We spoke to Tommy Östling, vice-president of financial advisory for project and export finance at ABB, at the GTR Nordics event about tackling sanctions as a global exporter and the decreasing amount of trade finance available from Nordic banks for riskier deals, making it even tougher for SMEs to source the funding that they need.

ABB is a Fortune Global 500 firm, making it one of the world’s 500 largest companies; its annual turnover in 2018 was US$28bn (2018). The Swiss-Swedish corporate’s expertise lies in the creation and integration of technology solutions across a variety of sectors including electrification, power and robotics.

In this video, Östling explains that US and EU sanctions continue to be a challenge for ABB, but as the delivery of its products are often in a country’s national interest, exceptions can sometimes be made for specific transactions.

He also says that because ABB is a large corporate, it gets the support it needs from the market, whereas smaller companies have a much bigger challenge on their hands when it comes to accessing finance.