Michiel Matthes (Netherlands)

Dutch born Michiel Matthes studied at the University of Wageningen and holds a Masters Degree in Agricultural Economics. After serving as a FAO advisor for four years in Ethiopia and Kenya, he returned to the Netherlands, where he joined Rabobank, one of the largest banks in the Netherlands. During the first five years with the bank he focused on economic research.

From 1986 until 2005 he has been Deputy Secretary General and a Senior Project Manager at the Unico Banking Group, an alliance of eight major European Cooperative Banks (Rabobank was one of them), which have together 81 million customers, 400,000 employees and a combined balance sheet total of € 2400 billion. It was in this capacity that he helped to create some 15 European banking products in several banking areas such as payments systems, investment banking, capital markets, leasing, international banking, retail banking, risk management, procurement and internet banking.
In the Unico Banking Group Michiel Matthes acquired the knowledge and the experience to help organisations from different countries to work together in an efficient, fruitful and beneficial way.
 
In 2006 Michiel Matthes left Unico Banking Group and set up a private foundation Ecology of the Child in Brussels, where Michiel Matthes is based since 2002. Ecology of the Child  is the vehicle with which a European Network Group is created of some 10 organisations in 8 European countries, that work together on the improvement of the living environment of children in the European Union.