Pictured: Ronald Biemans and Tom Gevers

In November of 2021, SFNet announced its first Cross-Border Finance Essay Contest, sponsored by Goldberg Kohn Ltd. Members of SFNet’s International Finance and Development Committee judged the essay submissions on content, originality, clarity, structure and overall contribution to furthering and expanding understanding and discourse within the field of cross-border finance. This essay is the first-place essay.

The authors of the winning essays have been invited to participate on a panel at SFNet’s 78th Annual Convention in Austin, TX, Nov. 9-11. The third place essays were published in the September issue of TSL and the second place winner was published in the October issue. 

To unlock the receivables cross-border financing potential in Europe, which was historically frustrated by the commercially unsuccessful multi-local market practice of providing scattered bilateral receivables facilities on a country-by-country basis, we designed the Single Group Facility solution (“SGF”) establishing a single receivables pool. The main advantages are a) its scalability and flexibility through consolidated asset pooling on a “plug-and-play” basis that smoothly (de-) connects relevant geographies (on and off balance sheet), b) relief for the clients in operating their working capital management and c) a single source of funding.

The SGF solution was implemented as a pilot in 2015. Currently it covers more than 21 European jurisdictions, USA, Canada, Australia and is accepted by the European ABF market as a valid and tested solution for cross-border receivable finance. Multiple European and US banks, aided by their legal professionals, participated in this (syndicated) solution over the past seven years.

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