F inspired by the fact that we're going for the gold medat— that we want to be the leader in the Netherlands, and the leader in global F&A business ES Who is Lex Kloosterman? S What are your immediate focus points? 0 What do you think of Rabobank's aim of becoming the global F&A bank? A"After graduating from law school and completing my military service, I began my career at what was then the ABN Bank in 1983, working at the money desk in New York. I worked there for two years, and then moved to Singapore where I was responsible for ABN's corporate banking activities. I moved back to work in the Netherlands between 1989 and 1992, which was the time when the ABN and AMRO banks merged to form ABN AMRO. My next assignment was to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where I worked for ABN AMRO affïliate Banco Holandes Unido, and had the good fortune to become president of the bank. This was a very challenging period in banking terms, with Brazil's daily inflation rate at a staggering 3.5 percent! Aftertwo years in Brazil, I moved to Chicago to lead the North American activities of ABN AMRO, before returning once again to the Netherlands. I then moved back to Brazil to become president of Banco Real and chief executive of ABN AMRO in Latin America. I left ABN AMRO in 2006, to take a position on the executive board at Fortis, where I was involved in the takeover of my previous employer, ABN AMRO. In 2008, after the acquisition story had run lts course, I left Fortis and spent the next 9 months working on some of my passions: the Concertgebouw - a famous concert hall in Amsterdam - where l'm the treasurer of the fund, and with a charity thatfocuses on the less-privileged in Amsterdam. I am married with three children. My wife is a philosophy teacher; my two daughters live and work in Paris, while my son is a student in Amsterdam." our FAR research, and where we have access to the boardroom. Once we have achieved that goal, we can utilise our knowledge and expertise all the way from 'the kitchen table to the board room'.' A"My initial aim is to take stock of our cliënt portfolio, and analyse Rabobank's role right across that portfolio. Then, with the help of the M&A team, the FAR team and our regions, I want to look into which sectors we should focus on, both regionally and globally. Once we have a fïrm grip on those sectors, we will identify, with the help of the regions, which bankers we intend to nominate to take the lead in dealing with our key clients in the regions and, of course, globally. Essentially we are looking for clarity within the organisational model, and we are trying to find a disciplined approach towards dealing with our clients, so that we have both a clear sector strategy and a very clear client-specific strategy. Then, based around that client-specific strategy, our key banking staff need to be firmly aligned with our product colleagues: in other words, our M&A, GFM, DLL, Robeco and other product groups within the bank. If we follow this disciplined approach towards developing cliënt opportunities within each of our key sectors, we will see clear initial gains within the first one or two years. Of course, that's just the low hanging fruit. At the same time, I think the strategie repositioning of Rabobank as the leading F&A bank involves looking for the best method to gain access to the boardroom. We already know that one of the most effective A "When Sipko Schat asked me to join Rabobank, I was inspired by the fact that we're going for the gold medal - that we want to be the leader in the Netherlands, and the leader in global F&A business. In essence, what we are aiming to achieve is to further build on the wonderful position that Rabobank has created within both The Netherlands and the F&A sector. There is a real perception that we're already the leading bank within the F&A domain, but the challenge now is to turn that perception into reality. Our next step is to focus on identifying the sectors we're leading in globally, which will then constitute our global platform. F&A is a broadly defined space, so we need to be precise about where we want to win and target our choices in order to excel. We want to be able to target those sectors and clients where we already have underlying knowledge through ways to gain access is through our research, but the challenge is to monetise that research and translate the research and boardroom access into deal flow. A great example is the recent takeover of Pilgrim's Pride. The company, a leading chicken producer in the United States, was hit quite hard by the financial crisis, and Rabobank NA helped them to restructure financially (through a DIP financing). A few months later, Rabobank together with its M&A partner, Rothschild, advised Brazilian fïrm JBS SA on its takeover of Pilgrim's Pride, creating one of the world's leading animal protein companies. That is something that I think we will be much closer to achieving - in terms of ambition level - once we have created these internal communities of knowledge. What gives me real joy is creating winning teams, and I think it's crucial that we build a team that works towards producing a winning position for both our clients and the bank."a ISSUE 22 JANUARV THE WORD 23

Rabobank Bronnenarchief

blad 'RI The Word / The Word' (EN) | 2010 | | pagina 25