Whats the idea behind setting up a trade finance arm in Noble Group?
The reason is quite simple. If you look at the trading business of Noble in the last five years, it has increasingly diversified. Noble Group used to be a steel and aluminum trade company. These days, Noble Group has expanded into sectors such as coal, sugar and cocoa. We have also expanded our traditional steel and aluminum trade to a wider marketplace. For different markets you need different financing techniques, such as different instruments, different guarantees and so on. For that kind of finance where you are increasingly pre-paying, trading and processing, more sophisticated financing structures are needed. So we decided there should be a more dedicated approach to financing the group’s activities. We converted part of the finance department to Noble Trade Finance Limited, and made it a profit centre to provide financing for the group’s activities. The company lends money and then goes into the market to structure it in a better way. That is, not only borrowing in the most flex
