The rationale and impact of Banques Populaires transformation from a cooperative to a commercial bank

II.7.9 RABOBANK TODAY: MARKET LEADER IN THE NETHERLANDS

Today Rabobank is the market leader in the Netherlands in almost all areas of financial services, with a considerable market share in the agricultural sector. From a historical perspective, agricultural financing is the Rabobank's forth. The market share in the agricultural sector still fluctuates between 85 and 90 percent. Over time the non-agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprise sector has become an important target group of the cooperative banks. In the mid-1970s the Rabobank already had a thirty percent share of this market and since then it has risen to around forty percent. In 1987 of all the loans issued to the business community, for the first time, the number of loans to non-agricultural companies was greater than agricultural companies. Lending to the primary agricultural sector currently accounts for slightly less than eight percent of the group's total lending operations ( www.rabobank.com)..