Lloyds TSB plans trade finance expansion following hiring spree

Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets is planning to increase its activity in structured trade finance (STF), participating in more of the major syndicated transactions as well as origination efforts within the local markets of its representative offices.

The bank will focus on payment undertaking guarantees (PUGs), structured pre-export finance, commodity finance working capital and the provision of borrowing base facilities, with the team divided into origination, execution, planning and credit.

The STF team is led from London by Mario Mazzocchi, managing director and head of structured trade finance at Lloyds TSB. It also has representative offices in Rotterdam, New York, Dubai and São Paulo.

“We have already participated in a number of recent structured trade finance transactions and we have made a number of strategic appointments over the past six months. But now we want to accelerate the bank’s presence in the market even further,” said Mazzocchi.

Key hires include Peter Lopoukhine, a former director of commodities finance at Société Générale, who has joined as a director in the New York office. He will be responsible for the bank’s origination efforts in the North American market.

John Hollick has been hired from Mizuho Corporate Bank (which itself has been busy hiring trade finance staff over the past year). Hollick had been director of sales in Mizhuho’s Commodity and Structured Trade Finance Group and is now a director in Lloyds TSB’s STF origination team.

Nick Lang has joined as a credit director from SMBC, bringing with him trade experience at Standard Chartered and Credit Lyonnais as well. Tracy Roche has joined from Barclays as associate director in the STF execution team, working under execution director Simon Harris.

Within the bank, Tim Tuke was promoted to director of strategic planning within the STF area. “These appointments will enable us to fulfil the first phase of our strategy to build our structuring capability and to optimise our global transaction pipeline,” said Mazzocchi.

Lloyds TSB, the UK’s fifth biggest bank, has been relatively lightly affected by the credit crunch, having adopted a more cautious stance towards the collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) around which the toxic US sub-prime mortgages had been wrapped and sold on.