Introducing the Chairman and Panel of the True Sale Discussion in Warsaw

With the ITFA Annual Trade and Forfaiting Conference only one month away, the ITFA Board is excited to announce that preparations are well on track to ensure another memorable ITFA event. To register on-line, to view the conference programme and for any other informative details, please click here.

At the ITFA Annual Conference, Sean Edwards will chair a Panel on ‘’True Sale following Abengoa: off-balance-sheet or just bank debt?’’ Sean is the enthusiastic chairman of ITFA whilst also working as the head of the legal department of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.  He is on the Editorial Boards of TFR and GTR and has written numerous articles on trade finance as well as being a regular speaker at industry events.

The panel, consisting of a rating agency analyst, a lawyer and an independent consultant, will be discussing how true sale, the cornerstone of all receivables purchasing programmes, has come under recent challenge and what steps can be taken to ensure that it is successfully achieved.

It is with great pleasure that we introduce each individual on the panel:

Matthias Heck – Vice President – Senior Analyst in the Corporate Finance Group of Moody’s Investors Service. Currently, Matthias is the Lead Analyst for a diverse portfolio of corporate ratings, comprising of several High Yield and Investment Grade rated corporates in Europe, including construction, manufacturing and consumer packaged goods companies. Prior to joining Moody’s early in 2013, he worked 15 years as equity research analyst for Macquarie, Sal. Oppenheim and Banco Santander.

Simon Cook – Partner in the Trade & Export Finance Group in Sullivan & Worcester’s London office. He has experience in a wide variety of banking and finance transactions, including in particular in relation to trade finance, structured trade finance, project finance, invoice discounting facilities and borrowing-base facilities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the CIS. Last year, at the ITFA Annual Conference in Dubai, Simon discussed Commodity Repos; what they are, how to structure them and more importantly how to avoid the pitfalls.

Peter Brinsley – Owner and director of Point Forward Ltd, a consultancy firm that provides advice to the worldwide receivables finance sector, both providers and users. Focus areas include strategy definition, risk appetite, product building, account management and training. Peter has more than 25 years’ experience in factoring, receivables finance, asset based lending and supply chain finance working for ABN AMRO, Fortis Bank, Atradius and Royal Bank of Scotland with the focus on international business. Peter was Chairman of the International Factors Group (IFG) education committee for seven years till 2014 and continues to write education materials for Factors Chain International with which IFG merged in January 2016.

We look forward to welcoming Sean and the rest of the panel in Warsaw!