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De Prooi: Blinde Trots Breekt ABN Amro (2008)

by Jeroen Smit(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Prometheus

review 1: Mr Smit deserves praise for the incredible amount of detail he dug up about the long chain of events that led to the demise of ABN Amro. Yet, even for me, with an above-average interest in banks, it was sometimes just too much. Sure, some decisions taken over ten years ago turned out to be disastrous in hindsight, but does a lengthy discussion of those decisions and the people who took them help the overall purpose of understanding why what happened, happened? Especially the first half of this 400+ pages book could have been shortened by at least a third.The book largest flaws however are its ceaseless focus on the top management's personality flaws and its limited attention for context they operated in. While ABN Amro, and in particular its top managers, made shocking str... moreategic mistakes and had an saddening disregard for their own vulnerability, there were not many banks that can say they didn't from the late 1990s up to 2007. Again, the benefit of hindsight here makes it easy to point fingers, something the author does not hesitate to do. Mr Smit seems to suggest that, if only ABN Amro had not become dominated by (de facto CEO) Rijkman Groenink & Co, its fate would have been radically different. His disgust at the more ambitious bankers' break with the more conservative generation that preceded them is almost palpable, and when the moment of reckoning eventually comes, the author comes dangerously close to appearing gleeful. Yet, in the end, it was the exogenous shock of the US-mortgage credit crisis that marked the definitive end of ABN Amro, and I am not convinced per se that the bank's fate would have been radically different if only it had been led by a different set of people. Despite this, the author does leave enough room for readers to form their own judgement. If you look past the unkind descriptions of the likes of Rijkman Groenink, the book clearly demonstrates that above all, this was a case of utter failure of corporate governance, institutional hubris and a tunnel-vision of the bank's management in which short-term shareholder value became all-encompassing and risks were consistently miscalculated, or simply ignored.
review 2: Tsja, wat moet je van dit boek zeggen? Zeker aardig om gelezen te hebben, geeft een goed inzicht in de gedachtengang van bestuurders van een grote bank in onzekere tijden, geeft inzicht in de sfeer van interne oorlogjes binnen zo'n bedrijf, hoe weinig slim men blijkbaar ook binnen zo'n groot (en in eerste instantie in mijn ogen ook professioneel) bedrijf toch werkt.Beetje langdradig op gegeven moment omdat het toch veelal een herhaling van zetten is met betrekking tot de ruzies binnen de Raad van Bestuur en de Raad van Commissarissen, daar hadden wel een bladzijde of 50 vanaf gekunt.Als tijdsdocument zeker de moeite waard om gelezen te hebben. less

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