After a series of pilot transactions, FQX, a Swiss-based fintech focused on electronic negotiable instruments, has launched its electronic promissory note, or eNote, solution into the global market, bringing a 2,000-year-old debt instrument into the digital age.
First used during the Han Dynasty in 118 BC, promissory notes are negotiable instruments that enable companies and individuals to obtain finance based on an unconditional promise to pay. Much like other paper-based trade processes, promissory notes are cumbersome and time-consuming to operate. FQX’s solution solves for this by moving them onto the blockchain in the form of an eNote, allowing them to be settled instantly.
British exporters need the UK to sign more trade deals if they are to trade their way back to profitability following the double whammy of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new data from HSBC.
In a recent survey of 1,000 UK businesses, conducted by polling firm YouGov in January for HSBC UK, 62% say that free trade agreements will be important to growing profits in the future, while just over a third say that they would want a trade deal to be in place before they would consider a new overseas market.
“The end of the transition period coupled with the third national lockdown has presented a challenging start to the year for businesses who are desperate to start executing strategies to recover,” says Ian Tandy, head of international trade for HSBC UK. “The message from businesses is that government needs to continue to deliver trade deals with new markets to help firms reach their growth targets through 2021 and beyond.”
Foreign businesses and investors that bet on a democratic Myanmar have been left rattled and are exiting the country, following a military coup in which the leader of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party Aung San Suu Kyi was detained. The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, took control of the government by force at the .
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga) has issued guarantees to Citi and Commerzbank for loans that they are providing to a state-owned Paraguayan bank in a bid to inject US dollar liquidity into Paraguay’s export sector and help the country’s economy bounce back from the Covid-19 pandemic.
As part of its Covid-19 response programme, Miga has agreed to back loans worth up to US$101mn from the two banks to Banco Nacional de Fomento (BNF), enabling the local bank to provide between five and seven-year loans to export-orientated Paraguayan corporates.
Proceeds from the loans will go towards agricultural, services, commercial and industrial activity nationwide, and will boost support for exporters by targeting productive investments, including the purchase of equipment and raw materials, as well as the expansion of infrastructure and other capital expenditure investments.
Taiwan’s central bank has taken enforcement action against six banks, including Deutsche Bank, ING and ANZ, for letting commodity traders route transactions through Taiwan to speculate on local currency rates.
In a February statement, the authority says the banks had accepted a large number of forward positions denominated in new Taiwan dollars, but related to trades that did not take place in Taiwan.
Eight major Asian food producers are accused of using foreign grain trades – the Central Bank of China, Taiwan (CBC), gives the example of a supplier in Brazil exporting goods to a buyer in India – as the basis for “foreign exchange speculation in the name of merchant trading”.