Announcing the ITFA Conference Speakers in Budapest – Silja Calac and Geoffrey Wynne

With just over one month to go to the ITFA 46th Annual Trade and Forfaiting Conference, the ITFA Board is delighted to announce that Silja Calac from Swiss Re and Geoffrey Wynne from Sullivan & Worcester, will be heading one of the sessions in Budapest, Hungary. This joint session is titled ”The new ITFA Unfunded Master Risk Participation Agreement – a new dimension in transferring payment risk in trade transactions for surety providers and the insurance market”.

Silja and Geoff will explain the thinking behind the recently released ITFA Unfunded MPA and how some key clauses are designed to widen the use of participations to allow other parties to assume non payment risk in a variety of trade transactions.

Silja Calac was born in Switzerland and studied in Paris, where she obtained a Masters Degree in International Trade. She acquired her first taste of Forfaiting at BDEI-Credit Lyonnais, Paris as a junior secondary market trader in 1996.

Before taking over the responsibility as Global Head for Trade Risk Management, Forfaiting and Secondary Market at UniCredit in Munich in 2007, Silja worked in Singapore where she assisted in the establishment of a Forfaiting Department within HVB. In 2015, Silja joined Swiss Re as Senior Underwriter based in Frankfurt, where she has the responsibility to further expand the Surety offer for banks.

Silja is a Board Member of ITFA, Head of the Insurance. She chaired the German Regional Committee of ITFA from 2010 to 2012. She was also member of the ICC Consultative Commission for the Drafting of the URF and Chairperson of the ICC URF task force until 2014.

Geoffrey Wynne is head of Sullivan & Worcester’s London office and also head of its award winning Trade & Export Finance Group. Geoff is one of the leading trade finance lawyers. He has extensive experience in many aspects of banking and finance, specifically trade and structured trade and commodity finance.

Geoff sits on the editorial boards of a number of publications and is a regular contributor and speaker at conferences. In Chambers and Partners Geoff is ranked a Tier 1 lawyer for Commodities: Trade Finance. He holds a Fellowship award for trade finance from Trade and Forfaiting Review and is recognised in the UK Legal 500’s “Hall of Fame”.

We look forward to welcoming Silja and Geoff in Budapest!