It's all in the number crunch

The number-crunching bedrock for the commodities finance market - the TXF Commodities Finance Report (H1 2017) - is available to subscribers for download.

The report is drawn from deal data in TXF Media's www.tagmydeals.com - the only commodity finance database in the market. The database range extends from 1 January 2013 to the present day and information is sourced directly from around 45 major international commercial banks, commodity traders and producers

Highlights in the H1 2017 report include:

• In the first half of 2017 banks provided a total of $48.7 billion worth of commodity financing for both commodity producers and traders.
• Commodity traders Trafigura and Glencore, as well as commodity producer FMG Resources, were the largest single recipients of bank financing in the first half of 2017.
• Revolving credit facilities (RCFs) amounted to a total of $28.9 billion in bank financing in H1 2017, down from the $39.5 billion signed in the same period in 2016.
• 73.8% of debt consisted of unsecured lending where RCFs accounted for 59.5% of the total.
• The major traders signed a total of 17 RCFs in the first half of 2017, six less deals than in the same period of 2016, but total volumes decreased by more than $17 billion over the same period.