The bank made the news several times, due to, among numerous things, overpriced mortgages and deferred annuities.

Dirk Scheringa [nl], a former police officer, founded DSB BANK as Buro Frisia in 1975.

[9] DSB bank provided mortgages and consumer loans, savings and insurance products to individuals.

Dirk Scheringa had over the years acquired a large collection of paintings, mostly Dutch (Koch, Ket, Willink a.o.)

These commercials were often chosen as ‘most annoying advertisement of the year’, but did provide them with the reputation of a cheap and safe bank.

[3] DSB bank sold mortgages jointly with term life insurance and made their customers pay these simultaneously, which is highly unusual, and illegal in the Netherlands.

As this practice of providing mortgages came to light, the DSB bank received two fines from the Dutch Authority of Financial Markets.

In 2009, several support funds were created to inform potential clients about the way DSB conducted business.

At that point, more than 600 million euros had already been withdrawn, which was a sign for DNB that the Solvency of the DSB bank was under pressure.

Thirdly, the media spread the news about a possible takeover of the DSB bank by DNB before the official report was published, this led to massive withdrawals by depositors.

Dirk Scheringa promised to resign as chairman and to sell his shares, nevertheless DNB decided to let the DSB bank go bankrupt.

[14] During the weekend of 17 October the final attempts to save the DSB bank were presented on television by financial advisor Adrian Dorrepaal under the title ‘Plan B’.

Since these depositors would lose their money in case of bankruptcy it was better for them to turn their deposits into shares of the DSB bank.

That weekend Dirk Scheringa was working with Gardner Ross Corp. on a possible takeover bid from the American investment company 'Lone Star Funds’.

This happened in the middle of a training camp in Germany, this led to the situation where the ice-skaters themselves had to pay for the rent of the ice-skating track and the transportation back home.

ABN Amro impounded 1300 art pieces to serve as collateral for DSB Bank's mortgage-debt of 32 million euro.

In March 2012, retired Dutch businessman Hans Melchers bought the bulk of this collection in a deal with Deutsche Bank, who were curator.