When ING Barings threw in the towel last month, ABN Amro became the only player in the big leagues of European investment banking that isn,t Swiss or German. Now, after a seven-month integration of its international corporate and global investment banking businesses, ABN Amro’s new wholesale-clients unit is ready to go. And its leaders aren,t ceding any turf.
Rijnhard van Tets, the 53-year-old Dutchman who chairs the new unit, is, not surprisingly, upbeat. “Banking is entering the era of one-stop shopping, and we are one of a handful of firms that can offer the full range of corporate and investment banking products and deliver them globally,” he says.
Since taking over from Jan Kalff in May, chairman Rijkman van Groenink has laid down an ambitious plan for ABN Amro. Between 2001 and 2004 the wholesale-clients unit is expected to double revenues, from E6 billion ($5.59 billion) to E12 billion.
Hugh Scott-Barrett, who, like van Tets, sits on the unit’s four-member executive board, says the restructuring will focus coverage on three main segments: corporates, financial institutions and the public sector.
Getting the coverage right is key. Although the bank estimates that it has a client base second in size only to Citibank,s, it’s “an underexploited franchise,” says Scott-Barrett. To date, only 40 percent of 10,000 core corporate clients have been successfully cross-sold. Van Tets is determined to boost that figure.
Whether ABN Amro can find the investment banking talent to capitalize on its client base is a major question. Scott-Barrett says it can; as evidence, he points to the addition last March of Nigel Turner, a former Lazard senior partner, as head of ABN Amro,s U.K. investment banking group. Given the bank,s ambitious targets, more strong hires will be needed.
