There was also a change in the lenders involved, with ABN Amro and JP Morgan replaced by Banque de Commerce et de Placements and Sberbank.
Marc Pfefferli, group treasurer of MET Group, says: “MET has once again demonstrated a strong relationship with its banking partners. Despite a challenging environment, the pricing of the facilities remained identical as in the previous year.”
Pfefferli tells
GTR that there has been a drop in risk appetite among major banks in the broader commodity and energy space, who were last year hit by defaults. ABN Amro, for one, announced in August that it would
Despite dark predictions for a long, drawn-out hit on trade as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, trade transaction volumes in Asia finished 2020 ahead of 2019 levels, according to HSBC. Proprietary data from the global trade bank, seen by
GTR, shows that the number of guarantees, trade and receivable finance products taken up month by month in 2020 overtook 2019 levels in September, and stayed above year-prior levels throughout the fourth quarter.
“It was very difficult to predict what kind of recovery would take place. At a certain level, we looked at our data and we were quite amazed,” says Ajay Sharma, regional head of global trade and receivables finance, Asia Pacific, at HSBC. “When we looked at the data in July, we could see that working capital cycles were stretched, past dues were quite wide, and there was stress in the banking system. Today, all of this is back to normal. I don’t think any of us could have expected to see it bounce back so quickly in this way.”
AXA XL has brought in Caroline Tran to lead its political risk, credit and bond (PRCB) insurance business in Europe, a newly created position for the global re/insurer.
Tran joins AXA XL from Atradius, where she had been for the last 12 years, most recently as deputy head of special products and product leader for structured single situations and political risks. She started her career with Coface in Shanghai in 2004 and, a year later, became a country risk analyst and a political risk underwriter for Unistrat Coface in Paris.
In her new role, based in Paris, Tran is responsible for developing the underwriting strategy for Europe and overseeing its implementation, working closely with AXA XL’s local PRCB underwriters and distribution teams. She is also responsible for the company’s PRCB portfolio in France.
In the second half of 2020, Chinese
restrictions on coal imports from Australia – part of a wider trade dispute between the two nations – left vessels anchored in the Bohai Sea for months on end, unable to offload cargo, divert course or even change crews.
“It’s totally devastating,” says Gaurav Singh, a navigation officer aboard Anastasia, which has been unable to dock since leaving Australia’s Hay Point in July last year. “Everyone is in panic, physically and mentally exhausted without any hope,” he tells
GTR.
Anastasia’s crew of 18, which comprises 16 Indian nationals, one Russian and one Filipino, are now entering their 21st consecutive month at sea.
At the end of last week, the European Commission set out a plan to control Covid-19 vaccine exports from the EU, including requiring vaccine makers holding contracts with the bloc to have authorisation to export.
The Commission cites a “lack of transparency” of vaccine exports from the EU as the reason for the measures, which came into effect on January 30 and will apply until the end of March.
The new export control regime mandates information disclosure by Covid-19 vaccine producers that have advanced purchased agreements with the EU and are planning to export their goods.
Initially, the EU had planned to go one step further: it intended to implement a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to halt vaccine supplies leaving the bloc and entering the UK via this route. But it made a swift u-turn on this decision after pressure from both sides of the Irish border and the rest of the UK.