Standard Chartered Structured Trade Finance

With teams located on the ground in London, Dubai, Singapore, India, Hong Kong and New York, the Structured Trade Finance Group arranges and structures trade financing solutions for clients across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. We specialise in providing competitive, asset based financings with optimal risk mitigation solutions for our clients.

Typical characteristics of trade financing solutions include:

• Risk mitigation - generally asset based financing (receivables/inventory)
• Often self-liquidating with cash inflow upon completion of transaction
• Advance for a specific purpose
• Advance less than lock-in value of security
• Transactional identity & control permits higher leverage
• Stricter Monitoring/Control requirements

Why Utilise Structured Trade Financing?

Both buyers and suppliers can tap our structured trade finance products to raise funds for either capital expenditure or working capital requirements.

If your company has limited unstructured credit lines due to reasons such as inadequate country limits, limited financial resources, sudden spike requirements etc, we can assist you.

Our risk evaluation focuses more on the client's performance track record, existing performance and collateral valuation, than on company financials.

In many instances, our clients may have large long-term contracts with their buyers, who require financing options. However, our clients would like limited recourse financing and look to book their sales. We believe in being the right business partner for our client. We can discuss and understand both our clients and their buyers' requirements to provide a suitable structure to meet objectives of multiple parties.

In 2005, we also introduced a new inventory finance product in response to demand from clients. The Hedged Inventory Programme is an ownership-based financing structure, providing clients with flexible short- term working capital. It is primarily designed for those who hold commodities physically deliverable to the world's major futures exchanges. The structure has a reduced emphasis and impact on balance sheet, little or no recourse to the client and involves simple documentation.

All solutions are tailor-made with a value-add proposition to meet our clients' needs. Potential benefits may include:

• Improved cash flow and liquidity
• Adaptability from specialised tailor-made solutions
• Transfer of payment risk
• Flexible tenor - short/medium term financing
• Limited or non-recourse financing possibilities
• Risk evaluation based on performance track record and collateral valuation; less emphasis on company financials and parent support

Our Strengths

Extensive Footprint. With an extensive footprint in more than 50 countries, Standard Chartered Bank has a vast portfolio of relationships with both Emerging Markets and OECD suppliers and buyers, which we leverage in matching potential clients and originating domestic and cross-border deals. We are particularly active in the financing of trade flows between the Emerging Markets and the OECD and within the Emerging Markets.

Comprehensive Client Coverage. Standard Chartered completes transactions for the entire client spectrum, from parastatals, OECD based MNCs, to financial institutions, and local Blue Chips and mid-cap corporates.

Product Innovation. Standard Chartered leverages its creative structuring capabilities to provide unique and innovative solutions tailor made for our clients, meeting their needs for everything from plain vanilla lending to structured transactions such as pre-export financings, lease financings, project related financings and the newly introduced hedged inventory products. In addition, Standard Chartered Bank provides differentiated financing opportunities through the trading companies it has established in various countries.

Strong Distribution Capabilities. Standard Chartered's leadership position is based on our underwriting ability, being able to accurately read market sentiment, and our selldown coverage, rather than simply using our balance sheet. Given our extensive footprint and deep market penetration, we have the capabilities to syndicate financings throughout the world, enabling us to take on large transactions where the ability to syndicate is a critical success factor.

Standard Chartered Trading Companies. Standard Chartered has three wholly owned trading companies registered in New York, Singapore and Hong Kong. Our trading companies are set up to facilitate trade transactions between our clients and their suppliers and/ or buyers, which cannot always be completed using traditional banking services. These trading companies differ from other trading companies in that they can buy and sell goods for our clients and not for our account; our trading company becomes an intermediary in your trade transaction by buying from your supplier(s) and selling them to your buyer(s).

Some of the structures are particularly effective in resolving some of our client's trade challenges:

• Overseas buyers' requests for extended terms
• Improvement of cash flow
• Improvement of balance sheet composition
• Inventory Management