Following the retirement of four members of International Forfaiting Association’s (IFA) board, former treasurer Paolo Provera has been elected chairman and new officers have been named. This news was announced at IFA’s annual conference and annual general meeting in Rome in early September.

At the AGM, which took place on September 3, four members of the board stepped down – having fulfilled their terms of office under the association’s statutes. This move made way for the new members to be elected and for responsibilities to be reallocated.

Continuing board members Sean Edwards, Sema Zeyneloglu and Charles Brough have become deputy-chairman, head of education and head of membership respectively. New to the board are: Paul Langford of WestLB in London, who is now in charge of the IFA’s regions; Daniel Schär from Zürcher Kantonalbank in Zurich, who is the new treasurer and, from Marfin Factors and Forfaiters in Athens, Demetris Zouzoukis, who now leads communications.

Lixin Guo of Bank of China, Beijing has been named chairman of the North and East Asia regional committee and both he, and Standard Chartered’s New York-based Brendan Herley, president of the Association of Trade and Forfaiting in the Americas (ATFA), have been appointed non-executive board members for a period of one year. Meanwhile, outgoing chairman Lucio Matassoni and IFA’s founding chairman John Egli have both been made honorary chairmen of the association.