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Rajesh Srivastava
In-house capabilities
Green light
China-lndia pilot
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Stage of development also played a role.
Gilbert Ee: 'Certainly for Global Financial
Markets (GFM) there was less leverage
across locations in terms of cliënt
relationships or deal infornnation. This is
largely because GFM was only Consolidated
as a department as of 2004. Prior to that
Singapore and Tokyo had Group Treasury
businesses with Singapore having a
separate Rabobank International (Rl)
Capital Markets and Hong Kong, India and
Indonesia having a Rl Treasury Markets. Hencethe region was
fragmented in terms of Financial Markets activity.'
The SAT team conducted 113 interviews to determine what in-
house capacities each of the countries had before developing the
strategy. A total of 33 papers were written on the issues that
surfaced from these interviews. Gilbert Ee explains, These helped
to build a picture of our positioning, front office, business
development, support, enablers, new initiatives, Human Resource
Management, IT, etc. Many thought it was too comprehensive,
but it was essential to have a picture of the whole to build a
strategy for the whole.' In May, the team met with 60 managers
across the region to share its findings.
The new initiatives presented to the Managing Board in April
were plentiful. SAT got the green light to further explore the
potential of Islamic banking (see side-bar page 8). Vietnam was
also highlighted as a market in which Rabobank needs to have a
presence. A 'country banking' strategy was approved for China,
and Indonesia is to be explored as a possibility as well. Asia as a
region also got a new focus sector, life sciences, while the core
sectors in the region will remain Food and Agribusiness (F&A) and
Telecom, Media Internet (TMI). The region also got the green
light to deal with other sectors on a case by case basis provided
the two core sectors contribute to at least 55% of Asia's gross
revenue.
'We also got the go ahead to develop a China-lndia corridor,' says
Srivastava. 'We need to capture trade flows between these two
countries, conservatively estimated to reach US$60 billion by
2010. A lot of the trade is actually happening in the sectors in
which we are already active in India, such as life sciences and F&A.
The China-lndia corridor will be a pilot model between the two
countries. If it is successful we will replicate it across other
countries and sectors. We didn't only come up with the idea; we
created a methodical approach, set up targets and established a
working group between these offices and a budget. Strategy is all
very well, but it needs to be linked to steps of implementation,
and SAT covers implementation as well.'
