The Dutch Central Bank has published new tables and a dashboard on the Netherlands’ conduit sector, showing a sharp contraction in multinational financial holdings used to channel financing flows. The number of these holdings fell from more than 14,000 in 2017 to fewer than 8,000 in 2025, while their combined balance sheet declined from 652% of gross domestic product at end-2017 to 401% at end-2025, or EUR 4,732 billion. The central bank describes these entities as having little staff and limited direct economic activity in the Netherlands. The release links the decline in holdings and balance sheet size in part to measures introduced to curb tax avoidance through conduit structures, including Dutch withholding taxes on interest, royalty and dividend payments to low-tax countries and a global 15% minimum tax on corporate profits. Holdings that disappeared after 2017 had a combined balance sheet of EUR 1,464 billion in 2017, about one third of the sector total at that time, and had relatively strong links to low-tax jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Despite the contraction, the Netherlands remains a major conduit centre in Europe, second only to Luxembourg, and the fall in holdings may also have contributed to the drop in active Dutch trust offices from about 200 in 2017 to just over 100 in 2025. The new statistics provide data on the size of the conduit sector, income flows and foreign relationships.

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