Deutsche Bank appoints Atul Jain and Oliver Resovac to head Trade Finance and Lending

By Joy Dumasia

Deutsche Bank has appointed Atul Jain and Oliver Resovac to jointly head the bank’s Trade Finance and Lending (TF&L) business.

Stefan Hoops, Head of Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Bank, said: “The appointment of Atul and Oliver from within the bank demonstrates our expert bench strengths in trade finance. As Global Hausbank to many of the world’s most international corporates, securing trade flows has become core and centre to us given the current political environment. With this co-leadership structure and Atul’s and Oliver’s home base in Germany and Asia Pacific, we are ideally positioned to further benefit from the growing importance of Asia Pacific for global trade.”

With more than 20 years of experience across Deutsche Banks’s corporate and investment banking, both in the US and in Asia-Pacific, Atul Jain is one the bank’s most seasoned trade finance experts. He currently runs the bank’s Asia-Pacific Trade Finance and Lending business. Atul is based in Singapore.

Oliver Resovac has been with Deutsche Bank in London and Frankfurt for more than 20 years. He joined the Corporate Bank from the bank’s investment bank, where he was previously Head of Illiquid and Complex Risk. Oliver will be based in Frankfurt.

Banks’ trade finance business has undergone enormous change over the past few years as technology, geopolitics, and the pandemic have rearranged the competitive landscape together with increased levels and complexity of risk. The Co-Head structure for the bank’s trade finance business reflects those changes.

The trade finance landscape is bigger there is more global trade in 2021, trade finance volumes bounced back from the pandemic’s impact, with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) recording an all-time high of US$28.5trn, an increase of almost 13% on pre-pandemic levels.

Structured financing has become more demanding as demand for infrastructure financing ramps up, and geopolitical tensions highlight possible commodities security issues, structured commodity trade finance deals and structured export finance deals are increasingly in demand. As they provide the opportunity to deliver ESG-aligned structures for corporate and institutional clients that make it possible to align sustainable behaviour with lending terms.