JB's weekly round-up - 19 May 2014
With a week and a half to go, our Paris conference on ECA/DFI Finance has almost sold out. We’re overwhelmed by the support we’ve received from the market and are now looking forward to two days of great content and even better networking, including Dan’s morning running club and erm…yoga with Dom?
See who's joining us in Paris
With a week and a half to go, our Paris conference on ECA/DFI Finance has almost sold out. We’re overwhelmed by the support we’ve received from the market and are now looking forward to two days of great content and even better networking, including Dan’s morning running club and erm…yoga with Dom? It will be two days of good fun so if you are not currently joining us, pleasecheck out who else is attending and sign up. You don’t want to miss this one.
BU80 hits the streets!
It has been a particularly busy time for TXF over the past few weeks. Two weeks ago the Berne Union held its Spring meeting in London where the organisation’s annual yearbook was freshly in from the printers – and in the Berne Union’s 80th year, TXF was privileged to have produced the 2014 edition – called the BU80.
The BU80 has some 23 feature articles written by prominent people from the agencies, private insurance and export finance sector, as well as an extensive interview with existing presidentDaniel Riordan of Zurich. At 144 pages the BU80 is the most ambitious Berne Union yearbook publication yet.
All articles, data and directory details are available for download on www.txfnews.com, or for the first time, you can visit the App store and download the BU app…
Hard copies will be distributed at Berne Union/Prague Club meetings throughout the year and at the TXF ECA/DFI Finance Conference in Paris.
All aboard the China express for East Africa
Well not exactly all – only China in fact. But that is not really a surprise. When the talk on global infrastructural development has focused so much on sub-Saharan Africa, of course it had to be China that came up with the next big project. Yes, it is the estimated $2.6 billion rail link project linking the port of Mombasa to Nairobi – and ultimately on from there to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and even South Sudan. The deal was signed in Nairobi last week between Kenya and China, and witnessed by several African leaders. And who is said to be the principal funding entity? China Exim, with possibly some additional help from other partners of China Inc. at some stage.
So, hats off to China Inc. then for another big strategic play in Africa. Chinese companies and Chinese funds are continuing to go where few Western interests have expressed serious interest and attractive financing. However, in this case, Italy’s Italferr was understood to have been close to winning the contract at one point. With many issues surrounding this deal, and the crucial importance for East African nations to have safe transport corridors to the Indian Ocean, this is a story which will continue to build.Read the initial stages of the story in the TXF news report.
Angola recharged with AfDB funds
Elsewhere on the African continent, the African Development Bank last week signed a $1 billion loan with Angola to help support theAngola Power Sector Reform Programme. This development programme has three major components - see the news item for further detail.
It is estimated that Angola has a $23 billion funding requirement for infrastructural work in the energy and water sectors alone, up to the end of 2017. And of course, during the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s four-country tour of Africa, Angola was also one of the countries he visited.
It’s not all frozen in Russia
As I write this, a Russian friend tells me that yesterday it was 33 degrees centigrade in St Petersburg. Anyway, although several deals with Russian companies have been frozen out or shelved as various institutions pull back/withdraw from doing business for the time being in Russia (because of the Ukraine-Russia troubles), some deals are still being done by banks with a serious and unwavering approach to the market. The latest major deal on the commodity front to be signed last week was a $200 million unsecured facility from ING for the world’s biggest nickel and palladium producer Norilsk Nickel. See more detail in the related news report.
This ING bilateral comes only a couple of weeks after ZAO UniCredit and ZAO Raiffeisenbank each signed bilateral, five-year loans of $400 million and $350 million respectively with Norilsk Nickel. And back in March a group of Western banks arranged a $1.2 billion PXF with Russia’s Metalloinvest. But of course deals are being shelved – Gazprom Neft for instance recently postponed a decision on a big ECA-backed export finance deal - as Russian companies and international financiers keep a close eye on the political situation and the prospect of US and EU sanctions against Russia.
Further slip at Banamex as Citi fires 12
The continuing saga at Citi’s Mexican subsidiary Banamex rolls on, with the news last week that Citigroup had sacked 12 members of staff over suspected fraud. Citi have faced the issues upfront, and chief executive Mike Corbat has been quite open in his approach to the bank staff, shareholders and the media. See the full story in TXF News.
The latest development at Banamex comes after the earlier announcement on fraud in relation to dealings with Oceanografia – a Mexican oil services company – back in March (something you can also read about on txfnews.com).
Hello Maarten van Alkemade
On the personnel front, TXF was pleased to hear about an old friend – Maarten van Alkemade - being appointed as head of the trade finance department at FIMBank in Malta. Congratulations to Maarten - long time no see, I look forward to catching up with you!
Maarten, who most recently has been in Johannesburg with Standard Bank, is a highly experienced trade and commodity financier. Last year he did some consultancy work with FIMBank, and now being based in Malta with the bank will work closely with another former colleague from Standard Bank days - Armin Eckermann, FimBank’s head of the overall trade finance group. He also teams up with another stalwart Mike Marnell, the bank’s head of commodity finance.
Finance for agriculture (Fin4Ag)
TXF is media partner for the Fin4Ag conference in Nairobi on the14-18 July – looking at bringing the agribusiness and finance communities closer together. The conference is organised with CTA (the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation), with former UNCTAD and MCX pioneer Lamon Rutten a key driver of the initiative.
Visit the Fin4Ag microsite on our website for related agribusiness news and further information on the conference.
And finally…….
A picture tells a thousand words, so they say. And, if you want to see a decent selection of photographs – have a look at the ones we have taken at our events and conferences – the most recent being taken at our Natural Resources & Commodity Finance Conference in Amsterdam two weeks ago. Who knows, you might even be in one or two…
That's all folks
JB
Jonathan Bell
Editor-in-Chief
