When did you join the bank?
In 1964. I joined the Netherlands Trading Society (NTS), six months before it merged with De Twentsche Bank to form ABN.
Were you from a banking family?
My father was a lawyer. But I’d always wanted to become a banker. My father hoped I’d become a barrister too, so I selected law studies. But all my optional subjects at university were in the direction of economics and finance. After university and before my military service, I did a four-month stagein a bank in Paris. I learned French but also sniffed banking for the first time. After that I was never was in doubt about becoming a banker – and I never regretted it.
You were 27 when you joined the bank.
I joined on May 11 1964, the day before my 27th birthday. I selected the Netherlands Trading Society because it was by far the most international of the Dutch banks. My brother was working for another bank, so I didn’t want to join the same one. But, amusingly, his bank then merged with nts so we ended up in the same bank after all.
Does he still work for the ABN Amro?
He retired earlier this year. We stayed in the same bank together for 30 years. But this place is so big that it wasn’t a problem. We never bumped into each other.
What was your first position?
After two years’ training – the training period in those days was rather long – I was posted to the Arnhem branch. But, after a year, I was taken out of the branch because an unexpected vacancy arose in treasury in Amsterdam. Somebody had died. I had a week’s notice to move. I worked in guilder liquidity management in Amsterdam for two years.
So you’re a trader at heart?
Yes, I started in trading – in what we’d now call treasury and fixed income. Of course, it was an awful lot smaller in those days. Then I moved into the Euromarkets, arranging Eurodollar structured loans. And then I was appointed branch manager of Rotterdam.
That must have been an important job.
Yes, we had 800 people in Rotterdam. It was the second largest branch in Holland.
You were young to do that.
It was in 1970, so I was 33. It was a fantastic job, because that was the boom time for port of Rotterdam. Investments were flooding in from abroad. Oil depots and chemical plants were springing up. Then I was made regional manager based in Rotterdam, and was appointed to the managing board. I was 39.
I heard you jumped a level to get on the board.
Right. I’ve never been a senior EVP. I jumped from EVP to the managing board.
Because you’d done so well in Rotterdam?
Rotterdam hadgone extremely well. I had a bit of luck in that the market was healthy and the competition wasn’t very tough. I had treasury and Eurocurrency experience, which helped a great deal. If you knew just a little about that, you were better than the competition.
After that, I spent nine years as managing board member in charge of the domestic division.
Why did you then switch to international?
Senior people in the bank probably had it in mind that I had better have experience of all three divisions: treasury, domestic and international. So when the head of the international division, Rob Hazelhoff became chairman of the board, I succeeded him. That was in 1985.
Was Hazelhoff your mentor?
To some extent. Perhaps Andre Batenburg, his predecessor, was more so. He was the one who moved me from the Arnhem branch into the dealing-room. He sent me to Rotterdam. That was a deliberate management development move.
As head of international, you started to look at the US market.
When I took over, we had just LaSalle National Bank in Chicago, which didn’t make more than $7 million a year. abn also had 10 branches, only one of which made $1 million. Hazelhoff said to me, “If we can make $10 million at LaSalle and $1 million per abn branch, that’s $20 million altogether. That would be great.” Can you imagine it? We now make $450 million a year in the US.
Together with our own people, I started to travel there many times a year so that we could get to know the Chicago banks and bankers. The market was still very fragmented. There were 1,400 banks in Illinois, where banking legislation was very strict. We were the only bank rich enough and with the ambition to grow in Illinois. We did our homework and then started to buy. Once every two years we bought a bank. We merged them all into LaSalle. All the acquisitions worked out fine. LaSalle’s image became stronger and stronger. Its rivals were weaker. First Chicago was having problems, Continental Illinois almost went broke. They were number one and two. Bank of Montreal bought Harris Trust, but did little with it. By contrast, we consistently pushed our bank to grow and improve. People came to work for us because they saw this was a dynamic bank. We kept on growing the mid-west operation even after the abn Amro merger, which gave us a stronger capital base. We’ve done several more mergers since then. The latest, Standard Federal Bancorp for $1.9 billion, closed on May 1.
This was all started by Hazelhoff, who bought LaSalle National in 1979 for only $82 million. Can you imagine that? We considered it a huge amount at the time, though. Now we’ve acquired banks for a total of $4.8 billion in the mid-west.
With the benefit of hindsight, it was good we moved when we did, since now anyone can acquire banks in Illinois and the best banks have been bought. Because we were so early in that game, we were in the position to buy when there were no other potential acquirers.
Don’t you need to keep buying in the mid-west just to keep the momentum up and to keep other banks out?
There is some business logic in that. But we should never buy anything just for those reasons. So far we’ve always avoided being forced into an acquisition we didn’t really want. We’re now number two in the mid-west after First Chicago NBD, which is a strong combination. The latest acquisition, Standard Federal, is still fairly recent. It’s in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The head office and the main part of the bank are in Michigan. We still have to digest that. That’s a major thing to do. We shouldn’t go too fast.
You never lived abroad. Do you regret that?
Yes. The intention was that I’d be posted overseas after Rotterdam. But, for one reason or another, it never happened and I went immediately onto the managing board. Then it was too late. I regretted it. My wife also. But that’s the way it worked out. But I travelled so much, particularly as chairman of the international division, that to some extent I came close to living abroad.
Was it always on the cards that you would succeed Hazelhoff as chairman?
No. Perhaps in his mind, but I wasn’t aware of it.
When did you know you’d become chairman – at the time of the merger?
At that stage it wasn’t clear at all who’d be the next chairman. Anyway, there didn’t need to be a quick decision: after the merger we had chairmen from both sides. Hazelhoff stepped down and became vice chairman for a couple of years, before moving up to be chairman again. He retired in 1994. So it was only about four years after the merger it had to be decided who would be his successor. Only at that point did I get the impression I was a strong candidate. It’s a joint decision of the managing board and the supervising board who will be chairman.
You just turned 60. When will you retire?
I was asked not to retire at 60, unlike others, for the sake of continuity. It won’t be before May 2000. I’ll retire then.
Do you know who your successor will be?
I know that I know him. But don’t ask me for a name.
Is it common knowledge in the bank?
No.
