Sector - Hedging, Derivatives & Securitisation
Ex-BNP bankers launch commodities investment firm
Two former BNP Paribas commodities bankers have launched Commodity Trade Invest (CTI), a financial intermediary between investors and small to medium commodity traders.
Jacques Béglé, BNP’s former co-head of commodity trade finance, and Philippe Steiner, former commodity trade finance relationship manager, left the bank last June (2012) due to a perception of reduced opportunities following the credit crunch and ahead of the implementation of Basel III.
Spotlight on transaction banking
GTR and BNY Mellon gathered a group of experts in the transaction banking business to discuss key concerns facing the market today. The debate served as a follow up to a survey conducted by the two institutions which tested the market on a number of different points including trade, liquidity, foreign exchange and regulations.
Metinvest secures PXF
Ukrainian steel producer Metinvest has secured a US$300mn three-year pre-export finance facility.
Banks 'must' educate investors
Banks should tackle institutional investors’ lack of education around trade finance assets in order to fill the liquidity void generated by Basel III, according to new research.
In its Cracking the Code research paper, Vancouver-based Global Business Intelligence (GBI) points out that Basel III regulations will open up space for insurers and institutional investors to get involved in trade transactions, but that banks have not yet found the right way to engage with these investors.
David Gustin, GBI’s president, tells GTR: “The best engagement point is probably conferences, where pension funds, family offices, and insurers get together to discuss their asset allocation strategy. These are big engagement points because they enable the banks to meet the people who make the decisions – paid consultants a lot of the time.”
He adds that institutional investors should not be seen as competition by banks, and that distributing assets among them would be better than among other banks from a competition point of view.
“The Basel III capital issue has gone a long way in terms of pushing this up to the forefront and identifying that there are new challenges in the banking industry and informing the non-bank community that there are opportunities for them.”
According, to Gustin, the lack of publicity around trade finance deals is also an obstacle that needs to be overcome in order to attract alternative investors.
“When a fixed income professional is told to look for investment, the first thing they do is look at a Bloomberg screen, and if it doesn’t exist on Bloomberg it doesn’t exist. If you do a search on the loan sector, there are hundreds of thousands of types of loan that you can buy and trade finance gets lost into that category. There is no description of trade finance transactions and most institutional investors don’t understand the nuances of trade.
“When hedge funds buy these assets, they have connections to the banks and they understand the difference between a Ukrainian steel deal and a Mongolian copper deal, and an Angolan cotton deal; they have the expertise to understand the complexities involved in those deals, whereas institutional investors do not have the resources to understand that,” he says.
StanChart hires loan syndication head
Standard Chartered has appointed Cristian Jonsson as global head of loan syndications.
VTB appoints project finance veteran
VTB has hired structured and project finance veteran Konstantin Limitovsky as vice-president.
Transaction banking survey: The winds of change
GTR and BNY Mellon have collaborated to produce a major attitudes survey of both the buy and sell sides of transaction banking.
Manitowoc wins securitisation
Manitowoc Company has won a US$150mn securitisation with the help of Wells Fargo and Finacity Corporation.
Sonae Industria wins trade receivables securitisation
Finacity Corporation and ING Belgium have closed a €100mn trade receivables securitisation for Portugese-based wood panel supplier Sonae Indústria.
Scipion Capital: Bridging the gap
Nicolas Clavel, chief investment officer of Africa-focused asset manager Scipion Capital, talks to GTR’s Melodie Michel about how hedge funds are filling a gap in commodity trade financing.
StanChart steps in to boost receivables securitisation
Alliance One has once again increased its trade receivables securitisation to US$250mn with the help of Finacity Corporation and Nord LB.
StanChart steps in to boost receivables securitisation
Alliance One has once again increased its trade receivables securitisation to US$250mn with the help of Finacity Corporation and Nord LB.
Finacity and NordLB boost receivables securitisation
Finacity and NordLB have again increased the Alliance One International trade receivables securitisation, this time from US$100mn to US$125mn.
China Power closes offshore bond first
China Power International Development has successfully closed its first renminbi-denominated corporate offshore bond through Standard Chartered.
Citi launches multi-bank trade initiative
Citi has launched a new global trade initiative aimed at helping trade banks more efficiently grow their trade portfolios.
