The Dutch government has blocked American IT firm Kyndryl from acquiring Solvinity — the company that operates DigiD, the Netherlands’ national digital identity platform — in the first-ever US acquisition blocked by the country’s Bureau for Investment Screening. The deal was valued at roughly €100 million.
State Secretary Willemijn Aerdts of Economic Affairs issued the prohibition on Monday under the WOZT, the Dutch Act on Undesirable Control in Telecommunications. The central concern was the US CLOUD Act, which authorizes American authorities to compel US-headquartered companies to produce data held on servers anywhere in the world.
A Kyndryl-owned Solvinity would fall under US jurisdiction in ways the Dutch state could not legally prevent — giving American agencies potential reach over DigiD data belonging to the 16.5 million Dutch citizens who use the platform to access tax, healthcare, pension, and government services.
Solvinity’s majority owner is British private equity firm Vitruvian Partners, which agreed last November to sell to Kyndryl. The ACM, the Netherlands’ competition authority, cleared the deal on antitrust grounds in February — but the national security screening process runs separately, and the ACM’s approval did not bind the Investment Screening Bureau.
Kyndryl said it was “extremely disappointed” and had cooperated “in good faith” throughout the review.
Aerdts described the screening as “country-neutral, risk-based, and proportionate,” noting that the Netherlands “attaches great value to the presence of foreign technology companies — especially American ones” — careful language for a government that has just become the first in Europe to block a US acquisition on CLOUD Act grounds. Other EU member states are likely to be watching.
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