Old-fashioned but not old guard

摘要

It was odd to meet a Gordon Gekko lookalike in humdrum south Amsterdam, complete with slicked back hair and red braces. But Michel Tilmant, chairman and CEO of Dutch bank ING Group, would never have starred in Oliver Stone's iconic 1987 film, Wall Street, in the corporate raider role made famous by Michael Douglas. Rather than much-quoted speeches by Gekko along the lines of "Greed is right; greed works", the 55-year-old Belgian, whose dress sense evolved during his 14-year stint at US bank Morgan Guaranty Trust, speaks about "the merits of the old-fashioned model" and the bank's "access to 75 million customers [who are retail, corporate and institutional], geographic spread and deposits".