Enterprise Risk Management at ABN AMRO

Details

Themes: -
Period : 2003
Organization : ABN AMRO
Pub Date : 2003
Countries : Global
Industry : Banking

Buy Now

Case Code : ERMT-023
Case Length : 19 Pages
Price: Rs. 300;

Tools

Background Note Contd...

ABN was smaller than AMRO until it bought merchant bank Mees & Hope (1975) followed by the purchase of Chicago-based LaSalle National Bank (1979).

After the merger in 1991, the bank turned its attention to overseas markets like the American Midwest, where LaSalle National Bank began to gobble up competitors like Talman Home Federal Savings (1991). ABN AMRO also took control of European American Bank (EAB), which had sustained heavy losses in real estate deals and Third World loans. The company bought investment banks Chicago Corp. and Alfred Berg in 1995.

Expansion brought internal oversight problems during the next few years. In 1995, Swiss banking authorities asked ABN AMRO to better police its branches after the bank lost as much as $124 million due to embezzlement. In 1997, the firm closed its diamond office after losing about $100 million due to fraud.

In 1998, ABN AMRO bought Brazil's Banco Real and Bandepe banks (and then closed their European and US offices). The next year, it began buying minority interests in banks in Italy. Also in 1999, the company decided to be a major player in European real estate with the acquisition of Bouwfonds Nederlandse Gemeenten, the Netherlands' fifth largest mortgage lender. As part of this effort, it expanded its mortgage-servicing portfolio with the purchase of Pitney Bowes subsidiary Atlantic Mortgage and Investment Corp.

ABN AMRO cut 150 branches in its saturated home market (and about 10% of its Dutch workforce) in 2000. It bought the energy-derivative business of Merrill Lynch, Barclays' Dial car-leasing unit, and Alleghany Corporation's asset management unit. In 2001, ABN AMRO sold EAB to Citigroup and bought US-based Michigan National Corporation from National Australia Bank and merged it with another Michigan holding, Standard Federal Bancorporation, to form Standard Federal Bank, one of the largest banks in Michigan. It also bought the US brokerage and corporate finance operations of Dutch rival ING Groep in a quarter-billion dollar deal.

Next >>