![Rabobank's incoming Australia and New Zealand regional manager, Mark Wiessing. Rabobank's incoming Australia and New Zealand regional manager, Mark Wiessing.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/32XghFRykTWK8psrWNhdBMC/ae1055d4-7795-4f47-a1ab-74fa93564ed7.JPG/r669_240_4486_2938_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
He speaks five languages and has already notched up a finance career spanning Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.
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Rabobank's Mark Wiessing's background is not exactly typical of rural bankers in Australia.
The new regional boss of Rabobank's Australian and New Zealand business cut his teeth in the food and agribusiness world as a Rabo trainee overseeing a meat sales deal between France and Brazil - literally sending European beef to the world's second biggest beef cattle producer.
That transaction subsequently landed him a job with the bank in Brazil for five years, where three decades later he would return to lead Rabobank's South American business.
At the end of this month, after almost eight years as Brazilian chief executive officer and Rabo's South American regional manager, Mr Wiessing takes over a similar role in Australia, replacing the retiring Peter Knoblanche.
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Mr Knoblanch, who has been the Netherlands-based Rabobank's Australian and NZ regional manager for seven years, is signing off on a 27-year career with Rabo.
Although his replacement Mr Wiessing will be new to the nuances of farming in Australia, he is remarkably well prepared for his trans-Tasman role, and enthusiastic about Rabobank's close ties with the local food and agribusiness sector.
"Surprisingly, Australia and Brazil have a lot more agricultural sector issues in common than differences," he observed after arriving to set up his new home base in Sydney late last month.
While resource-rich Brazil ranked as one of Australia's biggest primary industry export rivals, Mr Wiessing said Rabobank's client base in both countries and the issues which welded the bank's long term relationships with its customers were quite similar.
"It's a relationship very much built around a long term intimacy which has grown from kitchen table discussions with customers, and understanding farm family dynamics," he said.
Rabobank's local business, one of the Australian farm sector's biggest lenders, was not only considered a strong performer within its international network, but "one of the coolest locations in terms of the way it relates to its customers".
Close to customers
"What makes the Rabobank business model stand out compared to other commercial banking institutions I've known is a recognition of that closeness to the customer and their livelihoods," he said.
"The bank is not driven by products, but long term relationships, growing its customers and thought leadership in dealing with issues like sustainability."
Mr Wiessing's observations are based on plenty of global banking industry experience.
After starting his career with the co-operative-owned Rabobank, he moved to another Dutch giant, ING, working in Brazil, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Hungary, France and the Netherlands, followed by stints with Citibank (Citi) in West Africa; Standard Bank of South Africa; Tanzania's NMB bank, and the Zambia National Commercial Bank.
Raised in Africa and married to a US national, Mr Wiessing speaks Portuguese, Dutch, English and French "and some Amharic", one of the two main languages of Ethiopia.
He said he wasn't too daunted about the prospect of fine tuning his language skills to understand the Australian vernacular or the soft vowels spoken across the Tasman.
At university in the Netherlands he studied business administration, and later gained an MBA at the University of Georgia in the US.
During his time as South American regional manager Mr Wiessing frequently shared management issues with Mr Knoblanche, finding the two regions had many production and trade similarities.
NZ and Chile shared considerable horticultural and dairy characteristics and business links, while Argentina and Brazil were well established beef, oilseed and grain producers with production and export goals similar to Australia and often trading products, experience and technologies between each other.
Mr Wiessing had a chance to meet some of Rabobank's big farm and food sector customers and other agribusiness sector players at the international Farm2Fork summit in Sydney at the end of March.
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