Christian Muchery is replacing Raoul Bajaj as head of Fortis Bank’s structured commodity finance department for Asia Pacific.

After eight years at Fortis Bank of which the last four were spent in structured commodity finance as head of Asia Pacific SCF, Bajaj has taken up a position with Trafigura in London as head of structured trade finance for Asia Pacific. He will report to Pierre Lorinet and Nicolas Konialidis.

Muchery is replacing Bajaj, reporting to Carl Shipman, head of SCF.  Muchery joins from Bank of New York where he was the head of global trade financial services.  Muchery previously worked in Hong Kong with the structured trade and export finance unit of Barclays Capital.

Shipman comments, “Christian has worked extensively in Asia and as we further develop the regionalisation of the SCF business with dedicated teams in New York and Hong Kong, he will play a key role. Our China business model, for instance, will be more aggressively driven in 2006 with adaptations to the shifting import/export balance. In addition then to the strength we already have within the global commodities group in Hong Kong and Shanghai, there is a strong desire to have SCF specialists on the ground.”