Three years ago, Amsterdam-based Rabobank offered Hugo Steensma, head of its North American operation, a career opportunity in Singapore.
Mr. Steensma, 56, said thanks but no thanks.
Instead of heading east, he moved west - from New York to Sonoma, Calif., to start up Sonoma International Capital Associates Inc. The investment partnership targets promising food and agribusiness companies.
The choice Mr. Steensma faced parallels that of hundreds, if not thousands, of senior executives at banks that have merged, downsized, or shifted priorities.
Like others, Mr. Steensma had to decide whether to accept a post others had decided on for him, or to strike out on his own.
"We are living in an information-driven, systems-driven age," Mr. Steensma said. "There are simply too many banks out there, and the reality is that companies will ask you to move on. But once you get out from under the corporate security blanket, you'll find there are an awful lot of things you can do."
Besides, he added, "people are much more creative than they know, and they'll always find a way to make ends meet."
The Dutch-born former banker is making a success of his new career in Sonoma, an area famed for its vineyards.
Drawing on his experience at Rabobank, a major lender to agribusinesses, his partnership focuses on raising equity for companies with $25 million to $250 million of annual sales - as he puts it, companies "that stay under the radar screen and don't get picked over."
Most are privately owned and have a recognizable identity but need extra capital and are not quite ready to go public.
Since starting the company, he has brought in some impressive partners. One is Robert D. Cook, former chief executive of Dole Foods Co. Others include James L. Rainy Jr., ex-president and CEO at Kansas City-based Farmland Industries, the largest agricultural supply cooperative and a major food processor; and James A. Schlindwein, former executive vice president for procurement at Sysco, a Houston-based restaurant and hotel supply company.
"We try to identify attractive investment opportunities and invest for ourselves and others, including institutional investors," he said. Ultimately, he added, the group plans to manage a fund for such investments.
Tall and courtly, Mr. Steensma expressed no bitterness at having his corporate career abrubtly curtailed after 27 years in banking, during which he built Rabobank's U.S. operation. That operation got its start in a New York hotel room just over a decade ago and grew into a $12 billion-asset enterprise.
The important thing, once you must leave, is to decide what you like and want to do and "trust in your own skills and capabilities," Mr. Steensma said.
More bankers, he predicted, will wind up at the same crossroads. "Everyone faces the question of how long do you want to continue to do the same thing," he said.
"I think a lot us have realized that there is a bigger world out there than commercial banking," Mr. Steensma said, "so the question really is what do you want to do."
When it comes to that, he added, the key is "to leverage your experience, knowledge, and contacts."
Since launching Sonoma International, Mr. Steensma said, he has also experienced an intangible, unquantifiable but still large measure of intellectual satisfaction from having reorganized his life and built up something on his own.
"It's a significantly more enjoyable life," Mr. Steensma said. "Even if I'm busy, I don't have the corporate pressure and the incredible focus on corporate politics."
Would he have stayed if Rabobank hadn't asked him to move?
"I probably would have stayed on for a while," he reflected. "But eventually, I would have left anyway."
