INTRODUCING ANURAG CHAUDHARY (CITI); ONE OF THE THREE NEW ITFA BOARD MEMBERS

Anurag Chaudhary is a Managing Director and the Global Head of Trade Asset Distribution & Syndication within Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions team. Anurag is responsible for the sell-down of trade assets in the secondary market across the world covering various asset classes from short-term to long-term commodities & ECA (Export Credit Agency) backed transactions.

Anurag is based in London and manages Citi’s Trade Distribution teams located in New York, London, Singapore, Dubai, San Paolo, Mumbai and Hong Kong.

He has 20+ years of banking experience covering Relationship Management, Independent Risk/Credit, Trade, Structuring, Product, Distribution and experience in developing a world class Trade Risk Distribution business across the globe. Prior to this, Anurag worked in India for Citi as a Corporate Banker and a Credit Officer for 5 years and as a Trade Product Manager. Before that he worked at ANZ Grindlays Bank.

He holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA - Finance) with specialization in Finance from the University of Bombay and a Master of Science (MSc - Physics) with specialization in Electronics from University of Delhi.

His interests include:

• Running: completed half, full & ultra-marathons
• Adventure sports, including trekking, camping, rock climbing, skiing.
• Fine arts: sketching, batik, woodwork, oil-painting
• Rifle shooting
• Golf
• Drama

''The trade business is in a challenging time with a vigilant focus on balance-sheet management including risk-weighted-assets and on-balance-sheet assets. This gets more challenging with new Basel requirements and its implications for trade.

Thus, there will be a focus among banks on “how-to-do-more-with-less”. This positions Distribution & Syndication teams to play a more critical role within Trade. In-turn, this also gives opportunity to ITFA to bring new projects with the benefits of syndication/ distribution/ defeasance structures available to the industry and help bring in new partners/ banks into ITFA as members. The objective will be not only to sell-down FI/ Bank assets on ''funded'' basis but also to make corporate trade loans and supplier finance programs liquid as well. Furthermore, this awareness within banks and regulators helps position trade assets as a new asset class for investments to non-banks like debt funds, insurance companies, pension funds, etc.

I am delighted to have been elected to the ITFA Board and have been asked to help introduce ITFA to new banks and expand ITFA membership in the near future. Given that I interact with a number of Transaction Banking, Trade and FI relationship teams of various banks during prominent trade seminars, committees e.g. ICC, Sibos, BAFT, etc. I hope to help expand ITFA memberships soon.

I look forward to working with all and hope to see an interesting and fruitful 2016!''