Utrecht is in many ways the Dutch Frankfurt: centrally located in the country, transport hub for rail and road, therefore also popular conference city - and, less well known, even banking city.

The second largest bank in the country (after ING) is located here: Rabobank, located at the main train station in an attractive new building with a connected double tower that looks like binoculars and is also called that in the vernacular.

Six minutes walk away on the same street: "de Volksbank", which also belongs to the largest Dutch financial houses.

It cannot be compared with the German Volksbanks, because their counterpart – with a different geographical organization – is the cooperative Rabobank.

"de Volksbank" is the parent company of several banks, including SNS, which gave the group its name until 2017.

Online kiosk and coffee roaster on site

Well-known companies outside of the financial sector are also located in the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, which also has a similar ranking to Frankfurt (Germany's number five).

Above all the state railway NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen), but also the online kiosk Blendle.

For decades, the coffee manufacturer Douwe Egberts was based in Utrecht, which is now part of the cultural heritage of the coffee drinking nation.

The originally Frisian company chose the location for its expansion because of its central location, as reported in its corporate history.

Beans are still roasted here on the Merwede and Amsterdam-Rhine canals.

But the company, founded in 1753, has not only gone through changes of ownership in recent years and is now part of a conglomerate called JDE (Jacobs Douwe Egberts);

it also succumbed to the general pull towards the capital ten years ago and moved to Amsterdam.

The cable network operator Ziggo - years ago in the German news through an interlude of the German telecom manager René Obermann as CEO - represented Utrecht with a short stock exchange listing and has since been absorbed by the Vodafone group.

From the region, ASR is now the leading company on the stock exchange scoreboards.

Until December, the insurance group belonged to the 25-member leading index AEX of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, but was then moved to the AMX average value index.

Not because of weak business and falling market capitalization, but because an international stock market newcomer pushed into the top league: California's Universal Music Group, the largest music group in the world, went public on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in September and reached a market value of 46 billion euros.

The company has formally settled in Hilversum.

A pseudo-Dutch company has thus ousted a genuinely Dutch company from the top stock exchange league.

One of the largest insurers in the country

ASR - proper spelling: "asr" - is located in an office area in the east of the city.

Not far away is the Rietveld Schröder House by architect Gerrit Rietveld, one of the most important buildings of the De Stijl movement and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Also within walking distance is the "De Uithof" area with the university's outdoor campus, which has officially had to be called "Science Park" in the past few years due to the Anglicization madness of the Dutch education and government system.