Fortis Bank has appointed Juan Mejia as director, head of structured commodities finance in the Americas. He will work closely with his structured commodity finance colleagues in London as Fortis moves forward with its strategy to ‘regionalise’ its structured commodity product.

Mejia’s business reporting line will be to Cristina Roberts in New York.

Functionally he will report to Paul Schuilwerve, in his capacity as MD and global head, commodities.

Mejia joins after five years at BNP Paribas, where he was responsible for half its oil and gas Latin American portfolio. Previously, he was head of the Andean region and responsible for Mexican commodities.

In particular, Mejia led the return of BNP Paribas into the petrochemicals sector and Latin American reserve-based lending. He also developed its Latin American metals and mining portfolio, tripling its revenues in two years.

Before that, he worked seven years at Chase Securities and after completing its associate credit training programme joined the Latin American corporate finance group, specialising in project finance and mergers and acquisitions.

When becoming vice-president he joined the project finance and advisory group and later the global syndicated finance desk.