Page 27 - Exporta Publishing News Today

Supermarket chain Tesco has become the first UK retailer to offer sustainability-linked supply chain finance (SCF) to its supply base, through a new programme with Santander. The voluntary programme, which has been in development for 18 months and is due to launch in September, will see Tesco’s suppliers get preferential financing rates via Santander’s SCF platform if they meet targets around carbon data disclosure, emissions reduction and progress against sustainability goals. “In this c...

Two directors have stood down from the board of Singapore-based fintech Triterras following a disagreement over the company’s response to allegations of related party transactions. Triterras says in a regulatory filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Matthew Richards and Vanessa Slowey resigned as directors on April 22. The duo have also terminated their membership of the company’s audit and compensation committees. Richards’ resignation letter, addressed to Triterras...

US law firm Arent Fox has made three new hires in its international trade and investment practice. David Tafuri (pictured), who has been named as a partner, joins the firm from Dentons, where he chaired the emerging democracies practice. His prior experience also includes seven years as partner at Squire Patton Boggs, and before this he served as rule of law coordinator for Iraq at the US Department of State, where he worked directly with the chief justice of Iraq and Iraqi ministries to help r...

An Australian agriculture finance provider is suing  insurer the Bond and Credit Company (BCC) for refusing to honour a claim for A$7.3mn owed by collapsed Dubai-based commodities trader Phoenix Commodities. The legal wrangle highlights the ongoing fallout from the demise of Phoenix, a trading conglomerate that reportedly owed US$1.2bn to creditors when it entered liquidation ...

A coalition of banks last week committed themselves to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and adopting interim targets much sooner. But a glaring absence of banks from major polluting countries in the Asia Pacific and criticism of its conservative ambitions has undermined confidence in the alliance.  The Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) was launched on April 21 by the United Nations Environment Program’s Finance Initiative and comprises 43 banks from 23 countries.  Hailed b...

The European Union’s proposed new scheme to impose levies on carbon polluting imports in a swathe of sectors risks “unfairly penalising” developing countries, a new report from the Centre for European Reform (CER) think tank says. Last month, the European Parliament adopted a resolution backing the launch of a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) which will charge certain types of imports from “less climate-ambitious countries”. The European Commission is now set to table legisla...

Lee Si Ye, deputy managing director of Envy Group – a cluster of Singapore-based companies accused by state police of defrauding investors – says in court documents seen by GTR that the companies are “likely to become unable to pay their debts as they fall due”. The scheme involved Envy Group companies purchasing nickel at a discount from Australia-based supplier Poseidon, which would then be sold onto other parties including BNP Paribas and Singapore-based trading company Raffemet, L...

Crédit Agricole CIB has signed its largest ever synthetic risk transfer (SRT) with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), as it seeks to expand its trade finance activities in emerging markets. The structured finance transaction will see the IFC provide a US$182mn guarantee on a US$4bn-equivalent reference portfolio composed mostly of Crédit Agricole CIB trade finance ...

Swiss-Italian shipping giant MSC, a member of blockchain-powered global trade platform TradeLens, is introducing Wave BL’s electronic bill of lading (eBL) for its customers around the world, following two years of pilot testing. The solution, which MSC is launching today, uses distributed ledger technology to enable shippers and other supply chain stakeholders to receive and transmit the bill of lading electronically through a secure, decentralised network – helping reduce delays caused by ...

UK Export Finance, the state-owned export credit agency, is facing a review of its decision to back Total’s US$20bn liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. It follows a barrage of criticism directed towards the agency by UK MPs and activists for its continued support of overseas fossil fuel deals. Friends of the Earth, an NGO, has been given the go-ahead for a judicial review that will examine the judgment taken by UKEF to provide around US$1bn of taxpayer mone...