Mark Evans goes beyond trade buzzwords

Mark Evans reckons he has been working in supply chain finance since 1997, long before most transaction bankers were applying the term 'supply chain'. Evans was head of HSBC's trade and supply chain business in Asia until the middle of last year when he jumped across to ANZ to become global head of the same business for the Australian bank.

Evans says while supply chain has become a buzzword in the industry, the practice of financing transactions based on underlying trade flows makes common sense and was once the backbone of traditional trade banking. If banks hadn't strayed from this tradition, they might have avoided some of the pain felt during the recent...