The Perfect Prey

A year ago The Bank ceased to exist. Three large foreign banks paid the record price of 71 billion euro and tore ABN AMRO to pieces. Shareholders and management cashed in and The Netherlands lost the bank that had been at the heart of our economy for 183 years. A bank that took care of business community's ambitions in the Netherlands and far beyond.

How did management lose its grip on the future of ABN AMRO? Why did the logical merger with ING fail? Based on more than 120 conversations with the most important individuals directly involved, Jeroen Smit reconstructs the downfall of the institute. A bank with a profit of billions every year but at its core critically ill.

Ever since the merger of ABN and AMRO in 1990, ABN AMRO struggled with a surplus of ambition, arrogance and indecisiveness. A climate of divide and rule paralyzed the executives of the bank for years. Many key players resigned themselves with frustration to their own interests. A weak, absent board of commissioners failed to intervene.

Plagued on all fronts by frustrated and mutinous managers, the bank was then besieged by aggressive shareholders who sensed a quick stock exchange profit. The bank became a prey with no future and no way to defend itself.

Over de auteur
Jeroen Smit (1963) studied Management in Groningen. It didn't take long before he switched to journalism. Nowadays he works as a freelancer journalist, radio and tv host, commentator and columnist.