By Julia Payne
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) -The recent rout in bank shares will not have a knock-on effect on commodities, global trading firm Trafigura’s chief financial officer Christophe Salmon told the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit on Wednesday.
“On banks’ appetite for trading firms, let’s not forget trading firms give banks a lot of business opportunities from hedging to trade finance, M&A and so on…,” Salmon said.
“We are eligible to many products in banks so they are keen to support us,” he added.
Brent crude oil prices hit their lowest last week since 2021 on concern that the rout in bank shares could trigger a global recession and cut fuel demand.
Share prices have since seen a slight uptick after a historic deal in which UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, agreed to buy Credit Suisse.
But Salmon said he did not expect banks’ appetite for financing commodities trade to wane after the collapse of Credit Suisse, adding that the entry of export credit agencies is a major development in commodities finance markets.
“New lenders (are) now active in our sector, which are the export credit agencies. We managed to raise close to $5 billion of competitive term funding with the support of these export agencies,” Salmon said.
Trafigura has entered into several energy and metals deals in recent months involving German and Italian export credit agencies.
(Reporting by Julia Payne in Lausanne, writing by Rowena Edwards in London; editing by Toby Chopra and Jason Neely)