On the road in Western Europe
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By now it has become a maxim: as bankers, we live in a cross
border, cross-disciplinary world. However, acting on that belief,
and coordinating our approach to clients as an effective global
entity, remains an ongoing challenge. This was underlined at the
recent European road show that was organized by our Western
European offices and the Agri Project Finance Team (APFT),
together with participation from
investment banking. i
Structuring knowledge
Cross-functional
interaction
Identifying clients
Doing our homework
WhatsNewS Issue6*June 1998
The April road show was driven by a
strategie imperative: the need to
significantly upgrade the performance of
our European F&A operations. The
market is ntoving through a far-reaching
structural transformation, and the
process of further globalization and
strategie reorientation is raising clear and
interesting opportunities not simply for
F&A project finance alone, but more
particularly in combination with
corporate finance and investment
banking, including such fields as M&A,
structured finance, equity derivatives,
emerging market investment financing
and risk hedging operations.
Says Salvador Viada-Arroyo of corporate
finance and investment banking in
Madrid: 'It is often very difficult to get
into your customer at the most senior
levels of management, so when the
opportunity arises, as it did during the
APFT roadshow, it is absolutely essential
that you make the best
use of it. You really
have to show the whole
range of products and
services you can offer.
That inevitably means
taking a much more
proactive approach and
offering carefully
tailored, value-added
and knowledge-intensive
packages that meet the
customer's needs.'
APFT's Niek Streefkerk
cannot agree more: 'The
roadshow was an opportunity to assess
and further develop Rabobank's ability
to structure knowledge in key F&A
Salvador Viada-Arroyo,
Madrid
Niek Streefkerk, the Netherlands
sectors on both a global and regional
basis, and to further develop our interna!
lines of communication in pursuit of our
shared goal: namely, to promote our
customer focus and intimacy program
through the use of cross-border and
cross-functional "virtual teams". For
APFT, this will involve more closely
integrating its efforts with other units of
the bank including investment banking,
corporate finance, and F&A research.
The roadshow was a good example of
how we can link together our F&A
expertise with our product
delivery ability.'
Ben Davies, head of F&A in
Fondon and pending deputy
F&A business manager,
provides a practical example:
'We talked to one cliënt
about a particular business
segment in Poland where we
started out with APFT's
knowledge base which, both
in geographical markets and
specific product sectors, was frankly
superior to the customers' own. When
we put this together with some focused
strategie thinking, what emerged were
some very specific ideas and business
solutions that attracted the cliënt. This
makes it clear that a good cross-
functional interaction is really the name
of the game. What's more,' he adds, 'not
only did that encounter produce a
tangible business result, in the sense that
we came away bidding for a significant
deal, but it also paid
intangible dividends, in the
sense that we were able to
communicate the faet that^
Rabobank is now
operating on a different
knowledge plane than
some of our supposedly
more sophisticated
competitors. It shows that
we can actually deliver a
lot more than customers
previously realized.'
In organizing the
roadshow, F&A account
managers throughout Piurope directed
APFT in its quest to identify important
potential clients in target businesses such
as dairy, sugar and starch, edible oils,
and beer. It then set out to analyze their
current market situations and their
potential strategie requirements,
including eventual expansion
possihilities, and then directly address
their specific needs. This was done in a
variety of ways. Europe retains its many
powerfully diverse business cultures,
despite the move towards closer
economie union, and some offices
understandably feit that it was more
appropriate in certain cases to make a
single presentation to an entire group of
potential clients, while others opted for a
one-to-one approach.
The bulk of the effort revolved around
the preparation of tailored and bilateral
presentations for 21 potential clients, a
huge task that required the active
participation of general managers, globaUg
product managers and specific account
managers, as well as substantial input
from F&A research. The exercise
confirmed the keen interest of many
potential F&A clients in our capabilities
