Ralf Schwarzhaupt, CEO, managing partner at Jebsen & Jessen Industrial Solutions GmbH, cautions that global uncertainty is making investors shy away from long term decisions. Regulation, the drift away from level playing fields in ECA financing, and banks being bottlenecks to refinancing also matter. Even so, export deals are getting structured, particularly in Africa. Pragmatism and flexibility are key to navigate through complexity and uncertainty.
Read the preview from TXF’s recent interview led by Katharine Morton, Head of Export, Project and Development Finance, below 👇
TXF: What’s the current state of the export market from your perspective – where are the headwinds, and how are you responding?
Ralf Schwarzhaupt: I’m not speaking from the perspective of a typical exporter. At Jebsen & Jessen we export our investment goods and products, but we also act as a facilitator on behalf of banks, sponsors and investors, in structuring and bundling the entire equipment and service package.
From the perspective of what’s happening with investment goods and ECA covers for the capital expenditure financing side of the business, rather than short term trade (which carries some ECA components), the biggest issue facing the market is uncertainty about the global market environment. Much of that relates to the aftermath of the Russian attack on Ukraine, but additional uncertainty relates to economic uncertainty in China and the Trump administration and the direction the US is taking with tariffs.
If there is uncertainty about where in the world you can export to and what the framework is going to look like in six or seven years, which is the investment decision horizon, whether that’s exporting into the US, or Europe where there may be spillover effects or quotas. There is a lot of uncertainty relating to free trade.
Many investors we talk to, many principals, are shy and have put investments on the backburner and are postponing until they have a better understanding where the US is going in particular – and China, and India.
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