Willem Wagner
Building block
Guaranteeing access to food
Faced with the country's economie stagnation, most major
Japanese companies have been getting their houses in order in
recent years. They've been taking the losses associated with
decreasing asset values, making processes more efficiënt and
developing overseas markets,' explains Wagner. As a result, the
economy is becoming more and more efficiënt as companies
follow the lead of the big corporations.
Rabobank made its first foray into the Japanese market five years
ago by setting up Global Financial Markets (GFM) trading, which
has been consistently profitable since day one. 'We're a notable
player in the Japanese market even though we only have a small
team of people,' says Wagner proudly. 'All the things we do in
corporate banking are interesting from a strategie point of view,
but we couldn't do it without GFM. It's the building block for
everything we do.'
Researching the market
With GFM up and running successfully, it was feit that it might be
time to enter the corporate banking arena. So two years ago,
Food and Agribusiness Research (FAR) conducted several studies
into the Japanese market. At first glance
the signs were not very promising. 'While
quite a few foreign banks are involved in
onshore corporate banking in Japan,' says
Wagner, 'very few ofthem make money.'
So why should Rabobank be any
different? 'We already had the infra-
structure in place to support GFM. If you
add corporate banking to that the
marginal cost is actually very low.'
A much more compelling reason to
expand into corporate banking was the
state of Japan's food industry which is very
large and sophisticated. 'Japan does not
produce enough to feed itself,' Wagner
continues. 'It has to import over 60% of its
food from places like the United States,
Europe, China, Australia and Indonesia.'
Another important factor was local trends.
Japan used to be the only major buyer of
food in the region with easy access to
supplies. Increasing competition from
China and India, political tension between
Asian countries and the threat of diseases
like avian flu have changed all that.
All of these factors mean that access to
sufficiënt food supplies has become a
strategie issue for Japanese food buyers.
10 The Word
