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News

posted 3 Nov 2003

Deutsche Bank: Talking about an evolution

Reinhard E-Uhl, head of global trade finance at Deutsche Bank, has announced a major realignment with respect to the strategic delivery of the bank’s trade-finance products and services worldwide.

Using largely the same resources, Uhl is changing the focus for his business unit to allow relationship managers and product specialists to concentrate on their particular roles while being fully integrated into the overall goals of Deutsche Bank’s global banking division.

“I compare it to a baseball team,” says Uhl. “The relationship manager will be there to hit each transaction to first base or second base. The product specialist should then make the home run through deal execution. The key aim is to further strengthen the bank’s client focus by easing their interaction with the bank.”

To affect this, one major change is that the relationship managers will now feed transactions to both the high-volume, flow-business product teams, within the trade-risk services area (including documentary credits and collections), and the structured trade- and export-finance product teams that are charged with delivering bespoke, innovative solutions.

This allows the relationship managers to concentrate solely on the client’s needs while the product teams deal with the mechanics of transaction delivery. “It is evolutionary rather than revolutionary,” says Uhl. “But it is an important change nonetheless because it integrates and specialises the teams at the same time – creating a matrix of client, product and region – with the sole aim of offering the most effective deal delivery to the client.”

Why the change? According to Uhl, it better reflects the changes in the market. Uhl sees a world of rapidly maturing emerging markets that make the old delivery patterns for trade-finance products and services obsolete.

“Where once we had buyer markets and seller markets – perhaps correlating with developing and developed countries – we now see a convergence,” says Uhl. “Markets are now much more two-way, as indeed are the clients. They both buy and sell, both equipment and resources. And the best way to serve these more diverse needs is to locate relationship managers bang next to the client, whether in Moscow or Madrid, while the product teams, with their particular execution skills, are located in our hubs and focus purely on getting deals done. In our view, this is the best way to both maximise efficiency and stay as client-focused as possible.”

According to Dealogic, Deutsche Bank is the number one arranger of global trade-finance loans by mandates, so far in 2003, and was number one by mandates and volume in 2002. The team has also consistently won awards for short-term trade finance, documentation and structured trade finance, so any realignment on this scale is likely to have a significant impact on the market – especially given changes in the self perception of many traditional trade-finance borrowers.

“Emerging-market corporates are changing the way they view themselves,” says Robert Kelsey, managing director of Moorgate Group, a London-based consultancy specialising in public relations for emerging-market borrowers. “These borrowers are no longer simply a risk to be mitigated. They are complex entities, buying and selling capital goods as well as natural resources, and they require a range of debt and trade-finance products that reflects this. Any bank dealing with companies such as the Russian oil majors needs to recognise the new truth and to change to meet the new demands. This makes the latest wave of emerging-market lending different. The corporate, sovereign and financial borrowers have matured – many adopting international-accounting and corporate-governance standards – and they expect their lenders to acknowledge this.”

New loans coming to the market, with Deutsche Bank as a mandated arranger, include a one-year US$300m pre-export financing for Turkey’s Akbank. Other relationships likely to be affected include Russia’s Vneshtorgbank, where Deutsche Bank was one of 12 mandated banks for the US$157m club deal, and Hrvatske Autoceste of Croatia, where a 13-year Nexi-guaranteed loan for h250m was signed in October, with Deutsche Bank acting as one of two mandated arrangers. Kathleen Williams

SMBC’s Orita returns to Tokyo

Toshihide Orita of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) has returned to Japan as the general manager of trade finance in the global institutional banking department after five years in Singapore.

Based in Tokyo, Orita is responsible for trade-finance activities and will lead the bank’s trade initiatives. He established the trade-finance team in Singapore shortly after the Asian crisis and has since raised the profile of SMBC as one of the most active players in Asia.

Orita’s successor, deputy general manager Junji Nawata has been transferred from Tokyo.

Smith joins technology consultancy

Donald R. Smith, formerly of Citibank, has joined Norman Technologies as vice president of client services.

A 30-year international banking veteran, Smith was most recently vice president of global trade finance and services, and served as co-chaired the International Chamber of Commerce’s task force charged with documenting International Standard Banking Practices. He also serves on the board of directors of the International Financial Services Association, chairs the Banking Committee of the US Council for International Business and represents the US to the International Chamber of Commerce’s Committee on Banking Technique & Practice.

Norman Technologies is a Charlotte-based consulting firm specialising in supply-chain management, trade finance, cash management, foreign exchange, factoring and global payments established in 1997.

AFIA elects new officers

The financial institution members of the Association of Forfaiters in the Americas (AFIA) have elected a new slate of officers and board of directors for the term ending in 2004.

Hernan Narea of Orix USA Corp was elected president, Gregory Bernardi of London Forfaiting Americas was elected vice president and Bernardo Rothe of Banco do Brasil was elected treasurer. Other officers include: Luis Ponce of Absa Bank, Dino Sani of Banco Itau, Inwha Huh of Deutsche Bank, Diana Bustamante of Finantia USA, Therese Rabieh of JPMorgan, Bruce Fields of Standard Americas, Mark Ampuero of Standard Chartered Bank, Pamela Deutsche of TD Securities (USA) and Donald Asadorian of WestLB.

The AFIA is a non-profit group incorporated in New York dedicated to fostering and promoting international trade finance in the Americas.

New leaders and new members for Berne Union

Hans Janus of Euler Hermes Germany was appointed the new president of the International Union of Export Credit and Investment Insurers, more commonly known as the Berne Union, at an annual general meeting in Mexico. He succeeds Vivian Brown of the UK Export Credit Guarantees Department.

Janus joined Euler Hermes Germany in the political claims and rescheduling department in 1983. He subsequently moved through a variety of management positions leading up to his appointment to the board of management at Euler Hermes in 1994.

Topi Vesteri of Finnvera, the Finnish export credit agency, was elected to take over from Marjan Kramar of SEC, Slovenia, in the role of vice president. Vesteri was named director of export credit guarantees in 1998 and then deputy managing director at Finnvera in 2000.

During the course of the week-long meeting, Thai Eximbank was accepted as the newest observer member of the Berne Union, while Zurich from the US, Sovereign from Bermuda and SBCE from Brazil were voted in as full members after their two-year observer period. This brings the total number of Berne Union members to 52.

Last year, Berne Union members supported US$485bn of exports, up 6% from 2001, and backed US$14bn of investments, which is down about 10% from 2001. The countries with the largest commitments for medium and long-term business were China, Turkey, Mexico, Iran and Indonesia.

Sullivan & Worcester expands New York office

Corporate law firm Sullivan & Worcester LLP has expanded its New York office, including appointing George Lindsay to the management committee.

Lindsay, the managing partner of the New York office, is head of the firm’s securitisation practice group and a member of its banking and finance department. He represents purchasers, issuers and credit enhancers of asset-backed securities, and counsels banking organisations in secured and unsecured lending transactions, project financings, credit enhancements and capital-market activities both in the United States and abroad.

In his new role as a member of the firm’s management committee, Lindsay will serve on a seven-person team responsible for the overall governance and management of the firm.

HSBC cuts jobs in London restructuring

HSBC has embarked on a drive to review its investment-banking sector, leading the ‘world’s local bank’ to cut 30 staff in its corporate-advisory and project-finance, areas in September. This comes as part of a restructuring that is being driven by Stuart Gulliver and John Studzinski, HSBC’s new co-heads of corporate and investment banking who joined the group’s head office at Canary Wharf in London earlier this year.

An HSBC spokesperson confirmed that the bank is also in consultation with five staff in project and export finance and ten employees in its emerging-markets foreign-exchange division who are likely to be redeployed or made redundant. Despite reports that many of those about to leave are senior staff, the bank maintains that the majority of the job losses are in support areas. The spokesperson said: “At the moment, on the project- and export-finance side, there are job losses in support areas so we are not actually losing anyone from project finance at all. And, it is support staff in export finance that are going.” The bank has not released the names of those employees affected.

However, the spokesperson pointed out, with regards to export finance: “This is an area that we have traditionally been very strong in and we are still hiring there and doing some good deals. On the corporate and advisory side, where the 30 people are, it’s an area that we want to continue to grow, but it is one that we do actually need to review in terms of our business model and take it forward in the best interests of our clients.”

HSBC has traditionally had a low profile in investment banking, and Gulliver and Studzinski aim to revitalise it by capitalising on HSBC’s corporate client base. The shake-up at the London office follows the redundancy of 60 employees at the bank’s New York branch earlier this year, but like New York, London headquarters are in the process of hiring again in an attempt to strengthen its investment-banking team.

New trade-finance and insurance head at Ex-Im Bank

Richard Maxwell has been named vice president and head of the trade-finance and insurance division of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank).

Maxwell, a senior manager with broad experience in international banking, lending, and political-risk and trade-credit insurance, comes to Ex-Im Bank from GMAC Commercial Finance LLC, where he was senior vice president of the risk-management, commercial-services division.

Before joining that company in 2002, Maxwell was senior vice president of commercial underwriting at Euler American Credit Indemnity. Between 1983 and1997, he held a variety of positions at American Express Bank, ending as senior director and manager of international trade finance for North America. He began his career at the Foreign Credit Insurance Association.

Rosenblatt appointed vice president at TradePoint

Alan Rosenblatt, director of Large Systems Group, was recently appointed vice president of US operations for TradePoint Systems.

A 25-year veteran of the transportation and logistics industry, Rosenblatt spent the past 11 years performing a range of job functions, including application software designer and developer, business analyst, software-development manager, and product director with TradePoint, a software provider for the international trade community.

Fortis enters LME and precious-metals derivatives markets

Fortis Bank has announced its intention to enter the London Metal Exchange and precious-metals derivatives markets through Fortis Commodity Brokerage (FCB), a division of the bank based in London.

As part of this development, the bank has appointed John King as head of its new base- and precious-metals operation, and Gerhard Schubert as director of the precious-metals business. Seamus O’Connell will head the base- and precious-metals administration, and further appointments are expected in due course.

FCB’s main activities include advising, clearing and executing cocoa, coffee and sugar futures and options contracts on the commodity exchanges. Its clients are producers, traders and industrial processors of these products. FCB will now expand its services to include aluminium, copper, zinc, lead, tin, aluminium alloy, nickel, gold, silver, platinum and palladium.

FCB will have the exclusive and worldwide mandate within Fortis to offer hedging and investment services to its customers, as well as the institutional marketplace. Fortis anticipates commencing the business in the first quarter of 2004, once regulatory formalities have been completed.

Fortis names new GM of strategy

Hans De Backer is to succeed H. van der Knaap as general manager of strategy at Fortis, following a long and successful career with the group.

After his traineeship and five years as a senior trade-finance manager, De Backer joined Fortis Bank in Hong Kong, where he held various senior positions, including deputy chief executive officer of North Asia. He successfully redrafted Fortis Asia’s strategy and re-engineered its activities, and was a key player in the partnership negotiations between ICBC and Fortis.

New appointments at JPMorgan Treasury Services

JPMorgan Treasury Services has made five recent senior-level hires. Astar Saleh was named regional head of network trade for the Asia Pacific region. Based in Singapore, he will be responsible for capitalising on opportunities that arise from JPMorgan’s trade-finance solutions for large corporates and financial institutions. Having worked in trade finance for more than 15 years, he was most recently with Deutsche Bank as Asia Pacific head of structured trade finance.

Meanwhile, Tim Decker joined as vice president and will focus on JPMorgan’s response to technology and standards changes, and on strengthening the department’s position as a non-indigenous euro clearer.

Andrew Harding, who has been with the company for five years, has been appointed to create and implement a liquidity and investments business strategy for the EMEA corporate market.

Rod Staples, previously a senior manager of treasury consulting solutions at PriceWaterhouse Coopers, will assist in the development of financial-service-provider solutions.

And, with 13 years experience in business management and product development in cash management, securities and trade at Citigroup, Mojgan Faratin has been appointed vice president of trade. He will be responsible for trade services and finance sales development for corporates in France, Benelux, Ireland and the UK.