on trust in the AFM than those without mental set-up to a real-life event with a large media
natural exposure. As Figure 3 makes clear, there is impact. We showed that negative information
a negative effect of natural information exposure about an independent regulatory agency led to
on perceived competence (F(1,111)=8.28, p =.005, widespread and negative media-coverage, but did
partial eta-squared=.069), yet no effect on the other not significantly affect the public’s view on the be-
two dimensions. Overall natural exposure seems to nevolence or integrity of that agency. Perceived
have a similar effect as exposure in the more con- competence was negatively affected by media cov-
trolled experimental exposure: a negative effect on erage, but proactive communication through a
perceived competence, yet no effect on perceived press release by the public agency itself was shown
benevolence or integrity. to be able to mitigate that negative response.

7
Grimmelikhuijsen, De Vries, & Zijlstra, 2018

Empirical studies in the field of public ad- stronger reputational setbacks. Thus, research into
ministration that focus explicitly on communica- other more salient policy domains is needed to in-
tion are still relatively scarce (e.g. Fairbanks, Plow- vestigate the generalizability of our findings. An-
man, & Rawlins, 2007; Liu, Horsley, & Blake, 2010; other area for future investigation would be to in-
Ruijer, 2013), with some suggesting that proactive vestigate the longevity of these negative effects. In
forms of communication might act as a counterbal- our auxiliary analysis (focusing on the effect of only
ance to negative news exposure (Graber, 2003; Liu natural exposure to the AFM issue) we could see
et al., 2012). Our experiment contributes to this that the negative effect lasted at least several days.
growing body of literature by showing that by pro- But more research is need to understand the dura-
actively releasing news to the press it may be possi- tion of such negative effects as well as the long-
ble to ‘come clean’ about competence-based errors term effectiveness of related pre-emptive commu-
without losing on other fundamental dimensions of nication strategies. From a practical point of view,
trustworthiness, such as perceived integrity. our findings have some important implications;
It should be noted though that more sys- they suggest that communicating pre-emptively and
tematic experimental evidence is needed to be able openly about errors and focusing on a rebuilding
to generalize these findings. First, we need to take strategy can help to maintain citizen trust.
into account that we focused one specific event
with idiosyncrasies that might make this failure Notes
more ‘suitable’ for communication. The failure
concerned a fairly technical issue affecting small 1. Our study focuses on a critical report on the
and medium enterprise businesses, and there was quality of the supervision by the AFM of inter-
no visible harm to the general public because of this est rate swaps (IRSs). The AFM investigated
failure. Furthermore, the experiment reported on these complex IRS-contracts in 2014 and an-
what can be considered a ‘competence-based’ error: nounced that the banks involved had to review
the AFM made judgmental errors yet its employees and compensate firms. The AFM would super-
did not, for instance, deliberately break the rules for vised the process, yet on the 3rd of December
their personal profit. The latter would be an integ- 2015, less than a month before the deadline of
rity-based crisis, which would probably affect other the review by the banks, the AFM announced
dimensions of perceived trustworthiness. banks had made serious mistakes and that its
Another limitation stems from the fact own supervision of the review process had not
that we use a naturally occurring event and materi- been sufficiently rigorous. As a result, the re-
als in our experiment. Although this approach has view process could not be finished and cus-
the advantages of experimental realism, it comes tomers were not compensated. Appendix 1
with a loss of control over the stimulus materials. provides a more elaborate description of the
Therefore, we cannot pinpoint the exact explana- event leading up to a highly critical independ-
tory mechanism behind our findings. For instance, ent report and the subsequent press release by
we cannot tell which specific communication strat- the AFM.
egy drives the results, since both “stealing thunder” 2. We carried out a content analysis that indeed
and “rebuilding” (Coombs, 2007; Clays & Cau- shows the difference in focus, see Supplemen-
berghe, 2012) strategies are applied in the press re- tary materials for details.
lease. Moreover, the source of the message varies 3. http://www.tns-nipo.com/ons-aanbod/sec-
as well (the AFM and the three newspapers), which toren/finance/retail-investor, access February
makes the experimental design more realistic but 6, 2018
also the results somewhat more ambiguous to in- 4. Oneway ANOVAs on pretest results between
terpret. Future experimental work along these lines respondents that did and did not complete
should take this into account and try to test more posttest: Competence F1,817=0.541, p=0.462;
abstracted treatment materials to provide insight Benevolence F1,817=0.962, p=0.327; Integrity
about the precise causal mechanisms. F1,817=0.239, p=0.625; Trust F1,817=0.631,
Finally, other types of errors could evoke p=0.427.
more negative responses. For instance, if a health
inspection fails in supervising a hospital and pa-
tients die, the responsible agency might face much

8
Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 1(1)

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References to original newspaper articles


(in Dutch)

Externe onderzoekers oordelen snoeihard over


optreden AFM in rentederivatendossier (“External
reviewers issue harsh judgement on AFM regarding
interest rate derivatives”). Het Financieel Dagblad.
Last accessed at February 6, 2018,
https://fd.nl/ondernemen/1158142/externe-
onderzoekers-oordelen-snoeihard-over-optreden-
afm-in-rentederivatendossier
Hard oordeel over toezichthouder in
rentederivatendossier (“Harsh judgement on
regulator regarding interest rate derivatives”). Nu.nl.
Last accessed at February 6, 2018
http://www.nu.nl/economie/4285375/hard-
oordeel-toezichthouder-in-
rentederivatendossier.html
Flaterfestijn bij AFM (“Comedy of errors at AFM”)
http://www.telegraaf.nl/dft/ondernemen/2611475
3/__Flaterfestijn_bij_AFM__.html
AFM trekt lessen uit extern rapport over toetsing van
rentederivatendienstverlening door banken (“AFM
draws lessons from external report on assessment of
advice and sales of interest rate derivatives by
banks”). AFM. Last accessed at February 6, 2018:
https://www.afm.nl/nl-
nl/nieuws/2016/jun/rapport-toetsing-
rentederivaten

10

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