The Fast Track: His job is to turn a dwarf into a giant for ABN-Amro

ABN Amro Bank NV is the world’s eighth-largest banking company with 100,000 employees, but it’s only a dwarf in the U.S. asset management business.

Randall C. Hampton, the new president and chief executive of ABN Amro Asset Management, is hoping to make the Chicago-based unit stand taller.

“I believe our best days are ahead of us,” says Mr. Hampton, 56, a lifetime Chicagoan who was named to the position on Jan. 1. “It’s certainly not a turnaround situation but certainly we can do better.”

He replaces James B. Wynsma, who was promoted to chairman after serving as interim president. He took that job in April when, after just 14 months as chief executive, Tim Leach went to Wells Fargo & Co. as chief investment officer for the private client services unit.

Mr. Hampton has his work cut out for him. The group manages $8 billion, with $3.5 billion in mutual funds and most of the rest in institutional and public pension funds. Worldwide, ABN Amro manages more than $104 billion.

Of its11 mutual funds (it operates five money market funds, too), only two are in the top quartile of peer group performance year-to-date, according to figures from Morningstar Inc. Its International Equity fund is in the 92nd percentile.

“We certainly would like to be in the first quartile of performance in each style of the funds,” he says. “That is a reasonable expectation.”

Mr. Hampton is intimately familiar with the asset manager.

He was hired as executive vice president of institutional trust services for LaSalle Bank, a unit of ABN Amro, in January 1998. He retains his LaSalle post, but his priority now is leading the money management unit.

Mr. Hampton, who describes himself as a workaholic and relaxes by checking out stocks on the Internet and reading financial magazines, has a range of experience that should help him in his new role.

Before joining LaSalle, he clocked in three years as vice chairman of Chicago value manager Ariel Capital Management. Before that, he spent 28 years at Northern Trust Corp., where his last position was senior vice president and head of sales, marketing and client relations for government and Taft-Hartley pension funds.

John Rogers, the chairman of Ariel, says Mr. Hampton is well suited to build relationships with pension fund managers or with LaSalle bankers whom Mr. Hampton hopes to use to cultivate investors.

“Randall is very well-liked and we called him our ambassador because he was so good with people,” Mr. Rogers says. “He was out there building relationships and getting our name out into the marketplace.”

Mr. Hampton is trying to build on the strengths of the two companies. After Mr. Leach left, the asset management organizations of ABN Amro North America and LaSalle were combined into one unit with a staff of 72. Paul Becker, formerly chief investment officer of LaSalle, now has that position with the combined unit.

Now, Mr. Hampton’s job is to improve performance.

“We’re becoming more focused and working together in management teams and just working very hard to have a disciplined, focused process in place that utilizes the team strength of this new combined investment team,” he says.

Mr. Hampton says ABN Amro will stick to its historic strength of managing portfolios of growth stocks.

Last month it outsourced management of the $44 million ABN Amro Small Cap fund to Delaware Investments and the $151 million Value fund to Mellon Associates.

Marketing also is a high priority for Mr. Hampton. He plans to build up ABN Amro’s 401(k) business and use its funds as a cornerstone.

This year he plans to market ABN Amro funds that are managed abroad to large corporate and public funds.

schwab shelf space

To reach advisers, the funds already have been placed on the Charles Schwab Corp. supermarket. Mr. Hampton is looking to put the funds in other online outlets and is considering hiring wholesalers who will market to financial planners.

In another example of the growing link between the asset manager and LaSalle, Mr. Hampton plans to use the commercial bankers of LaSalle as a marketing force.

“We have now picked up another 600 salesmen who are our commercial bankers here in Chicago and other locations,” says Mr. Hampton. They “will help us take our products out to their middle-market clients. That’s a referral network that has not been utilized to its full extent in the past.”

Mr. Hampton’s success depends partly on how much support he gets from the parent company, which announced plans last week to cut 2,500 jobs in its home market. In the past, the biggest Dutch bank has put asset management on a back burner, says a former executive. This may change, however, because ABN Amro — a universal bank — is expected to acquire a U.S. life insurer once financial services deregulation goes into effect.

Mr. Hampton says that while there are no immediate acquisition plans, that could change.

“We are a small firm and we are responsible for all of North America and that’s a large task,” he says. “I do think somewhere down the line it is going to change, and ABN Amro is somebody that does acquire.”