Canada’s Northstar Trade Finance, Office du Ducroire-Luxembourg (ODL) and Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI) have launched Northstar Europe to provide vendor finance for export sales.
The Luxembourg-based company will provide trade finance solutions for European small and medium-sized enterprises engaged in international trade, as well as larger firms with small and medium-sized transactions.
Northstar Europe will structure buyer financing for foreign buyers of European goods for values up to €5mn, and for up to five years per transaction. Transactions to be funded by the company are ones that, because of their size or term, would otherwise not have had funding generally available to them.
Jeannot Krecké, minister of economics and foreign trade for Luxembourg, comments: “[Northstar Europe] will ensure that there is new and ongoing support for smaller transactions to encourage buyers to proceed with their procurement plans and help exporters penetrate new markets. We are proud of the leadership role of ODL and SNCI in the development of this European instrument.”
The new venture is a unique partnership between Northstar Trade Finance of Vancouver Canada, a leader in trade finance solutions for small and mid-sized export transactions, the Office du Ducroire-Luxembourg, the public export credit insurer, and the Société Nationale de Crédit et d'Investissement of Luxembourg, a public-law banking institution.
Both KfW and AKA Bank of Germany will be invited to participate in the venture in order to strengthen the European character of this initiative.
Scott Shepherd, president and CEO of Northstar, notes: “We are delighted with this new and promising partnership. Each organisation has achieved admirable success helping Luxembourg exports, and are excellent partners in our shared efforts to provide complementary value propositions in trade finance, for businesses engaged in trade as exporters from the EU, providing buyer credit solutions to their buyers worldwide. It is a visionary leadership role by Luxembourg to help all European exporters.”
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