In what would be the largest financial-services merger ever, Britain’s Barclays PLC bid for the NLs’ largest bank, ABN Amro NV, for $91.16 billion. The result: a worldwide banking giant.

Working your way up is overrated. Companies are increasingly just buying their way to the top of global markets.

BABY FOOD TASTES SWEET

In an all-cash, $5.5 billion deal, Nestlé will buy the Gerber baby-food business from Swiss pharma giant Novartis. The purchase catapults Nestlé to the top of the…

34 years ago in TIME: Announcing its first foreign head last week was a big step for Sony. If the Dutch can produce goods of excellent quality, said Akio Morita, the Japanese could do it too.

Announcing its first foreign head last week was a big step for Sony, the Japanese electronics giant that was founded and run for years by AKIO MORITA.

A young businessman named Akio Morita made his first trip outside Japan in 1953 to investigate export prospects for his struggling little electronics…

The Dutch $1 billion philanthropist Van Leer Group Foundation focuses on helping young children. It has blazed a trail by spending 95% of its grant money outside its home country.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Bavarian machinery company his grandfather set up in 1901, Richard Scheubeck and the firm’s other family owners decided to create a charitable foundation. They put in $1.1 million, and Scheubeck encouraged the company’s suppliers and business partners to make donations. With more than…

The chairman of scandal-tainted NL.-based Royal Ahold stepped down following national outrage over his failure to inform investors of the new contract he gave new CEO Moberg.

Outrage about executive salaries is missing a couple of decimals in Europe. In September New York Stock Exchange boss Dick Grasso resigned amid a backlash over his $188 million deferred-compensation package. Around the same time, the chairman of the world’s third largest food retailer, scandal-tainted Netherlands-based Royal Ahold (whose…

Asymptote, NY-based architects, built HydraPier, an exhibition pavilion at the Harlemmermeer: A two-winged structure sits on an artificial lake created on land reclaimed from the sea.

We live in an era that puts little stock in stability. Solidity and permanence read as rigidity and torpor. The future will be only more unruly, tossed and pulled by disparate forces like a piece of bread among sea gulls. So where does this leave architects, whose work is all…

CEO Holthuis’ tiny OctoPlus, based in the Netherlands, has helped biotechs chemically package 25 drugs to reach bodily ZIP codes and, once there, work efficiently.

JOOST HOLTHUIS Drug Courier

The best-designed drug is useless if it can’t go where it’s needed, say, in the brain or lungs. CEO Holthuis’ tiny OctoPlus, based in the Netherlands, has helped biotechs chemically package 25 drugs to reach bodily ZIP codes and, once there, work efficiently. The seven-year-old private…

In the Netherlands a company called Rigid Airship Design is building a 591-ft.-long airship, which it hopes to begin testing at the end of next year.

Just once, Scott Danneker would like to see a TV documentary or magazine story about his employer that doesn’t feature the airship Hindenburg’s bursting like a lava-filled egg over Lakehurst, N.J., on May 6, 1937. “What would happen if people felt compelled to mention Pan Am Flight 103 every time…

Germany’s Beate Uhse acquired a Dutch chain of 44 “erotic discount centers,” plus a Dutch mail-order company that offers a full range of sex toys, videos and publications.

Sex shops: seedy, if not downright sinister; XXX signs plastered on blacked-out windows in shady neighborhoods; frequented mainly by men. When it comes to the flesh industry, Europe, for all its sophistication, wasn’t much different from the U.S. Then along came Ann Summers, a British chain of sex emporiums, and…

The only agreement of equal access airline negotiations, concluded so far, though, is with the tiny Netherlands, a pact that followed Northwest’s deal with KLM.

The British are coming! The British are coming! And this time, they’re not coming by land or sea, but by air! That cry of alarm can be heard in Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta these days, as leaders of the top U.S. airlines wail about a threat to their hard-won global…

The biggest marriage on the Continent took place in April with the joining of two longtime Dutch rivals, Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN) and Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank (Amro).

The 1980s were a time of feast and fear for the world’s international banking system: an era of globalization and vigorous overseas expansion but also of sharp competitive thrust. Asian banks and increasing numbers of European ones hung OPEN FOR BUSINESS signs abroad, joining the U.S. multinationals that had…

The Netherlands Antilles, with cash flowing steadily from banking centers in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, is a favorite financial center for investors seeking a low profile.

In Willemstad, the sunny Caribbean capital of the Netherlands Antilles, a banker ushers an American visitor through a hotel casino and into a dining room overlooking the harbor. During refreshments, the prospective customer says he expects a six-figure cash windfall soon and would like to bring the money “quietly” into…

Most popular source for exotic foreign flowers is the NL. which exports flowers worth about $100m. to the U.S. each year. Flowers are auctioned in Aalsmeer and flown out that night.

Valentine’s Day has always sent lovebirds flocking to the florist. Right after Cupid’s departure, though, flower sales used to shrivel up. No longer. Flowers, once an ornament reserved for special occasions, have become a year- round staple on many shopping lists. Now, no better reason for buying a bouquet is…

Frans Swarttouw announced that Fokker and McDonnell Douglas Corp. of St. Louis were preparing to link up and build a Fokker-designed 150-seat, medium-range passenger jet.

Fokker’s challenge to Boeing

When it comes to flying high, few businessmen can measure up to Frans Swarttouw, 49, of The Netherlands. Having built Rotterdam’s containership terminal into a key operation of the world’s biggest and busiest deepwater port, Swarttouw took command three years ago of Holland’s weak and floundering…

KLM, which up to now have operated predominantly U.S.-made fleets, announced important buys of planes built by Airbus, a consortium backed by four European governments.

Some big orders give the European wide-body a boost

American commercial planemakers have long dominated the world skies, but their near monopoly is under assault. Last week The Netherlands’ KLM and West Germany’s Lufthansa, which up to now have operated predominantly U.S.-made fleets, both announced important buys of wide-bodied, twin-engined…

With exhilarating wit and charm, Dutch Physician Wil Huygen and Illustrator Rien Poortvliet put together a mock sociological history of the gnome that is proving to be a money spinner.

One of the most enduring characters of European folklore is the gnome, a gnarled night creature who lives for centuries, stands only 6 in. when full grown but is seven times stronger than man. With exhilarating wit and tongue-in-cheek charm, Dutch Physician Wil Huygen and Illustrator Rien Poortvliet put together…