Banking on Benelux

Devries ’69 and Verhoeven ’77 cash in on college ties

By Sherri Kimmel

When the crowned heads of European banking get together, what do they talk about? Citibank managing directors, who meet in a different site every few months, review how clients are doing in emerging markets such as Asia, Latin America and Africa, analyze e-business and securities issues and so forth. In keeping with Citibank’s philosophy of giving back to the communities they serve, the directors also can count on getting their hands dirty.

At their July meeting they cleaned the gardens of a 14th-century monastery in Sintra, Portugal, that had been abandoned in 1834. At this UNESCO World Heritage site they cleared the terraced gardens, now being rebuilt and restored along with the monastery. School children will tour this living monument to see how the monks of centuries ago lived and what they ate.

The motto of Chris Devries, shown here in front of his Amsterdam home, is "You must be nice to people." He lives by his rule.

The team-oriented philosophy helps Citibank’s managers develop esprits de corps, essential in a behemoth the size of Citibank, a subsidiary of New York-based Citigroup. The world’s largest and only truly global bank has more than 270,000 employees in 100 countries.

Two of those employees—in fact the leading Citibankers in the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg)—recently discovered a new and deeper bond than they found clearing brush at the monastery.

After requesting a list of European-based alumni from the college last year, Holland Country Corporate Officer (CCO) Chris Devries ’69 was startled to see that the second name listed was that of Peter Verhoeven ’77, one of his closest associates. He quickly phoned Verhoeven, with whom he’s spoken nearly daily for the three years that Peter has been Belgium’s and Luxembourg’s CCO. Between them they are responsible for all Citibank business in Benelux as well as the global-business dealings of those particular countries.

Last summer Verhoeven and Devries took time out from their busy Citi schedules to talk to a visitor from Dickinson. Relaxing on the back porch of the house Citibank provides him in the Brussels suburb of Waterloo, Verhoeven strokes the ears of his golden retriever, Jazz, and remarks, “Neither of us had any idea we had gone to the same school. The odds against this are staggering. Any bookmaker would give it a million-to-one odds.”

Digging below the surface one sees that Citibank and Dickinson are not their only common denominators. Both were raised literally around the world, following the career ascensions of their Dutch fathers, both of whom had been heroic fighters in World War II.

Bert Devries, who had married Chris’ mother in East Java in January 1942, was thrown into a Japanese POW camp a month later. He escaped and spent the next three years fighting with the Dutch-Indonesian, English and American forces. After the war, his wife, Truus, emerged from a Japanese POW camp, and they reunited. Their only child, Chris, was born in London two years later.

Peter’s father, Pieter, also had his problems with the Germans. He was interred in several German work camps during the war, being confined to a camp with increasing hard labor after each of several escapes. Near the war’s end he wound up in Prussia and once more escaped, wearing the uniform of a dead German soldier. He stowed away on a ship that capsized in the Baltic Sea, only to be rescued by a Danish fisherman who took him to Copenhagen. In Denmark he not only met his future wife, Bodil, but he joined the Danish resistance.

During the late 1960s, Peter proudly explains, the Dutch queen named his dad a Knight of Orange, “essentially for being a terrorist against the Germans.” Retired from his career as a diplomat for Holland the senior Verhoeven, ironically, now lives near Bonn, Germany.

But when Verhoeven was growing up, the family was posted in many of the world’s danger zones, including China, before the sleeping giant opened its doors to the world in 1972. One of his early memories is of his father being held under house arrest in China, in punishment for an incident between someone in the Netherlands and a Chinese national.

During the Cultural Revolution Peter recalls seeing street demonstrations—teachers paraded down the street wearing dunce caps. Later, at their post in Iraq, he and his sister were frightened by the violence that occurred when the monarchy fell. Verhoeven, whose first language was Chinese, added English, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, French and Indonesian as he shuttled around the world.

Chris’ upbringing was no less exotic. Father Bert, who first worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency and UNICEF, became an international-business leader for Kodak. By the time Chris was 18, he had lived in 13 countries, including the Philippines, Thailand, India and Singapore, and had attended 25 schools. Like Verhoeven he speaks a slew of languages.

Both Devries and Verhoeven came to Dickinson after graduating from high school in Europe, Devries from The American School of The Hague, and Verhoeven from a U.S. department of defense school in Bonn. Devries found his way to Carlisle after his principal told him, as Devries relates, “ ‘Chris, you’re a nice guy with lots of interests. You need a liberal-arts education in a small, friendly environment. I recommend Dickinson College.’ ”

For Verhoeven, finding Dickinson was a stroke of luck. While attending a college night at his high school held by a consortium of Pennsylvania colleges, “I went up to the last person available, sitting in the back of the room, and he was from Dickinson. He said there were small class sizes and that I would be one of the only international students. I was interested in history and political science, and Dickinson was good at what I wanted to study.” Like Devries, Verhoeven traveled to Dickinson sight unseen. “I had no regrets. I had the time of my life; it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I had wonderful challenges and opportunities.”

Dickinson was, as Devries notes, “a very cozy type of environment.” Belonging to Phi Delta Theta fraternity provided “a secure environment, a kind of home. These were brothers for a kid who grew up all alone all over the world.” Nearly 40 years after they first met Devries is frequently in touch with his Phi Delt brothers, as he is with other members of the circle of friends he’s acquired through a half-century of globetrotting. With ubiquitious mobile phone at the ready, he even organized Phi Delt’s first reunion last Alumni Weekend for graduates of 1960-70.

Looking back on his Dickinson years, Devries notes, “I’ve found the small campus/small town/fraternity experience a most useful one in promoting team spirit and working with and managing people.”

Post-Dickinson the men took different tracks to the highest echelons of Citigroup. Verhoeven returned to Germany and worked as a photographer, a skill he’d honed at Dickinson, while figuring out his next step. Would it be Chinese studies, an advanced history degree, law school? In Bonn, he took a business course on a lark.

“I really liked it and applied for an M.B.A. program at the University of Dallas. Banking was still far down on the list of things I wanted to do. At Dickinson I didn’t envision the career I have today.”

But the program was ending, and Verhoeven and Cydna, his girlfriend from Arkansas, needed jobs. He signed on for a training program with a bank. “I wanted to do something international,” he says. Ten months later, Citibank hired him. He, wife Cydna and sons Alex and Chris, have since lived in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Houston, San Francisco, Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, Hong Kong and, for the last three years, Brussels.

Devries, with his B.A. in economics, served in the U.S. Army’s infantry in Germany then headed to Holland in 1971 to do marketing for a fast-food franchise. A job with Kodak led him to France, where he pursued a master’s at INSEAD, “the Harvard of Europe.” He also pursued Eva Van Gelder, a Dutch artist he met on a blind date in 1974. He took a job at Citibank’s Amsterdam office in 1976 to be near Eva, whom he married in 1980. (Devries’ first wife was Gail Mangels ’71.) He and Eva have two lovely and lively daughters, Annabel and Vivian. Except for a five-year stint in Denmark, they have lived in Eva’s hometown of Amsterdam. Upon their return from Copenhagen in 1996, Chris was named CCO.

Here at the 850-year-old Abbey de Villers, a half hour from his home in Waterloo, Belgium, Verhoeven indulges the love of the past he cultivated while a Dickinson history major.

Gaining the top job at the branch with the third-largest revenue among Citibank’s corporate-banking units in Europe “was not a slam-dunk, even though I am [a naturalized] American and speak Dutch and have the experience,” Chris says, sipping a glass of red wine in the back garden of his home just a canal away from Anne Frank’s house.

“I pulled every string I had. When I started out, Europe still operated on the old boys’ network, and for a foreigner like I was, it was hard to break into. Nobility with a legal degree, a Harvard or a Wharton M.B.A. [were the tickets].”

Devries’ charm and chatability helped him make headway. “I have a tremendous memory for names, and I went out of my way to meet people, give speeches and join organizations.” His four-and-a-half story house built in 1680 is the before-dinner drinks destination for Citibank Amsterdam clients. (Devries dines out nearly 300 nights a year.)

The home that often is showcased in design magazines also is where an American student bunks every summer. His guests are students enrolled in New York-based Humanity in Action, a program that brings 30 American students to Holland, Denmark and Germany each summer to study the Holocaust and the plight of refugees.

Devries has a particular interest in human-rights issues, since both of his parents were interred in POW camps by the Japanese. He also follows father Bert’s example. The elder Devries always felt that a business had an obligation to give back to the community. As did his father, who now lives in Manila with his second wife, Devries devotes much time to a variety of organizations. Not only is he the Dutch adviser to Humanity in Action, but he is on the board of the Netherlands-American Commission for Educational Exchange, which approves all Fulbrights for Holland, and is president of the American Chamber of Commerce, a prestigious position his father held 40 years ago. Devries also advises the Giving Bank, a mentoring service for immigrant children.

Less wedded to one location than Devries, Verhoeven’s career ascent has taken a different path. Instead of concentrating on rising to the top in one particular country, he has moved around the world as he’s been promoted. He doesn’t consider Brussels, now the capital of the European Union, to be his final destination.

“I’ve never been to South America. I’d love to go back to Asia, since I’ve lived in most of the Northern European countries,” says Verhoeven. “I’d like to spend some time in the Middle East. My favorite country is always the one I’m in.”
Right now he enjoys Waterloo, a perfect location for a former history major. Verhoeven likes to show guests a good time. But rather than wining and dining in Devries fashion he prefers leading historical tours around the Napoleonic battlefields or the nearby ruined 12th-century Abbey de Villers.

Philanthropic by nature like Devries, Verhoeven is on the board of the National Foundation for Teaching Enterprise, a Belgian organization that “teaches how to do bookkeeping and how to start in business. It works with minorities and the underprivileged,” he says.

Verhoeven also serves on the boards of the American Chamber of Commerce for Belgium and the Belgium board of Junior Achievement as well as the United Fund for Belgium, a United Way affiliate. His favorite cause is the latter. “It spreads the wealth. Most European countries have good safety nets, but all the nets have holes.”

Just completing a two-year stint as national campaign leader for the United Fund for Belgium, he reflects on the experience. Smiling, he says, “Asking for money has never been hard to do.” •