RICO - regional exchange central and eastern europe i i In the run-up to the global Rabobank International Conference (RICO) slated for early June in Antwerp, the regions are busily organizing more local events to hammer out issues relating to their particular area and business environment. In March representatives from Latin America and the Far East came together, in April it was the turn of our people in Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC). What's NewS sits in on the country presentations and reports on some of the pressing issues confronting these operations. Listening action Network structure What sNewS Issue5* May 1998 It may come as something of a surprise, but Turkey (see page 3) has also been clustered with our people from CEEC - Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Russia - so five operations were represented at the two-day conference. The reason is that it has many characteristics of an emerging market and in geographic terms shares borders which are at least interesting for potential Rl activity in the region. But, comments Hungary's Tamas Simonyi, even though all have a number of commonalities, the countries represented at the RICO are also very disparate in terms of development stage, business environment, market requirements and so on. These differences should not be underestimated. What they share in terms of challenges was key to the conference agenda. Staffing, systems, capitalization - all were raised as issues crucial to not only further development, but also survival in some of these markets. Hanno Riedlin who has Tamas Simonyi Hanno Riedlin backed by the Polish team become responsible for the region following the management board reshuffle, was there to listen and, CEEC Rabobankers hoped, to respond to their needs with, among others, stronger head office support for very specific prevailing circumstances. Riedlin sketched briefly the recent history, not only of growth in CEEC as background to the introduction of the customer focus strategy and our conimitted emphasis on a knowledge- driven approach. While many of the CEEC Rabobankers stressed our late arrival in the region and its consequences for building cliënt bases, they were reminded that only three years ago we had no more than a single rep office and three staff in the Hungarian capital. 'Six years ago,' adds Riedlin, 'wm were also a single product bank. Now, v\W are a multiple-product bank - although not yet always a good one.' All of these changes, and the introduction of what is sometimes called a 'matrix' organizational

Rabobank Bronnenarchief

blad 'What's news' (EN) | 1998 | | pagina 4