corporate banking 10 WHAT'S NewS Issue 7 July 1996 Koh Ban Aik enormous impact on the market in Singapore.' Yong Meng is quick to give credit for this success to his team. 'We've been totally focused,' he says. 'The team we've managed to put together is extremely experienced. Because we know this market, we haven't wasted time on putting up proposals for transactions we did not think would gain head office approvals. In fact, you could say we have an almost 100 percent success rate in that respect.' SELLING POINT Singapore is a major world port with a high degree of automation and close strategie links to Rotterdam. But a great deal of the volume financed by the team never actually docks here. 'That's right,' Yong Meng confirms. 'A lot of our business is, for example, Thai rice going to Indonesia, or Indonesian fertilizer for Vietnam, or wheat out of India to Vietnam. A big advantage here is our international network. When we go into the market, we're not just bringing our own experience of trade flow patterns and an understanding of the commodity itself, but also how it should be financed. We have that know-how here in Singapore. But we also have it in other offices in the network.' Yong cites Brazil as example. 'You have a customer in Singapore for soy bean oil out of Brazil for Pakistan. We work closely with Sao Paulo on closing the transaction. The fact we can do that is an additional selling point for the customer.' NEWTERRITORY Yong's team has recently added a further enhancement to what it can offer clients. 'You mean forfaiting,' he laughs. 'We're in almost constant communication with London branch at the moment to develop our forfaiting unit. We've managed to recruit a specialist, David Yee, to head up the unit. It's a logical progression for us because we also originate a lot of trade ourselves. So we need to sell off a lot of the risk into the market to manage both our country limits and internal risk constraints. It's new territory, but there's already great demand.' BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Another new product in the branch is syndications - according to Den Heijer - Koh Ban Aik and his corporate banking and structured finance department have put Rabobank firmly on the map in this business. Their branch forms a cohesive group of eight account managers (including Koh) who have responsibility for specific national markets in the region served by Singapore. 'We fulfill a number of roles,' says Koh. 'Perhaps the best way to describe our activities is as a business development centre. In addition to our own market we also provide both marketing support and the more sophisticated products to our other offices in the region.' CENTRE OF COMPETENCE According to Koh, Thailand is a good example of how the Singapore team works. 'What happens is that you open up a market. If the climate is right, the bank then establishes a presence there, usually a rep. At present, the Bangkok team is in the process of establishing a branch after which business will switch to Thailand. A similar pattern of development occurred in Indonesia, Australia and Malaysia. Once the branch is established, we continue to play a role as centre of competence. For example, our Indonesia operation takes care of its own bilateral lending, but we would do syndications or project finance transactions for them: the products that require specific technical competence. It is difficult to have all the expertise you require for all the products you want to market in every office.' GROWING SYNDICATIONS Koh's team is very exciting about the potential offered by syndications capacity. 'A year ago, we were not active as an arranger for syndicated transactions. In the past 12 months, we have arranged 10 deals. This year, we've closed four and three more are in the pipeline. One of our current favourite deals is the USD 76 million transaction we put together for a Thai customer. We won the mandate after an extremely fierce fight with two other banks. The original mandate was for USD 50 million. We syndicated it to the market and managed to bring in a subscription of almost USD 100 million. The borrower couldn't take all of it because of government restrictions, but they took 76 million. It was a very satisfying^ experience for us all. And it made us a very substantial fee income.' MAKING PROGRESS Agri-Project finance is another area that is bringing in dividends for Singapore. 'We are really doing very well in this area,' Den Heijer confirms. 'We have a dedicated team located here in the branch and they have built up a real expertise in the specific markets of South-east Asia. Their activities have put us firmly on the F&A map in the last couple of years.' In spite of carving out significant niches in F&A, Den Heijer insists Singapore still has a long way to go. 'We're not the number one in all sectors of agribusiness,' he says. 'But what I would like to emphasize is that we have certainly initiated an ongoing process whereby we are transforming from a loan-oriented operation into cross-selling products which generate higher earnings. That process is not yet complete, but we're definitely making progress.' SAMENWERKING IN DE REGIO Samenwerking tussen de kantoren in de regio vindt veelvuldig plaats, mede door het grote aantal grensoverschrijdende activiteiten. Ook al is Singapore een havenstad, veel gefinancierde goederen komen hier nooit:Thaise rijst gaat bijvoorbeeld direct naar Indonesië en kunstmest uit Indonesië wordt rechtstreeks verscheept naar Vietnam. De binnen ons kantorennet opgebouwde kennis op het gebied van commodities en financiering hiervan is een groot voordeel. Daarnaast is de mogelijkheid om zowel de exporteur als importeur plaatselijk terzijde te staan een duidelijke product-plus.

Rabobank Bronnenarchief

blad 'What's news' (EN) | 1996 | | pagina 10