REGION SPECIAL EUROPE KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER
Rabobank makes no secret of its ambition to be the leading allfinanz player and the primary
bank, or house bank, for all its Dutch clients. Rabobank International, which includes the Dutch
wholesale banking operations, may appear to have more modest ambitions for Europe as
a whole, but as Managing Board members Rob ten Heggeler and Rutger Schellens explain,
focusing on what Rl does best will enable the bank to carve out a significant and profitable
niche in the pan-European Food Agri sector.
Expanding
This is about
clients knowing
and trusting us
Rabobank International (Rl), in the Netherlands, offers a full
range of banking services to its large corporate and commer
cial clients, from leveraged finance to structured finance and
from financial logistics to GFM. In the Netherlands, Rl can liter-
ally be everything for everybody. That is the biggest differ-
ence between Rl in the Netherlands and Rl in Europe. Outside
the Netherlands, Rl profiles itselfvery clearlyasa niche player
with a highly specialist angle on Food Agri, which accounts
for 60% of RI's European clients, with Telecom, Media and
Internet (TMI) accounting for another 25%."
"We are a 'boutique' bank, offering services like M&A, struc
tured finance and leveraged finance. These are all areas in
which we can compete with local players and win", says Rob
ten Heggeler, general manager of the Netherlands region.
M&A is a perfect example of something that is really starting
to take off across Europe, says Rutger Schellens, who heads
the European region. Rl now has one person who runs M&A
for the F&A sector in both the Netherlands and Europe. This
not only generates a lot of synergy, it also makes use of the
bank's M&A expertise right across Europe, an approach Rl
is hoping to extend to other product lines. "It's ridiculous
to look at the European F&A business and not include the
Netherlands. If we want to be a significant player in the Food
Agri world, we have to look at F&A as a pan-European busi
ness", Schellens says.
But again, he stresses, Rl has no ambition to be the house
bank for clients outside the Netherlands. That is impossible
without products like financial logistics, which Rl currently
cannot offer to non-Dutch clients.
Rl is expanding its financial logistics offering, to follow Dutch
clients beyond the Netherlands, which is around 72% of all
Dutch companies. "We are protecting revenues of €170 mil-
lion of our member banks in the Netherlands, so it is essential
to follow our Dutch clients into Europe", Schellens says.
And to dojust that, as of May, Rl has been offering inter
national financing to its Dutch clients in Belgium, the UK,
Germany and France, to be extended to Turkey, Poland, Italy
and Spain by the end of the year. Rl will be looking for part-
issue 16 ii THE WORD
