Santander has hired Eugenio Cavenaghi to the position of managing director, head of trade, export and supply chain for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

In this all-new role, Cavenaghi will be tasked with building and consolidating the bank’s position throughout continental Europe. Based in Frankfurt, he will lead a team offering a broad range of trade finance products to key European exporters.

“There’s a lot of freedom and space to develop and create new things,” Cavenaghi tells GTR. “My team will cover a wide spectrum of products: from traditional documentary business to funded working capital solutions like factoring or confirming, and long-term business such as export finance and ECA-related transactions.”

Cavenaghi moves from Barclays, where for two years he was head of trade and supply chain finance products for Europe and country head of trade for Germany and Holland. He has also worked at UniCredit, where until 2012 he was global head of trade product development and sales facilitation.

Cavenaghi reports directly to Santander’s head of global trade business for continental Europe, Bart Timmermans, who is based in Madrid.

“Our ambition is to become one of the key partner banks for major European exporters, building on the strengths of product competence and global reach.” adds Cavenaghi.