This year I -really- attended the TXF Lisbon global conference

And indeed I was pleased to have attended the Global TXF 2022 in Lisbon last week. It is always good to see old friends colleagues and peers, and equally important to meet new ones. Thanks TXF team for your perfect organisation. And unlikely to the previous editions spending a lot of time in one to one meetings locked in a meeting room and running to the conference room, I had this year the opportunity to be attending several interesting panels.

Among the main takeaways that raised my attention this year : i) concerns raised on Talents acquisition and retention by some panelists and participants alike ; ii) focus on sustainable export finance and the need for improvements at regulatory and OECD level required to facilitate the growth of sustainable export finance; and iii) SCB having been awarded the Deal of the year for BITA facility in Angola and having been involved in 5 perfect deals out of 10. Worth also mentionning that defense related exports were barely mentioned in any panel, while with the current reshuffling in geopolitics and subsequent increase in defense budgets worldwide, we would expect this to be a hot topic.

Talent acquisition was not a hot topic at all, softly mentioned in one panel, and discussed afterwards with some participants, in fact kind of a shameful thematic for an impact industry such as ours. But it was the first time I heard of it during a conference, and in the end not totally unexpected , so it is worth to spend a minute here. After years spent in the industry in France and in the UK, some of them heading a pool of talents, I have my own thoughts on why some in the industry may be struggling in acquiring talents . And not all is based on the compensation package, which is a starter to any discussion but not a retainer. Empowerment, trust and "taylor made" career path are some of the keys for talents to grow in an industry like ours. You have to make them understand that they are important because they simply are, and stop treating them as second rank employee. Would you believe that in many French corporates and banks, working from home is still considered as a privilege only granted (with mistrust) for employees with more than up to 1 year presence in the company, whatever the experience of the talent acquired? I wonder if this is also the case elsewhere. And also, how many of you travelled to the conference with any junior members of the team? Are you making your talents grow properly by for example allowing them to attend business travels or key Internal committees with senior team members ?

Nothing surprising however for Sustainable export finance and green related deals becoming the key driver for ECAs and banks alike, and it was about time. Most if not all panels added a piece of sustainability in their agenda. I am still on the learning curve on this particular topic, but in my view our industry could become a role model in terms of sustainable finance, not only by having regulatory changes and OECD arrangement enhancements, but also by including a comprehensive analysis of the supply chain of a project, and the project impact. I understand there is still a lack of proper tools and common valuation criteria, but this is critical as it will help discard any suspicion of creating a "greenwashing" finance.

So last but not least, I was amazed and impressed by SCB number of awards this year. It is interesting to understand what does it take for a bank like Standard Chartered Bank to become an Export Finance Industry Leader. All the more so when SCB has a limited presence in key sectors of our industry (or at least have a case by case approach) such as cruise vessel, satellites, mining or defense. During my career, I have been part of Société Générale EF teams and then HSBC's, both also being Structured Export Finance leaders but different from SCB in light of their important client base, extended branch network (at least when I was there) and a financial capacity stronger than SCB's. My experience is that SCB relatively "smaller" size - we are speaking about giants here - and lending capacity has led them to be more creative and place the "out of the box" thinking as a day to day behavior, adding team members which are passionate about their job and committed to create an impact, committed to clients, and able to adopt an open minded culture : a great transaction can come from a genuine discussion. A management with a long term view able to support the team during the origination phase (first discussion on the deal was back in 2013), and a close collaboration with syndications as of deal day 1 definitely helps. Like in every company, there are also a lot of shades of grey within SCB culture, some darker than others, but I prefer to keep in mind the brightest parts.

BITA transaction is in big part a result of this culture; and I was proud to have been part of the deal team on the ECA advisory side. I definitely should have been on the photo (Faruq you owe me a photo with the team) but congratulations nonetheless to all my friends at SCB, SUEZ, Mota, BPIfrance Assurance Export and all other parties involved. You Rock !