Page 18 - Personal Data Held News Today

A trade embargo placed on Mali by the majority of its neighbouring West African countries could affect its vital gold export sector in the coming months should a détente fail to be swiftly reached, analysts say. On January 9, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) imposed sweeping  sanctions on Mali after the country’s ...

Deutsche Bank has closed a lending facility to finance phase two of the Kumasi Market redevelopment project in Ghana, together with the UK Export Finance Agency (UKEF) and African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). The €184mn financing to the Republic of Ghana consists of a €145mn loan supported by UKEF and a €39mn commercial loan by Afreximbank. ...

HSBC has appointed Natalie Blyth to the newly created role of global head of commercial banking sustainability, effective immediately. In her new position, Blyth is tasked with driving HSBC’s sustainability plans within commercial banking, in collaboration with group chief sustainability officer Celine Herweijer, who the bank brought in from PwC in February last year. She ...

Despite the continued impact of the pandemic, the disruption to global supply chains and the transformative effect of technology on trade and trade finance, GTR’s most-read stories of 2021 focused on the commodity finance sector. In some cases, the most popular stories – as measured by page views – were outlier events. In one example, ...

Despite a stable end to 2021, the commodity finance industry remains wary of being embroiled in another fraud scandal. Though price rises and strong liquidity have led to booming business at the top end of the market, smaller traders continue to struggle for access to finance. Could strengthening collateral checks or warehouse inspections help mitigate ...

The Commodities Issue takes a look at the key developments across the industry, as it continues to grapple with the fallout from a string of fraud scandals in 2020.

Japanese trading conglomerate Sojitz has been hit with a multi-million dollar fine by US authorities after wayward employees secretly traded Iranian-origin goods in violation of economic sanctions on the country. Sojitz’s Hong Kong subsidiary agreed to pay US$5.2mn to settle allegations by the US sanctions enforcement agency, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), that ...

A United Arab Emirates oil trading company committed fraud when it arranged for part of a trade finance facility extended by Mauritian bank SBM to be dissipated to related entities and failed to repay more than US$21mn owed to the lender, a court in Dubai has ruled. Renish Petrochem FZE secured a lending facility with ...

HSBC has arranged a trade facility for multinational garment manufacturing company Epic Group that it says is its first sustainability-linked trade finance transaction in Hong Kong. The proceeds will support Epic Group’s working capital and trade cycle, with pricing tied to its performance in greenhouse gas emissions intensity, freshwater use intensity, as well as Higg ...

Illicit actors are turning to new techniques to evade sanctions on maritime trade, with industry insiders warning of a spike in location signal manipulation and “deep” dark activity, as well as growing misuse of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) exports.  Instances of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) manipulation, which allow vessels to report false information about ...