Virtually every business in the world uses some form of trade or supply chain finance to manage its working capital needs. This book delivers, in clear and precise terms, the first truly comprehensive and practical guide to understanding contemporary international and domestic trade finance, making it easily accessible to finance professionals, business managers, students, lawyers, regulators, or anyone starting or considering a career in the field. It provides detailed explanations of the most widely used modern tools and risk mitigating techniques, outlining how their shared fundamentals underscore all its products and solutions, including finance for receivables, confirmed payables, letters of credit, trade credit and political risk insurance, FinTech, blockchain, and export credits.
Trade and Supply Chain Finance refers to a group of financial products, solutions, and structures by which a bank or other any other type of Financier provides or risks its funds to provide Buyers time to pay for their goods or services, or to ensure that their Sellers get paid on time. All forms of trade finance achieve at least one of these two prime objectives, while often delivering additional benefits to its users. Trade finance is but one financing option a business can use to meet its needs, and in many cases, it can provide a more cost-effective solution compared to other types of finance. The better trade finance is understood, the more it can be used to benefit business of any size.
This book's purpose is to present a holistic understanding of trade and supply chain finance as a coherent universe of financial solutions that share common fundamentals to achieve their prime objectives. Trade finance is one of the oldest forms of finance used throughout the world, having evolved over time to encompass a wide range of highly specialized products adapted to each user's needs, abilities, risk tolerance, and local market conditions.
In the past, the term Trade Finance referred mostly to cross-border imports and exports, with financing solutions focused heavily on mitigating cross-border risks. In reality, however, the vast majority of Trade Finance today is used to support domestic trade among businesses buying and selling goods or services within their own country.
An internationally recognized industry expert, speaker and writer. Stephen Atallah has over 30 years of real-world domestic and global trade and supply chain finance experience as a banker international trade attorney, trade credit insurance underwriter. He has structured and executed all the forms of finance covered in this book in the most challenging credit markets and business environments. His career started. as an attorney for the United States national Export Credit Agency - the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM) - negotiating international trade deals using loans, guarantees, letters of credit, trade credit and political risk insurance. He led trade finance businesses for global banks before heading the North American underwriting group for the world's second largest trade credit insurer and advising emerging blockchain companies and other FinTechs.
