denotes premium content | Jan 7 2009 Trade & Forfaiting Review magazine archive
Volume 5 Issue 4
Features
AUSTRALIAN TRADE FOCUS: Asia’s trading bridge
TFR has spoken to leading Australian trade banks ANZ and Westpac, as well as to AWB Ltd, the Australian grains marketer, on trends in the local market, strategies, opportunities and risks.
BRAZIL: Advantages all round?
Luiz Carlos Aguiar looks at the advantages of using forfaiting for Brazilian importers. He is the Executive Manager responsible for trade finance products and services at Banco do Brasil in Sao Paulo – Brazil, the largest financial institution in Latin America.
CHINA: It’s taken 15 years…
One of the most important economic developments of the new century has gone virtually unnoticed, writes Martyn Hobrough, a partner of Smith & Williamson, and a specialist in international business and management. China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation is a monumental event, he argues.
EXPORTER VIEWPOINT: Techint in Uzbekistan
A winning edge in central Asia
Italian engineering company Techint has built up impressive business in Uzbekistan, thanks to its ability to link contracts to financing through SACE and commercial banks. Paolo Frascarolo, Head of Finance at Techint SpA, explains further.
FORFAITING MARKETS: GREATER CHINA
Only the tip of the iceberg
China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation is something that Holger Kebernik, Head of Forfaiting, Greater China, at WestLB in Shanghai has been waiting for. He explains how Chinese banks have been preparing themselves for the event and what lies in store for foreign counterparties.
LEGAL ISSUES: RUSSIA
Currency control freaks
Vladimir Dragunov of Baker & McKenzie in Moscow looks at the latest developments in Russian currency controls.
REVIEW OF 2001: EXPORT FINANCE
Fit for a changing landscape
2001 saw various developments thatTight market conditions in 2001 forcedexport financiers changed the landscape in export financing and put pressure on participants to engineerto design increasingly creative innovative deal structures, says argues Hans Herold, Global Head of Structured Export Finance at Deutsche Bank.
REVIEW OF 2001: FORFAITING
No exceptional year
Forfaiting hasn’t been experiencing its glory days in recent years. And 2001 was no exceptional year. Argentina and Turkey dominated the market, with margins subdued. But there were some important highlights, according to Dino Skandalis, Global Head of Forfaiting at Standard Chartered Bank in London. And 2002 could see a rebound to better days.
REVIEW OF 2001: LEGAL ISSUES
Courts and the acts
The year has seen some interesting legal cases affecting the trade finance market - deferred letters of credit, bills of exchange, security and jurisdiction - plus moves to legislate in the area of electronic trade. Robert Parson, partner at Sinclair Roche & Temperley in London, reports.
REVIEW OF 2001: TRADE & COMMODITY FINANCE
A roller-coaster year
September 11, economic recession, fluctuating commodity prices: these are just some of the factors affecting the trade and commodity finance market during 2001. Uwe Vogel, Global Head of Commodity Trade Finance at WestLB in Düsseldorf, analyses the year.
REVIEW OF 2001: TRADING ASSETS ELECTRONICALLY
After the hype, the reality
The dotcom bubble bursting, unstable economies, and of course the terrorist attacks in the US, have all helped to strip out much of the glitz and veneer from the corner of the market that promised so much and attracted so many: the world of trading trade finance assets electronically. Philip Carter discovers who's survived the year and who hasn't.
RISKS POST SEPTEMBER 11: Redefining export risk
The tragic events of September 11 couldn’t have come at a worse time with the US economy already in a downturn. Slater Smith, EFIC's General Manager, Credit Risk & Policy Management, talks about the impact on Australian exporters of trading in a more uncertain world.
TRADE FINANCE INDEX: Argentina’s slow-motion stranglehold
The LTP Trade Finance Index from LTP Risk Management gives its November performance update. This has been held to ransom by negative events in Argentina.
BOLERO: Fighting the criticism
bolero.net was launched in 1999 as the definitive way forward for putting trade and exports online and eliminating time and costs burdens. Two years on and there are only two active trading chains in use but a seemingly vast array of other signed-up partners in the field of banking freighting and shipping insurance technology and IT who haven’t taken the plunge yet. What’s preventing the market from wholesale adoption of something that has been proven to increase efficiency and cut trading costs? It’s not as simple as this as Rupert Sayer finds out.
Rescuing digital development
Learning the lessons of a new economy hasn’t come easy to policy-makers in the development community or their private sector counterparts. The hype surrounding the new economy must yield promptly to more effectively-designed technology solutions for ongoing development efforts. Groups like the World Bank, for instance, ought to put its money where its mouth is, argue Steve Rynecki, Director of Strategic Partnerships, and Casey Wolfe, Vice-President of Internet Technologies at ECI, a Washington, DC-based international communications consulting firm.
BANK VIEWPOINT: JP Morgan
Trade has not taken full advantage of technological advances, argues Jerry Topitzer, Vice-President within JPMorgan Treasury Services. He considers innovative finance options on offer to larger importers and exporters and how to leverage information for supply chain finance.
CUSTOMER NEEDS: The B2B bottleneck
Customers won't change their spots. You can lead a horse to water, but it won’t necessarily drink. Companies need to change their approach to B2B, says Neil Brownlie, Vice-President, EMEA Sales at Ironside Technologies.
ONLINE AUCTIONS: Reducing the cost of procurement
Economists have long maintained that the auction provides the best means of achieving a perfect balance between supply and demand. From a financial viewpoint this has been true in the case of the online auction where higher yields on both scarce and excess inventory have been achieved. But, while the benefits of online auctions, or dynamic pricing events, are undisputed the true value comes from moving the whole procurement process on to the web. Mary Tyler, Associate Partner in the Accenture Supply Chain management practice, and Simon Peters, Senior Member of the practice, discuss steps to maximise the benefits of dynamic pricing events and the extended footprint for e-procurement success.
ONLINE TRUST: Working out trust
In this second part following on from the last issue, Chris Bridges from Netmarkets Europe completes his outline of the results of a white paper undertaken by the firm and sponsored by bonitrus, on the issues surrounding online trust.
PRIVACY AND SECURITY: Far safer role play
Graham Ashley, Director at OpenNetwork Technologies Europe Ltd, considers how role-based access control methods can help companies maintain the basic tenets of customer privacy and data security.
