Man at the top 20 talking heads WHAT'S NewS Issue 7 July 1996 An investment mistake that turned into a bonus gave international's Jaap Slotema a taste for banking at a very early age. He and his family have spent almost all 'their' working lives in the business of international banking. 'We worked in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Ireland, St Maarten and Singapore,' he says. 'And every place we go, my first stop is usually a supermarket.' Slotema's late father was something of an investor. 'He played the stock market - cautiously, hut quite successfully,' he says. 'At one point, I'd been doing a lot of odd jobs because I was saving for a moped, you know, one of those mechanized bicycles. I had a couple of hundred guilders and my Dad suggested I should buy a few Philips shares. They were denominated in two prices - NLG 1,000 and NLG 10. He called his bank and bought some for me. Unfortunately, he didn't say they were for me so I ended up with 20,000 guilders, rather than 200, in Philips shares and Dad had to foot the bill. He went bananas. But the shares went up and I made what for me was a killing. I got my moped straight away.' Slotema junior not only made money. The fortunate mistake also gave him a fascination for banking and how money and markets work. 'It decided my future. That and a real desire to work abroad. We live in such a small country, I think looking cross-border is practically part of Dutch culture. At the time, ABN was the only Dutch bank that had any kind of real international presence, although Rabobank has changed that significantly in the past 10 years. It was really the only option to combine both banking and international experience.' Yes, but what about supermarkets? Slotema laughs - almost ruefully. 'Not very macho, is it? But yes, I've been fascinated by supermarkets since my student days. When 1 went to Nijenrode - which wasn't yet a university - we were given a multi-disciplinary education. It was a good mix of the humanities and business studies. One day a guest lecturer gave us a presentation on the development of mega- stores - they were a relatively new phenomenon in Holland then. It wasn't so much that the products got my attention, but more the psychology behind the organization of supermarkets. In the west, whenever you walk into a supermarket, the first thing you see is cosmetics. Why? Because it's a high margin, high turnover product range and it appeals to our sense of smell. In other countries, with different cultures, cosmetics may he tucked away on the fourth floor. How a supermarket is laid out can teil you a lot about a country.' Wherever he goes, Slotema always tries to look over a supermarketalso because they tend to sell wine,' he grins. 'For 19 years, we worked all over the world and it would have been almost impossible to continuously move a 'wine cellar'. I always promised myself that at some point I'd start laying down some wine for when I retire. I have this picture of myself with grandchildren sampling the wine we're putting down at the moment.' His two sons, Sander and Michiel, are not yet aware of their father's plans for them. At 22 and 20, they do not appear ready to oblige at this stage. 'Our eldest boy is doing accountancy with KPMG and the younger son is going into hotel management,' he says. 'Because we worked in so many different countries, they went into the international school system. The eldest did business management in Londc^fc and our youngest is still at college in the UK.' There's that 'we worked' again. When he says this, he firmly believes in the importance of seeing an ex-pat career as a family effort. 'Certainly, my wife Marijke was never on the payroll. But she played an incredibly important role from a commercial perspective. It was her who organized and cooked many of the business dinners. And she always did a lot of voluntary work wherever we went. Now we are back in the Netherlands, she continues to work for the Red Cross on a very regular basis.' Marijke Slotema is not as passionate about wine as her husband. 'I've convinced her that one glass a day and an asprin is good for your health,' he laughs. 'The passion we do share is the garden. This is a real team effort, a kind of natural division of labour.' Slotema is also a firm believer in team efforts within the work sphere. 'The challenge in any organization is to get the right mix of people, the right mix of skills,' he says. 'This is one of the reasons I found Rabobank so attractive. I'm part of a very^ successful organization that is^P made up of a broad range of very different people. Different views, different backgrounds, different lifestyles. And it all comes together in this bank. This is a very entrepreneurial organization - a lot is delegated to the network, so you have to put entrepreneurs in place. The fact that the international division was started almost from scratch not too many years ago means that many of the people who have built it had never, for example, run an office before. I don't want to sound dramatic, but I'm inspired by being part of a team of the people from all over the worlc^F which has such a lot of drive and dynamism. I love the fact I'm part of a winning organization.'

Rabobank Bronnenarchief

blad 'What's news' (EN) | 1996 | | pagina 20