Rabobank Before, During and After the Credit Crisis: From Modesty via Complacency to Fundamental Steps

Abstract

Rabobank survived the financial turbulences of 2007–2010 well and without governmental support. In 2010, Rabobank even booked the highest net profit in its history. However, Rabobank could not escape from the fall-out of the credit crisis and the break-out of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe a few years later. For instance, the credit crisis triggered economic recessions and changed the business and regulatory environment of banking drastically. Moreover, structural imbalances in the Eurozone came to the fore and the ECB took unprecedented monetary steps which resulted in a very low interest rate environment. In its home market, the whole banking sector lost the lustre of reliability and Rabobank incurred reputational damage due to its involvement in the Libor affair at the end of 2013. The bank took fundamental measures to cope with all these challenges: a further virtualisation of its products and services, actions to increase the reservation capacity and initiatives to reinforce its participation in society to address social-economic issues together with members and customers. In May 2015, member representatives and banking executives decided to reshape the cooperative governance, while preserving the core principles and the cooperative profile.

The views expressed in this paper are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Rabobank. The article was finished in June 2015.