number of valued employees last year, many of whom had made a meaningful contribution to our bank's development over a long period. We have also made good progress internationally within Wholesale, Rural Retail. We have formulated our vision on the global food issue under the name Banking for Food.The world population currently stands at seven billion and large numbers of these people do not have enough to eat and drink every day. The number of people living on our planet is set to reach more than nine billion by 2050. Rabobank expressly wants to contribute towards the solution to this issue. These efforts combined to ensure that customer focus once again featured prominently on the agenda in 2014 and it will continue to do so in the years ahead. The second directional theme is Rabobank as rock-solid bank. We are working on bringing about operational improvements for our customers and following the events of 2013 continue to place priority on internal control, integrity, compliance and risk management. With a view to the increasingly stringent capital requirements in the future, we are looking for ways to lighten our balance sheet without this coming at the expense of our customer service. We will scrutinise even more closely the profitability of our activities for the long term. The third directional theme is the strength of a meaningful cooperative. We are exploring possibilities for adapting our structure and the governance of our cooperative organisation. The related objective is to strengthen both our cooperative and our banking business. The decision-making on adapting our governance is expected to take place in the course of 2015. As a socially responsible organisation Rabobank will play an express role in and contribute to the economic and social agenda for the Netherlands. We are setting out our contribution to sustainable development from now to 2020 under the name 'Sustainably Successful Together'. The related aim is to link our financial services, knowledge and networks in the field of sustainability with our customers' ambitions. Our worldwide focus in this area is on accelerating the development of sustainable agriculture and a sustainable food supply and strengthening the vitality of communities. The fourth theme focuses on empowering our employees: after all, they make the bank. We got off to a flying start in 2014 with respect to bringing about our culture change. We are actively implementing the Culture Collective programme throughout the entire organisation. Our aim is to achieve even greater customer focus, transparency and entrepreneurship. Leaders from nearly all divisions of the bank participated in Culture Collective in 2014. We are actively continuing this programme in 2015. Parallel to this, we are working on a renewed approach to talent and leadership development, again with the aim of shaping one Rabobank. 2014 results The Dutch economy recovered cautiously in 2014. We achieved net profit of EUR 1,842 million in 2014, but the underlying profit rose sharply compared to 2013. Our efficiency ratio stood at 63%. We further strengthened our capital position, which is important for our reputation as a sound bank. Our common equity tier 1 ratio amounted to 13.6% at the end of 2014 and our capital ratio stood at 21.3%. Rabobank consequently passed the stress test of the European Central Bank with good results in October 2014. The European Central Bank took over the prudential supervision from De Nederlandsche Bank on 4 November 2014. We maintain a healthy capital buffer even under the worst case scenarios. We will strengthen our buffers further in the years ahead in line with higher capital requirements. This will require us to look for solutions in order to enable us to continue to meet the credit demand from our core customers. The return on tier 1 capital at 5.2% remained far below the long-term target of 8%. 2 Annual Report 2014 Rabobank Group

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Annual Reports Rabobank | 2014 | | pagina 3