His firm GSFS, once closely tied to Van der Moolen, is a specialist in international dividend tax arbitrage. Taking advantage of loopholes in international tax laws, the firm has always been controversial and hated by the all tax authorities.
Vogel isn't short of bravoure, and knows what he's doing because in spite of all predictions (“loopholes will be closed by Brussels”) he's still doing fine.
Pension fund
For his firm he created a pension fund. That's nice, as pensions aren't very common in the business. Turns out this pension fund, for the 17 employees, is launched a few years ago to live in a tax friendly zone.
The GSFS pension fund is only active in dividend arbitrage. DNB is responsible for monitoring the Dutch pension funds, and decided GSFS' alternative investment strategy didn't fit for a pension fund.
“Dividend stripping may not be the DNB's most favourite pension investment strategy“, GSFS responded, “but we follow the rules and suggest the DNB starts doing the same“.
2 million claim
DNB had no choice but to agree. Frank Vogel doesn't stop here, he claims EUR 2 million from the DNB. During all discussions with DNB, the trading activity of GSFS pension fund was halted. Their missed opportunities are valued at 2 million, and somebody's got to pay for it. And it's not going to be GSFS.
It will drive people crazy at DNB. He may even win the case. A larger, serious pension fund managed to get compensation for opportunity loss after forced selling of their gold holdings in 2013 (link – nl).