Trade and Export Finance

Whether you are an exporter or importer, creditor or debtor, Haynes and Boone is well positioned to handle the legal complexities and commercial challenges posed by today’s most sophisticated trade and export finance transactions.

Breadth of Practice

Our Trade and Export Finance Practice is far reaching, covering traditional and innovative products such as:

• Commercial and standby letters of credit
• Silent confirmations
• Discounting of bills of exchange and other negotiable instruments
• Account receivable sales and purchases
• Trade receivable securitizations
• Supply chain finance
• Pre-export financing
• Borrowing base facilities
• Trade advances
• Undisclosed payment guaranties
• Microfinance lending
• Export credit agency, multi-lateral and other development financial institution transactions

Many of the transactions handled by our Trade and Export Finance team are multi-disciplinary in nature, also involving our Project Finance and Development, Energy, Power and Natural Resources, Leveraged Financings and Commodities Trading and Finance practices. Most frequently, these matters also contain a cross-border element, involving multiple parties in developed, as well as emerging, foreign markets.

Unique Experience

Members of our Trade and Export Finance Practice have worked on several groundbreaking transactions. These award winning transactions have involved operations or parties in countries as diverse as:

• Argentina
• Austria
• Brazil
• Cayman Islands
• Chile
• Ecuador
• Germany
• Iraq
• Japan
• Mexico
• Peru
• Spain

Two key members of our Trade and Export Finance Practice are former officers of the trade and commodity finance departments of two of the world’s largest commercial banks. This experience in acting as internal counsel has been invaluable to these Haynes and Boone Partners in dealing with general counsels and other members of in-house legal departments in all aspects of client representation in the trade and export finance arena.

Our Clients

Our clients active in the trade and export finance area include corporations, investment funds, commercial and investment banks and development financial institutions. We advise these clients on transactions involving a wide range of underlying products, including “soft” commodities such as coffee, soybean, cocoa, palm oil, grain and livestock, “hard” commodities such as oil and gas, coal, steel and precious metals, as well as capital intensive and finished products such as aircraft, automotive parts and components, heavy industrial machinery, electronic equipment and clothing and textiles.

As the demand for innovative and cost-effective financing increases, we expect to also see an equivalent increase in new trade finance transaction structures meant to facilitate efficiency for debtors while affording creditors the legal protection that they require. The breadth of our Trade and Export Finance Practice positions us for such changes in the market, ensuring that our clients will benefit from counsel that is at once highly experienced as well as attuned to changing market trends and products.