ABOUT US
Bluestone Asset Manager Ltd is a Mauritius company formed in 2020 in order to address the increasing liquidity shortage witnessed in trade finance and help small to mid-size trading companies continue to carry out their commercial activity despite a deteriorating business environment.
Because of new regulations worldwide and growing risk aversion, the trade finance banks have in recent years adopted an increasingly conservative approach that translates into higher equity, profitability and compliance requirements to grant credit lines.
As a consequence, small to mid-sized trading houses currently struggle to finance their business and need to find alternative financing solutions, thus creating a case for trade finance funds.
Trade finance funds are to be considered, for small to mid-sized trading companies, as an alternative to banks and offer to finance all or part of a deal. They are often specialised geographically and or by commodity type and are flexible and fast in decision taking while conducting a thorough analysis of the financed deal to minimize the investor’s risk.
As a consequence, the borrower accepts to pay higher interest rates than those offered by banks to have a deal fully or partially funded.
To capitalize on what it considers a long term liquidity shortage Bluestone Asset Manager Ltd has launched the Bluestone Merchant Fund Ltd, a Mauritius based trade finance fund for the purpose of providing:
- Flexible and responsive solutions to trading houses looking for non-bank financing
- Stable, decorrelated and above market financial returns to investors
KEY PEOPLE
Maurice Taylor - Chief Investment Officer & Operations Committee
Maurice has 28 years of experience in advising small and medium sized commodity trading companies providing administrative, management and banking relationship support in trade, finance, credit, commercial activities and operations.
Pierre Iseux - Special Situations & New Investment Structures
Pierre has 25 years of experience in Investment Banking - M&A and Equity/Debt fund raising. Most of the transactions ran by Pierre are related to Natural Resources - grains, metals, energy - and involve GCC & European institutional investors.
Yves Manfrini - Risks & Operations Committee
Yves has 21 years of managing expertise which he acquired during a 34 years career in the banking sector. Specialized in providing comprehensive solutions to international institutional clients, Yves is an expert in the field of asset management for both institutional clients and mutual funds.
Bernard Simonin - Operations & Investor Relations for Bluestone Merchant Fund Ltd
Bernard spent 3 years as senior Trade Finance manager for the Trade Finance Fund Horizon Capital RAIF SICAV SA, Luxembourg. He has more than 25 years of experience working in several Trade Finance banks, such as BNP PARIBAS, and COTECNA, a Surveillance company.
