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Top management at Philips Electronics NV has expressed sympathy for victims of an eight-hour siege that took place last week at Amsterdam's Rembrandt Tower.

In the March 11 incident, an unidentified man armed with an M-16 assault rifle and explosives took 18 hostages and kept more than 200 others trapped in their offices in protest over what he claimed were Philips' deceptive promises about the quality of widescreen television. More than 100 Dutch police officers were on the scene, some in telephone contact with the gunman, who issued a four-page statement to Dutch news organizations describing his protest against what he called "arrogant manipulation by the vendors of widescreen television."

Unaware that Philips had vacated the building six months earlier, he required Rembrandt Tower office workers to put anti-corporate messages on the building's windows and in the hallways. "The atmosphere was pretty tense at the beginning, considering that it is the six-month anniversary of September 11," an office worker in the building told Reuters news service by telephone. "But when we found out the reason behind this on the Internet, we laughed . . . we are definitely not very scared."

The incident ended when the protester killed himself. No one else was harmed. That day, Philips issued the following statement:
The management and employees of the Philips Headquarters in the Breitner Center, Amsterdam would like to express their sympathy to the people who today became victims of a hostage situation in the neighboring Rembrandt Tower.

Gerard Kleisterlee, president and CEO of Philips, stated, "We find it terrible that an action apparently meant against Philips has impacted our neighbors—neighbors with whom we shared a building until six months ago. It is a great relief that the situation was brought to a close without any of the hostages being hurt."

Workplace hostage situations are comparatively commonplace in the United States, but are rare in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, whose citizens are indoctrinated from the earliest age with the importance of social responsibility.