ANZ has brought in ex-China Ex-Im worker Alice Zou to continue building on the Australian bank’s exposure to China’s government-run agencies.

Zou has joined the structured asset and export finance team as a Beijing-based director, with a specific focus on increasing potential business lines with Sinosure, the Export-Import Bank of China and possibly China Development Bank.

Paul Richards, global head of structured export finance, tells GTR: “Given ANZ’s focus on Asia, we see a lot of opportunity with supporting Chinese exports and Chinese customers who are investing in projects in our network and also customers who are importing Chinese equipment. We want to be able to deliver Sinosure and China Ex-Im solutions for those customers.”

Zou will be particularly focussing on the resource and infrastructure sectors.

“We see Alice and her relationships and capabilities with the Chinese policy institutions as being a critical part.”

“In Asia we see a lot of Chinese engineering procurement construction activity and in Australia you have the classic equity in, commodity out, flow which we want to capture. We see Alice and her relationships and capabilities with the Chinese policy institutions as being a critical part of that,” Richards continues.

As well as working at China Ex-Im for almost a decade, Zou most recently served as vice-president, global structured finance at BNP Paribas’ Beijing office.

“Alice’s hire is consistent with ANZ’s commitment to export finance in Asia,” the bank notes in a statement.