IBcontacts participated in the 5th Annual Russia & Eurasia Trade & Export Finance Conference

February 7, 2012, Moscow: for the second time IBcontacts has become an official media partner of Annual Russia & Eurasia Trade & Export Finance Conference, organized by UK’s largest news agency Exporta. This year the event gathered leading experts on trade and export finance from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, as well as European countries, in order to discuss economic problems of the region and estimate the influence of world markets on the region.

IBcontacts delegates conducted also preliminary negotiations on enhancing cooperation of Ukrainian companies and new possibilities of trade and export finance with experts of foreign export credit agencies, in particular in particular EKF (Denmark), EDC (Canada), Euler Hermes (Germany) and international organizations, namely European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, International Chamber of Commerce, International Finance Corporation, Bern Union.

The current Euro zone crisis was a topical issue at the conference. The largest market players, such as Coca-Cola, Lukoil, Nokia, CNH, DHL, shared the information about the methods of synchronizing their strategies with the current situation in the market.

The representatives of international banks outlined three main trends that have recently influenced on trade finance: development of cooperation with local companies; Asian economies are no longer key markets; high concentration of SME in the developing countries.

More than forty participants shared their views on modern market development. The main topics of discussion were as follows:

• the changing attitudes towards global currency settlements,
• project finance collaborations,
• capital goods trade between Russia and the Mena region,
• facilitating trade through institutional partnerships,
• the changing attitude to trade credit insurance.
• the current risk appetite for Russian trade finance.

The participants shared the opinion that investment climate in both CIS region and Europe is improving. It’s interesting to note a new trend – companies donotapply classical bank trade and export financetools any more. Meanwhile, innovative structure scheme, aimed at minimizing expenses of projects, is being introduced.