Letters of Credit

Commodity Trade Finance in Switzerland: How Trading Houses Fund Billion-Dollar Cargoes

A supertanker carrying two million barrels of crude oil from the Gulf of Oman to Rotterdam represents roughly $150 million in commodity value floating on water for three weeks. Getting that cargo from producer to refinery requires financing — and Swiss-based trading houses and their banking partners have built one of the world's most sophisticated commodity trade finance ecosystems to make those transactions work.