Our team provides useful information to industry practitioners, through various articles, studies and research.

Commodity Trade Finance between fraud, pandemic and digitization

The recent much publicised cases of fraud and losses in various trading companies in Asia and MENA (e.g. Hin Leong, Agritrade, Phoenix, Hontop Energy and Zenrock) have left a deep mark on the industry. The “usual suspect” group of financing banks (e.g. HSBC, ABN AMRO, Société Générale, Natixis, CACIB, BNP Paribas, ING, MUFG etc.) was seriously impacted with potential losses in some banks going well over USD 100 million. As a direct consequence some leading banks have decided to completely discontinue the coverage of this sector, others have discontinued their activities in certain geographical regions and let their respective teams go. Furthermore, new business has been frozen and thorough reviews are currently being prepared by other leading sector lenders.

The State’s PRÊT GARANTIE D’ETAT (PGE) is a financing and not an automatic right!

Put in place by the French Government to offer companies easy access to COVID-19 special financial support, the banks are not entirely comfortable with some of the terms and conditions of the measures. They are exercising their normal due diligence, as they would do with any credit applications. Treasury departments should therefore not spend time thinking about the optimal financing structure in the context of more or less rapid economic recovery.

Data for Stronger Banking Relationships

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