Rijkman Groenink

Rijkman Groenink     ( banker,  businessman)
Born	25 August 1949  Den Helder,  Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	•  Utrecht University •  Manchester Business School
A big Dutch businessman and banker who was in the board of directors and in charge of ABN AMRO during the Global Financial Crisis. Noted to have a "bad reputation" in the UK.

Rijkman Willem Johan Groenink is a Dutch banker. He is best known as the former chairman of the board of Directors of ABN AMRO. He attended the 2002 Bilderberg meeting.

Education

Groenink was born in Den Helder in 1949. He studied law at Utrecht University and then business administration at Manchester Business School.

Career

He joined the then AMRO bank performing various functions, especially in the field of lending. In January 1986, he became Director General Affairs, a position directly under the board of directors.

Upon the merger of the AMRO bank with the ABN in 1990, he became a member of the Board of Directors of the new ABN AMRO bank. On the Board of directors, he became responsible for the Netherlands division. In May 2000, he succeeded Jan Kalff as chairman of the Board of directors. In 2006 he was ranked fourth in the Volkskrant top 200 most influential Dutch people., on 31 december 2005, he was voted Dutchman of the year by the editors of Elsevier.

In late 2005, ABN AMRO was caught up in three scandals in the US, including fraud with customers' money, evasion of sanctions and money laundering. In The Wall Street Journal article 'Risky Territory; how Top Dutch Bank Plunged into World of Shadowy Money' it was stated that many problems at the bank had arisen or got worse under Groenink's responsibility. In 2004, Groenink ordered the destruction or concealment of documents relating to violations of sanctions against Iran and Libya. Groenink admitted to using the word "destroy", but according to him, it only affected the copy of the report faxed to him. the scandals have led to a number of settlements with the US "justice system" and a criminal investigation was underway in 2007. Legal successor RBS again paid a settlement of $ 500 million in 2010.

Takeover

In 2007 the bank was sold to a consortium] of three international banks after a take-over struggle. Groenink preferred a complete takeover by Barclays but the combined share-holders preferred the higher offer from the consortium, led by the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Banco Santander in 2007. As CEO Groenink had built up a substantial portfolio of shares in the bank through various stock option bonuses and the sale of his stake generated an income of €23 million.

In the award-winning book "De Prooi" (Dutch: "The Prey") by journalist and professor Jeroen Smit the fall of ABN Amro is described. In the book Rijkman Groenink is described as a detached manager, more concerned with maximizing shareholder value and individual bonuses for the company's leaders than in serving the best interests of the bank's customers. According to the numerous sources in the book, talks with several other banks about mergers failed because of Rijkman Groenink's personal demeanor or his unreasonable demands. At several occasions these demands were related to his own position in a post-merger organisation.

Groenink had openly defended a takeover by Barclays, so when the consortium RFS won the takeover struggle and declared that they won the bid Groenink stepped down as CEO. As the sale of the bank to RFS was shortly before the Late-2000s recession where governments had to step in and nationalize several banks a big discussion started about the bonus culture in the banking industry.

Financial crisis

Both RBS and Fortis were hit very hard by the 2008 Banking Crisis and the ensuing general financial crisis. In the United Kingdom the government all but nationalized the RBS Group and in Belgium the Dutch and Belgian government had to step in to avoid Fortis going bankrupt. Although the ABN AMRO takeover was not the root cause of these banks' problems it worsened their financial situation.

In October 2008, after the acquisition of ABN AMRO by the Dutch state, Rijkman Groenink said he wanted to return to ABN AMRO. Groenink said that he could be of great value to the bank, because there would be no one else in the Netherlands with so much experience in banking and specific knowledge of ABN AMRO. During the conversation with journalists from Bloomberg News Agency, Groenink sighed about his buyout and Option Scheme: "I didn't need the money and didn't want it. But the public thinks I'm a crook and I screwed up the bank."

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/2002	30 May 2002	2 June 2002	US Virginia Chantilly Westfields Marriott	The 50th Bilderberg, held at Chantilly, Virginia.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2006	25 January 2006	29 January 2006	Switzerland WEF	Both former US president Bill Clinton and Bill Gates pushed for public-private partnerships. Only a few of the over 2000 participants are known.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2007	24 January 2007	28 January 2007	Switzerland WEF	Only the 450 public figures listed of ~2200 participants

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