Banking and trading veteran Jan de Laat has joined the commodity finance arm of warehousing and logistics company C. Steinweg Group.
De Laat joins after two years at metals and minerals ores trader Raffemet Group. In a career spanning four decades, he served for nearly 17 years as managing director, trade and commodity finance at Rabobank, including in Singapore, London, Nairobi and New York.
He has also held roles at Dutch banks ABN Amro and ING, as well as Fortis Bank, and spent two and a half years as finance director at Glencore in the 1990s.
Steinweg Trade & Commodity Finance (Suisse) SA, which is based in Geneva, provides commodity finance as an extension of its core warehousing and logistics services.
The company offers ownership-based financing as a complementary source of liquidity to C. Steinweg Group clients. Its commodity finance team is headquartered in Rotterdam and is led by Pim van der Heijden, also Steinweg’s director for group treasury.
De Laat tells GTR the company started providing financing around 20 years ago “on a very small scale”, but has since grown this business “to pretty large numbers”.
“Banks, at the same time, have been changing strategy,” de Laat says.
“They impose more stringent country-specific limits, some commodities are ineligible for financing, and pricing goes up. This shift has had a pronounced impact on second-tier participants who are now facing mounting difficulties in accessing essential financial support.”
In response to this growing imbalance, Steinweg says it is providing tailored solutions to bridge the financing gap and address the evolving needs of clients and prospects.
“We now want to take the next step and expand commodity finance even further via our Suisse-based commodity finance franchise,” he says.
“This is a fantastic instrument combining ownership-based financing with the strong custodian role of Steinweg. This approach not only attracts clients but does so efficiently providing valuable support to those increasingly struggling to secure financing for their business”.
