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In those circumstances, the Hoge Raad der Nederlanden (Supreme Court of the Netherlands) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘(1) (a) Should Article 7(2) of [Regulation No 1215/2012] be interpreted as meaning that the direct occurrence of purely financial damage to an investment account in the Netherlands or to an investment account of a bank and/or investment firm established in the Netherlands, damage which is the result of investment decisions influenced by globally distributed but incorrect, incomplete and misleading information from an international listed company, constitutes a sufficient connecting factor for the international jurisdiction of the Netherlands courts by virtue of the location of the occurrence of the damage (“Erfolgsort”)? (b) If not, are additional circumstances required to justify the jurisdiction of the Netherlands courts and what are those circumstances? Are the following additional circumstances – the fact that BP focuses on a global investment public, including Dutch investors; VEB represents the interests of a large number of investors, the vast majority of whom are domiciled in the Netherlands; the settlement reached between BP and its shareholders in the United States has not been offered to the investors whose interests are represented by VEB, and no other similar procedure is being conducted in Europe; and, finally, the fact that the shareholders for whom VEB is acting include consumers, to whom Regulation No 1215/2012 affords special legal protection – sufficient to found the jurisdiction of the Netherlands courts? (2) Would the answer to Question 1 be different in the case of a claim brought under Article 3:305a of the BW by an association the purpose of which is to defend, in its own right, the collective interests of investors who have suffered damage as referred to in Question 1, which means, among other things, that neither the places of domicile of the aforementioned investors, nor the special circumstances of individual purchase transactions or of individual decisions not to sell shares which were already held, have been established? (3) If courts in the Netherlands have jurisdiction on the basis of Article 7(2) of [Regulation No 1215/2012] to hear the claim brought under Article 3:305a of the BW, do those courts then, on the basis of Article 7(2) of [Regulation No 1215/2012], also have international and internal territorial jurisdiction to hear all subsequent individual claims for compensation brought by investors who have suffered damage as referred to in Question 1? (4) If courts in the Netherlands as referred to in Question 3 above have international, but not internal, territorial jurisdiction to hear all individual claims for compensation brought by investors who have suffered damage as referred to in Question 1, will the internal territorial jurisdiction be determined on the basis of the place of domicile of the misled investor, the place of establishment of the bank in which that investor holds his or her personal bank account or the place of establishment of the bank in which the investment account is held, or on the basis of some other connecting factor?’