Under the leadership and guidance of Head Office’s Corporate Banking Division, Singapore Branch prevailed over technical complexities, legal documentation issues and geographical difficulties to eventually collaborate with Suzhou Branch and successfully concluded an additional USD50 million issuance to an existing 5-year syndicated term loan facility with Flextronics. With this undertaking, ABC Bank is now construed as a core relationship bank to Flextronics, thus advancing bilateral business partnership in China going forward.
Flextronics, an established Fortune 500 multi-national company, is incorporated in Singapore and listed on NASDAQ, USA. It has significant operations and multiple manufacturing plants in China, thus highly sought-after by financial institutions in China. However, Flextronics will only cooperate with ABC Bank in China after our participation in the above mentioned international syndicated loan transaction and becoming its core relationship bank. As this loan was originally syndicated in USA and not in Asia region, there were subtle differences in regulatory requirements and applicable governing laws. In response, Singapore Branch engaged external legal counsel and relentlessly led numerous tripartite consultations with the USA based Mandated Lead Arranger, Flextronics, Head Office and Suzhou Branch. Eventually, using the “unfunded risk participation structure”, Singapore Branch acted as the lender on record and funding bank, whilst Suzhou Branch was the participating party by taking on the transactional risks and acting as the credit back-stop. With the conclusion of this transaction, ABC Bank was elevated to the rank of core relationship bank with Flextronics.
This successful collaboration between domestic and overseas branches established a new model for us to service Fortune 500 companies and multinational corporations more effectively. It further bears testimony to ABC Bank’s successful internationalisation strategy and improving global banking service capabilities, enabling overseas branch to provide full-fledge banking solutions to demanding multinational corporations.