In an unassuming Hong Kong conference room, open-collared Mark Westley sits down to discuss shipping. His recent appointment as managing director and head of Asia-Pacific shipping and asset-based finance at Societe Generale, is another sign that banks are now positive about the future of Asian shipping.
This is an about-face from the doom and gloom of a year ago. A sizeable percentage of global trade flows disappeared and, by some estimates, as much as $100 billion of trade financing dried up in the six months from October 2008. The decline was so bad that the Baltic Dry Index, the global benchmark for shipping demand, is still down more than 80% from its all-time high in...
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