Making good on plans to expand its Asia-Pacific structured trade and export finance team, Deutsche Bank added Evert-Jan Zondag and Edward Hui to its staff in the region from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
Zondag is responsible for origination and export finance for Korean exporters and telecoms across Asia and Hui works on his team creating structured financing solutions. Both hires are based in Hong Kong. Zondag reports to Paul Gardner, Singapore-based Asia head of structured trade and export finance.
The appointments come three months after Deutsche appointed Gardner to his regional leadership role and confirmed plans to continue selectively expanding its regional structured trade team. At the time, the bank had nine staff on the team but has since expanded it to 12 people (including Zondag and Hui) in its China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore offices.
"The two new appointments to our STEF [structured trade and export finance] team in Asia strengthen our client coverage in the region," said Klaus Michalak, global head of structured trade and export finance at the bank. "This reinforces our commitment to serve our Asian clients with best-in-class structured financing solutions in the commodity, receivables and export credit agency areas and further strengthens our global product delivery."
Both Zondag and Hui joined Deutsche from RBS where they both worked in export and project finance, Hui specifically in power and telecoms. Gardner also came from RBS.
FinanceAsia reported that the British institution lost Pravin Advani, former Asia regional head of trade, to J.P. Morgan last week. He is expected to take over as the bank's Asia-Pacific head of trade.
Asked to comment on the three recent departures from RBS's trade finance teams, a representative of the bank said it was "committed" to the region and that Zondag and Hui came from its structured finance business, not trade finance. Still, it is worth noting that the bank no longer has trade staff in the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam following the sale of retail banking assets to ANZ last year and has shrunk to serve its regional cash and trade customers from a hub in Singapore and in 11 countries across Asia.
Trade bankers largely agree that an on-the-ground presence is necessary to serve the majority of non-multinational corporate clients.
Deutsche has landed four structured trade mandates worth more than $500 million since January according to Gardner. While he would not disclose client names, he said one mandate was a pre-export finance deal with an alumina producer in China while the rest were export credit loans, two in Japan and one in South Korea.
"There has definitely been a lot of pick-up in interest in these types of transactions," said Gardner on the demand for structured trade finance deals.
In the six-months ending March 31, the Export-Import Bank of the US (US Exim) made $1.9 billion in export credit loans in Asia, significantly more than in the same period in 2008 when it lent $456 million. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (Nexi) have also been actively lending in the region, including a $300 million credit line to Malaysia's CIMB from JBIC and a $165.4 million export credit guarantee from Nexi to Japanese manufacturers to build ships for export.
"Structured trade finance is filling the void for deals that might have used a plain vanilla loan two or three years ago," said Gardner. He estimates that the increased demand will continue for another 18- to 24-months.
"I believe that [structured trade] products will still play a vital role even when the capital markets come back again," he said.
Other banks have also seen a rise of structured trade deals in recent months. Citi provided a $200 million loan to the Vietnam National Coal Mineral Industries Group guaranteed by Nexi and J.P. Morgan provided a $1.1 billion US Exim backed loan to Air India in January.
