As part of a raft of new appointments, London Forfaiting Company (LFC) has rehired Jeremy Burke as a senior manager for African marketing and coverage.

Burke, who spent seven years as an associate director at the firm in the 1990s, has rejoined this month from CDC Group, where he held the role of investment director since September 2010.

Prior to this he worked at Mizuho for 10 years where he served as head of trade finance and head of Russia and CIS markets.

Based out of London, Burke reports to LFC’s CEO Simon Lay, who tells GTR that Burke “is responsible for generating new African business opportunities and providing an enhanced level of risk monitoring on our exposure to African transactions”.

Lay adds that he sees many opportunities to increase LFC’s activity in places like Ghana and Nigeria: “Africa is a key market for us. We do a lot of supplier credit business plus some syndicated and bilateral loan transactions. However, when we purchase an export transaction from a company in Europe selling to Africa, we do not always have direct contact with the counterparty on the continent. Therefore, we see enhanced coverage of such risks as an important component in our portfolio management.”

LFC has made a couple of other major hires since the turn of the year, bringing in Nataliya Kruglikova to its Moscow office as a deputy chief representative, responsible for business development and coverage in Eastern Europe.

Kruglikova, who specialised in trade, receivables and commodity finance while working at HSBC, VTB Bank and Citi, had up until recently been working for a family office in Germany and France.

Meanwhile, Lars Reinhold has been hired as a consultant in LFC’s German office, reporting to Wenli Weng, the company’s representative in Germany. His prior experience includes 13 years as head of trade, export and project finance and controlling at EDL Anlagenbau in Leipzig.