Ken Hughes
Expert Witness – Commercial Banking and Trade Finance
Ken Hughes has over 40 years of commercial banking experience including 23 years in Hong Kong and 10 years in Africa. His expertise includes dealing with letters of credit, bills of exchange, bills of lading and trade finance facilities including DP/DA bills discounted, and LC/TR facilities following internal bank guidelines, regulator guidelines and UCP500 and UCP 600 – ICC publications. He has extensive operational experience of trade finance.
Mr Hughes has passed the Institute of Bankers, London examinations in the Finance of Foreign Trade, which includes trade finance and contract law as applied to banking transactions. He has been a Member of The Academy of Experts, London since 2000.
Trade Finance experience
Over 33 years, Mr Hughes has been involved with:
Opening new import letters of credit in accordance with UCP and approving them.
Checking shipping documents and negotiating payments against export letters of credit .
Listing discrepancies and mistakes in shipping documents and advising other banks of the issues .
Handling customers bank loan facilities in L/C ,T/R ,D/P and D/A .
Detailed understanding of UCP 500 and 600 and how they relate to L/Cs and Bills of Exchange and Bills of Lading.
Specific Experience
Grindlays Bank London handling import bills and shipping documents from India and Africa covering import of commodities such as sugar, tea, coffee, sisal and jute.
In Uganda, handling L/Cs and export shipping documents covering export of sugar, tea and coffee to U.K.
In Bangladesh ,handling L/Cs and export shipping documents covering export of jute to Europe.
In Ghana, handling import L/Cs and shipping documents covering imports of motor vehicles, spare parts and consumer goods and exports of cocoa and agricultural produce .
In Hong Kong (Dao Heng) handling Transferable and Back to Back letters of credit and 2 sets of shipping documents for trade by large Japanese trading companies, using Hong Kong to finance trade between 2 third countries. This involved TR loan facilities and higher than normal risks due to the back to back nature of the transactions and shelf company (with $2- capital) in the middle.
In Hong Kong, handling L/Cs and shipping documents covering imports of capital equipment from USA and Europe into Asia including cement plants for Philippines, double decker buses for Hong Kong, Landrover trucks for Indonesian Army, aircraft simulator for Cathay Pacific Airways, and generating equipment for Taiwan Power Company.
All this experience over many years also involved numerous discrepancies and some attempts to pass fraudulent or incorrect documents through for payment.
In 2000/2001, I redrafted the trade finance operational manual for Dah Sing bank, Hong Kong; a project of six months.
Major Expert Witness cases involving letters of credit fraud or bank operational negligence.
The Argo Fund Ltd V Essar Steel 2004 U.K. court action
Itochu Petroleum V Nanyang Commercial Bank, Hong Kong, High Court Action 2175 of 2005, appointed by Kennedys, Hong Kong.
Bangladeshi company V New York Company regarding fraud under a letter of credit covering shipment of a secondhand hospital from USA to Bangladesh. 2009/2011
Major Trade Finance with Project Finance transactions handled by Kenneth Hughes since 1975.
- Concentrated lime juice factory – Ghana, West Africa. US$ 8M
- Glass bottle manufacturing plant – Bangkok US$ 12M
- First joint venture commercial building, Shenzen, China US$ 20M
- Bacnotan Cement plant – Philippines US$ 9M
- China Light and Power, Castle Peak Power Station – Citibank HK$ 1.5B
Syndicated loan, Hong Kong
- Taiwan Power Company, Nuclear Power plant, Taiwan US$ 80M
- Mass Transit Railway Corporation, Hong Kong
– ECGD project finance various
– contractor financing various
- Commerical property development financing – Hong Kong Numerous
- High speed passenger craft – Macau, Suppliers Vosper Thornycroft . US$ 21M
- Jetfoil passenger craft – Macau, Suppliers Vosper Ltd. US$ 12M
- 200 Double decker buses – China Motor Bus Co., Hong Kong US$ 13M
- Lam Soon Group – Two piece canning plant, Hong Kong HK$120M
- Commerical and residential property complex – East Asiatic US$ 43M
Company, Beijing, China
- Sino/Norwegian Commercial building – Hua Wei Centre, Beijing US$ 43M
- Hopewell Sharjiao Power Station –Guangdong Province, China US$200M
– Citibank Syndicated non recourse finance
- Gladhover – BOT finance, reclamation contract – Zhuhai, China US$ 46M
- Gammon, Dragages, Skanska – Route 5, Hong Kong Government HK$ 60M
- Chinatel (First Pacific) Cellular Telephone project, Hong Kong HK$ 85M
- Project risk evaluations completed on:
– Finnish plywood factory – Tsing Tao, China No funding
– Six hotel and commecial projects – China No funding
– Build, Operate, Transfer Slaughterhouse, Hong Kong No funding
- China Harbour Engineering Company (Mainland China owned) US$ 12M
– Hong Kong Government BOT contracts for Landfill & Refuse Transfer Stations.
- Sino/Korean Container Manufacturing project, China US$ 7M
Details have been provided by Mr. Hughes.
Richard Harris is a pioneer of the Asian Investment Management markets, with nearly 40 years experience. It is 46 years since he first arrived in Asia, within which he has 16 years in Europe. He has global multi-cultural contacts and a long-term financial professional… Learn More