Orix Trade Capital is being wound up by its parent Orix USA Corporation and the two figures that set up and ran the tem in New York, James Klatsky and Hernan Narea, have left.

 

Orix has made a strategic decision to exit the trade finance business, claims an insider. It has decided that this business does not fit within a predominately US asset-based funding business, which includes real estate, municipal finance and other non-trade areas. It is not a business that the parent wants to add resources to.

 

Orix Trade Capital (OTC) launched in mid 2002 with much publicity as a trade finance asset management company, providing additive capital to financing flows in emerging markets. The group saw itself as a new source of trade financing at a time when it claimed growth in demand for cross-border commercial financing was surpassing the available supply of capital.

 

The group closed some interesting deals that included the following in Brazil: a US$20mn medium-term secured pre-export finance facility for Coimex Trading Ltd and a US$38mn import finance facility for Braskem which was oversubscribed.

 

The insider adds that the OTC team experienced zero losses and now there is a skeleton team remaining to sell down the remaining book. He adds that: “This is not a fire sale.”

 

Orix USA is in turn owned by Orix Corporation Japan.