Speakers line up 2024

Frank Aldenhof

Director, Deutsche Bank AG, Germany; in charge of ESG Client Solutions in Corporate Banking for MNC clients; over 15 years’ previous experience in the Institutional Cash & Trade business, covering banks in Europe, Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Innesa Amirbekyan

Head of Financial Institutions and Trade Finance at ID Bank CJSC, Armenia. Experienced trade finance and international banking professional with 20+ years in leading Armenian banks, specializing in import/export finance and trade finance business development. Accomplished speaker and panelist at international conferences, delivering internal and external trainings and workshops. ICC NC Armenia Executive Board member, Chair of ICC Banking Commission Armenia, and member of ICC Task Force on Bank Guarantees. Member of BAFT Trade Finance and Payment committees.

Tim Bachinger

Head of Global Guaranty Management team at Siemens Healthineers Treasury and Trade Finance. Tim has more than 16 years of extensive international experience in trade and structured finance. He joined the Siemens Healthineers Trade Finance department during a transformation phase, when the company was building its own stand-alone Treasury set-up separated from Siemens AG. Tim shaped the Siemens Healthineers’ stand alone approach to Guaranty and Letters of Credit operations moving from a decentralized to a centralized structure, including the implementation of a new process and IT set-up with an award winning high degree of digitalization and automation.

Neil Chantry 

Independent Consultant on Trade Finance & Compliance, UK. 40 years with HSBC - on the international executive staff, serving countries in the Middle East & East Africa, on the UK Group executive staff, specialising in Trade Finance operations, procedures, finance, compliance. Recently, consultancy with Standard Chartered Bank. Neil held many ICC positions, e.g. Former Chair, Wolfsberg Group Trade Finance Committee; Joint Wolfsberg Group; Financial Crimes & Anti-Terrorist Financing Group; ICC & BAFT drafting group for the “Compliance Principles Paper; former Chair of the Executive Committee;

Vera Economou

Vera Economou leads the ESG Group Competence Center and coordinates corporate ESG experts across RBI’s Network Banks. She manages green and social bond frameworks supporting Green and Social Bonds of RBI Network Banks in CEE. With international experience as a business consultant in Hong Kong for 4 years, she joined RBI in 2011. She holds a master’s degree in quantitative Assets and Risk Management , an MBA in Finance and is CESGA certified ESG analyst from EFFAS. Through ESG services to Financial Institutions, she facilitates customers’ transition to responsible and sustainable business models, provides guidelines on portfolio screening for sustainable transactions, ESG customer assessment, and develops measures to increase staff awareness and brand recognition.

Steven Fannon

Associate Director, Traditional Trade, Trade & Working Capital Products at Lloyds Bank, UK; over 10 years of experience working within the Guarantees/Standby Letters of Credit business covering a wide range of aspects with regards to these products.

Björn Hertzer

Vice President, Deutsche Bank AG, Austria; Coverage Banker covering a number of German and Austrian multi-national corporates. Previously Björn had spent almost 20 years in various Trade Finance related roles. He was working in Trade Finance Advisory & Services at Deutsche Bank AG in Germany, as well as in credit risk related roles at German and Austrian corporates before heading Trade Finance Operations at Deutsche Bank AG in Austria and being a Trade Finance Sales and Relationship Manager.

Mia Hofmeister

part of PORR AG’s guarantee department since 2008; responsible for all bank guarantees & sureties issued for and received by the whole PORR group.

Ludger Janßen

Co-CEO and Managing Director at Digital Vault Services. With over 25 years of experience in various banking roles, Ludger brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to his role. He has a broad background in international banking environments, particularly in the areas of trade finance, receivables and export finance. Prior to joining DVS, Ludger held various senior leadership positions at a major German bank, where he honed his skills in driving business growth and success.

Saibo Jin

Senior lawyer and partner of Jingcheng Tongda Law Offices in Beijing PR China, working as a litigator and arbitrator over 30 years. Jin is vice director of Financial Special Committee of All-China Lawyers Association (CLA), was ex-director of Banking Law Commission of Beijing Lawyer Association (BLA), vice director of Shanghai Banking Law & Practice Center (SBLPC). He is also an Invited expert by the PRC Supreme People’s Court (SPC) regrading to the drafting of the SPC Judicial Interpretation of Provisions on Some Issues Concerning the Trial of Cases of Disputes over Letter of Credit (LC Rules) and was first drafter of the SPC drafting project of the Judicial Interpretation of Independent Demand Guarantee (Independent Guarantee Rules).

Florian Kandlhofer

Head of Guarantees. He has been leading RBI’s Guarantees Team since 2013, overseeing the servicing of many of RBI’s largest customers on both the corporate and IC side, while taking care of product development together with his team. Florian started his RBI career in 2005 as a Product Manager in Guarantees Department. In addition to his managerial role and overseeing major aspects of the guarantees business within RBI Group, he has been actively involved in industry forums and initiatives in trade finance.

Gabriele Katz

Director, Deutsche Bank AG, Germany; in charge of Global Transaction Banking in Product Management for the Documentary Trade Business for Europe & MENA; has a more than 25 years’ experience in the LC and BG business. Member of the ICC Germany Banking Committee;

Nelli Kocharyan

Head of Financial Institutions and International Banking Relations at Converse Bank CJSC. Covering international relations, correspondent banking and trade finance business at Converse Bank CJSC, Armenia. With 14 years’ of banking experience in trade finance, cash management, funds raising and KYC evaluation basics. Certified in International Trade and Finance by London Institute of Banking and Finance (LIBF), holder of ICA Certificate in KYC and CDD, as well as ICA Specialist Certificate in Trade Based Money Laundering extended by International Compliance Association.

Michael Lehotzki

Managing Associate General Counsel at HSBC – acts as global Wholesale Lead for Digital & Transformation projects using new and emerging technology such as DLT, digital assets or AI.

Ulli Leucht

Senior Manager at PwC Germany in Berlin. He has more than 10 years of consulting experience in Data & AI and focuses on Financial Services. As an expert in GenAI, he supports his clients in the adoption of the technology - from strategy to implementation. Most recently, Ulli Leucht operatively lead the creation of the GenAI strategy of Consulting Solutions for PwC Germany.

Stephanie Powell

Senior Consultant Trade Finance Advisory at Siemens Mobility GmbH, Certified Specialist for Demand Guarantees (CSDG) by the London Institute for Banking and Finance (LIBF). Stephanie joined Siemens in 2010 and after various operative roles moved to trade finance in 2017, where she gained substantial experience advising Siemens’ large-scale projects on guarantee and suretyship topics as well as corporate risk mitigation measures. Since 2019, she has been specializing exclusively on mobility projects, providing guarantee advisory to projects as well as providing internal trainings on guarantee-related risk and risk mitigation.

Glenn Ransier 

Head of Documentary Trade and SBLCs, Wells Fargo, USA; Glenn is furthermore one of the Technical Advisors of the ICC Banking Commission; He maintains strong ties to domestic and global trade communities; has been actively involved in trade finance for more than 35 years;

Markus Rupprecht

Senior Executive Advisor at PwC. He is focused on Trade and Supply Chain Finance. He has a crossfuntional role to serve FI's as well as large corporates. In 2009 he founded and ran Traxpay, a SCF-platform where Deutsche Bank took a minority share in 2020. Before that he worked for 10 years in various senior roles consulting banks and large organisations in trade, payments and cash management. The basics for his career he acquired during 10 years at Deutsche Bank where he started his professional journey.

Christina Elisabeth Seierup 

Vice President, Trade Finance Operations, Dankse Bank AS, Denmark; Member Danish Banking Committee. Since 2010 Head of Training & Education for Trade Finance, Danske Bank Group - responsible for corporate Trade Finance and related subjects as AML trainings; She joined Danske Bank A/S in 1985 and has been working with International corporates since 1989;

Evgeniya Sharkova 

Evgeniya Sharkova has been leading the RBI Trade Finance Sales Team since 2022. She oversees driving the end-to-end sales process of conventional and sustainable Trade Finance solutions from pitch to closing for corporate and institutional clients, implementing sales and marketing initiatives. Evgeniya has over 15 years of experience in corporate and investment banking, origination and client coverage, business development, and sales management. She started her career at VTB Bank and joined RBI Group in 2010.

Lorna Strong

Deputy General Counsel for HSBC Global Trade and Receivables Finance (GTRF) acts as the primary legal advisor for GTRF's operations globally; advising GTRF and playing a role in shaping HBSC's contribution to regulatory and policy debates on trade finance.

Andrea Tang

Legal Services Director at FIATA, the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations, Switzerland. In addition to being responsible for legal matters across the Federation, she oversees the Federation’s work across the various modes of transport (air, maritime, rail, road), as well as trade facilitation and customs. She is a qualified lawyer and was admitted to the Bar of England and Wales, following which she completed her Master studies in International Law. In addition, she holds a Certificate in Insurance (CII) from the Chartered Insurance Institute. 

Oscar Tiberg

Lawyer at Chouette, Sweden. He is specialised in transportation law, insurance law and international trade law. He has a wide range of experience as legal counsel, insurance lawyer and in-house counsel. He has worked with and for both very small and very large companies and has acted in court as well as arbitration proceedings both in Sweden and elsewhere. He also has significant experience from contract negotiations and drafting. In his role as in-house counsel he has often been involved with company formation and other matters of general corporate law. He is also well versed in competition law.

Mireille Troosters

Head Expert Trade Finance at KBC Bank Belgium, Board Member of ICC Belgium. Mireille started working in KBC bank in 1992 and switched to Trade Finance in 2005, as a Trade Finance Officer (a commercial job), then as Head of Operations Documentary Credits. In 2015 she switched to being Risk Manager Trade Finance and today is combining this with being Head Expert trade finance again.

Keynote

Maximilian Burger-Scheidlin

Senior Director, ICC Austria - International Chamber of Commerce; specialised on prevention of corruption, root causes of global crime & money laundering; prevention of disputes; ethics & business; He is a member of BIAC’s & ICC’s Commissions on Anti-Corruption, Paris; OECD Task Force on “Fighting illicit Trade”; Co-Editor of “Compliance Praxis”; a lecturer at 4 universities; international lecturer on anti-corruption & prevention in Asia & Eastern Europe (e.g. China, India, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Ukraine, etc.); co-author of 17 books, he has lived in 9 countries in Asia & the Middle East and has worked in 87 other - consulting business in their global expansion.