Amsterdam - The Amsterdam bourse jumped 3.68 per cent Monday boosted by soaring banking stocks with ING Group's shares charging ahead by almost 20 per cent after the government threw the insurance and banking house a financial lifeline over the weekend.

By early afternoon trading, the bourse's main index stood at 261.55 points with shares in financial houses backed by the government's financial support plan helping to power the exchange.

Indeed, just one day after the government announced a capital injection of euro 10 billion euros (13.4 billion dollars) for ING, the bank's shares jumped by more than 8 per cent to stand at 8.66 euros. Shares in the Fortis financial house also raced ahead by about 14 per cent.

But while financial stocks enjoyed strong gains Monday, shares in construction and infrastructure companies suffered on the back of concerns about the economic outlook with steelmaker Arcelor-Mittal falling by 2.76 per cent and property group Corio sliding by 1.75 per cent.

Along with ING, the Dutch government has also mounted rescue operations for Fortis and one of the Netherlands other leading banks, ABN Amro.

However, Rabobank, the Netherlands' last remaining independent retail bank with some 7 million customers in the Netherlands alone, said it did not require any government aid.

Dutch insurer Aegon, whose stock came under renewed pressure on Monday said it was considering using the 20 billion euro fund made available to financial institutions by the government.

"We are studying if and under what conditions government support would benefit Aegon," a spokesman said, emphasizing Aegon does not have a liquidity problem and meets all minimum capital ratio requirements. (dpa)