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Next trustbuster for EU known as tough insider

By TOBY STERLING
The Associated Press

FRED ERNST / AP Incoming European antitrust chief Neelie Kroes is expected to be less of a crusader than her predecessor, Mario Monti.

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Designated as Europe's next antitrust watchdog, she inherits a job of tremendous power. Her predecessor blocked General Electric and Honeywell International from merging and slapped Microsoft with a $600 million fine.

Financial experts predict Kroes, 63, will have a softer touch than Mario Monti, whom she replaces Nov. 1. By all accounts she is closer to business than Monti, whose career was mostly in academics before he became the trustbuster dubbed "Super Mario."

Kroes is a wealthy businesswoman and an adroit networker. She also is a former Cabinet minister, has served on the executive boards of dozens of business and cultural institutions. Many young women in business or politics owe their positions to her mentoring.

Unlike Monti, she is seen more as a member of the political and financial elite than someone likely to crusade against it.

"She is a strong woman, someone who perseveres, someone with connections, not an intellectual heavyweight," said Jan Bletz, editor of Chief Financial Officer magazine.

"Nobody has so many contacts in politics and business and academia. That helps her get a lot of things done behind closed doors," Bletz said.

Karel Van Miert, who was the EU competition commissioner during the mid-1990s, said Kroes is suited to the tough negotiations required when blocking mergers or confronting governments. "She's not the type of person to blink, and that's the quality you need for success in this post," he said.

Even in egalitarian Holland, business is still a man's world, but Kroes says it is up to women to break through the glass ceiling.

"If you think that men are repressing you, then roll up your shirt sleeves and try to change something about your life yourself," the Volkskrant newspaper quoted her as advising women colleagues.

Boost from father
 
Kroes' father founded a transport company in Rotterdam. With his influence she was appointed to the company's management board, the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce and the board of Erasmus University while she was still in her early 20s, shortly after she graduated with an economics degree.

Those were the first of more than 60 positions Kroes has held at various institutions, including more than two dozen companies. The list includes the Netherlands' Investment Bank and Dutch National Rail, the international shipping company P&O Nedlloyd, Sweden's Volvo automaker, Australia's Brambles, British telecommunications company MM02, and the Dutch arms of McDonald's and Lucent Technologies.

Kroes has declined all interview requests until she assumes office. Spokesman Cees Kole said that along with studying and preparing for her new position, Kroes will spend the next two months "winding down all her obligations."

Kroes said earlier this month that she plans to resign from all boards before taking her post. Through Kole, she declined to comment on her role at any of the companies where she was a director or on what measures she would take to avoid conflicts.

She will face questioning by EU legislators over possible conflicts arising from her directorships at shipping company Royal P&O Nedlloyd and mobile-phone provider MMO2.

As competition commissioner, Kroes will have to rule on antitrust charges against MMO2, where she's been a director since the company was formed in 1998, and decide whether to proceed with an antitrust-rules revision opposed by shipping companies including P&O Nedlloyd, where she has been a director since 1992.

Stint in politics

Having made her mark in business, Kroes entered politics in the 1970s with the Liberal party, a free-market centrist party that has been in coalitions with both the left-leaning Labor party and the conservatives.

The privatization of the Dutch Post and Telecommunications was her major accomplishment during her term as transportation minister from 1982 to 1989 — although 10 years later the successor postal company TPG and telecommunications company KPN both continue to dominate the Dutch market.

Kroes' ministerial reputation was marred when a parliamentary investigation concluded in 1997 — long after she left office — that she was "blamable" for awarding a subsidy to Tank Cleaning Rotterdam, a company with a poor reputation that went on to badly pollute the Rotterdam harbor in the Netherlands' largest environmental scandal.

Kroes left politics and became president of Nijenrode University, the most highly rated private Dutch graduate business school. Through her appeals to qualified women, the student body is one-third female.

Even in the relatively obscure regions of academia, she remained very much visible, in part through her marriage to politician Bram Peper, a former mayor of Rotterdam and interior minister. The couple divorced last year.

Material from Bloomberg News is used in this report.