ABN AMRO Hires Arturo Porzecanski and Team.

Business Editors

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 7, 2000

ABN AMRO (NYSE: ABN), a leading international banking group, today announced a major expansion of its emerging market research capabilities with the hiring of Arturo Porzecanski as head of emerging markets economics and debt strategy. Fernando Losada and Michael Henry have simultaneously been appointed senior economists for Latin America. Immediately before their arrival at ABN AMRO, all three were prominent members of the financial markets research group at ING Barings.

Arturo Porzecanski is one of the founders of emerging markets research on Wall Street, having started his post-doctoral analyst career nearly 25 years ago by covering Latin America for J. P. Morgan, which he did until 1989. Since that time, he has held research leadership posts at Republic National Bank of New York, Kidder, Peabody & Co. and at ING Barings, where he set up the fixed-income research department six years ago.

He is widely credited by issuers and investors alike for having anticipated most of the key turning points in the fortunes of various emerging markets, including the remarkable financial rehabilitation of most Latin American countries in the early 1990s, the destructive Mexican devaluation of late 1994, Brazil's successful currency devaluation of early 1999, and the many economic and political cycles in Argentina. He and his team at ING Barings were the first in the industry to develop a sovereign risk model to anticipate changes in long-term creditworthiness and first also to develop a sovereign liquidity risk index to pinpoint short-term vulnerabilities in otherwise creditworthy emerging countries.

At ABN AMRO, as managing director and head of emerging markets economics and debt strategy research, he will support both the equity and fixed income businesses - origination, trading and distribution - involving stocks and bonds issued out of Asia, Emerging Europe and Latin America. He reports to Kevin Darlington, the London-based global head of strategy and economics, and to Keith Schneider, the New York-based head of fixed income for Latin America.

Fernando Losada has been appointed vice president of Latin American economic research. He is one of the best known specialists on Argentina and Mexico, and has won praise for his coverage of the recent groundbreaking Mexican national elections. His cautious optimism on Argentina has stood in marked contrast to the widespread pessimism expressed by most other analysts. He started his post-doctoral research career as an economist at the World Bank before coming to Wall Street. He worked at ING Barings for the past two years.

Michael Henry has also been appointed vice president of Latin American economic research. He is one of the most knowledgeable Wall Street experts on the Andean region, and will continue to cover countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. During the past year, he has been alerting investors about holding Ecuador bonds and has generally been much more constructive on investment prospects in Colombia and Venezuela than many other sovereign analysts.

Brian Lawson, Global Head of Fixed Income at ABN AMRO, commented:

"These senior appointments, together with others we are making in the origination, trading and distribution sides of the business, are proof of our commitment to deliver first-class investment banking services to issuers and investors. We already have in place an excellent group of equity and fixed income analysts covering companies, industries and countries in Asia, Emerging Europe and Latin America, but were missing an overall team leader and additional expertise in terms of Latin American economic and debt strategy research. Now we are in very good shape."

Based in The Netherlands, ABN AMRO is a leading international bank group with nearly $500 billion in assets, active in 76 countries with more than 100,000 employees worldwide. ABN AMRO is the fourth largest bank in Europe and the largest foreign commercial bank in the US, with The LaSalle Group and Standard Federal in the MidWest and European American Bank in New York accounting for some $120 billion in assets. ABN AMRO shares trade in the US on the NYSE in ADR form, and are listed on the principal stock exchanges in Europe. The ordinary shares may be accessed on the Reuter Equities 2000 Service under the symbol ABN.AS and on Quotron under the symbol AABN.EU. Additional information is available on ABN AMRO's home page: http://www.abnamro.com.