This is Euromoney’s inaugural award for the world’s best bank for trade finance. Arguably, it is being introduced at a time when this business has never been more important. The disruption to corporate supply chains after two years of Covid 19 and now war in Europe is acute; and the need for solutions to the critical problems that clients are facing worldwide has never been more urgent. Euromoney’s first winner in this category is a bank that is almost a byword for global expertise in trade finance: HSBC.
“Everyone at the top of the house at HSBC has at some point worked in trade,” says Vivek Ramachandran, head of global trade and receivables finance (GTRF) at HSBC. "Trade finance is strategic for the bank. It is so important for us."
Ramachandran was appointed to lead the business in May this year, rejoining the team from Serai, the HSBC-founded business-to-business supply-chain platform venture based in Hong Kong that he has run since 2019.