Trade & Commodities

Overview

Assessing the impact of the trade and commodity sector is vital to determine its effectiveness in delivering not only trade and commodity related products and services but also any other business sectors around the globe. Focusing on the global challenges of measuring consequences, performance and quality is increasingly crucial to satisfy both funding sources and needs of sellers, buyers and end users. As far as today’s global business and economic environment is concerned, international trade and commodity market participants have realised that they need legal guides who give extensive instructions on trade negotiations and export – import strategies, as well as scrutinising and explicating regulatory developments and global trade fluctuations.

Conducting impact assessments enable us to support our clients by facilitating the usage of resources and to ensure continuous improvement. We have an exclusive depth of understanding across the full range of the trade and commodity markets, working closely with our clients and offering them unparalleled advice that deals with varied challenges within the sector.

We help our clients to promote their business interests and ensure that trade and commodity negotiations are dealt with wherever and whenever needed. We also provide customised resolutions, focused and prompt responses to commercial needs and objectives of our clients in a broad range of legal and consultancy services.

Extensive global networking skills are complemented by our international academic knowledge and regulatory practice that consequently enables us to move forward with our clients’ operations rapidly and cost effectively in both volatile and unacquainted trade and commodity markets.

A&T trade and commodity professionals are well aware that international trade disputes are needed to be resolved post-haste as even a minor delay in operation is likely to cause deleterious effects on the business. A&T is adept at navigating through diverse trade markets and patterns by scrutinising economic sanctions, effective cost calculations and regulatory issues, potential trading risks, strategic trade planning and trade restrictions.            



Our Clients

We advise and act for a broad range of trade and commodity players across the industry, including: banks and financial institutions (including trade finance institutions), brokers, carriers and shipping companies, commodity trading companies, commodity funds, end-users, export credit agencies, foreign producers, governments and their entities, hard and soft commodity clients, insurers, international and domestic traders, local and global importers – customers – end users – producers, mining and smelting companies – owners – operators, multinational energy – power – chemical companies, processors and manufacturers, shippers, soft commodity trading houses, trade associations, warehouse operators and owners.

What we do in Trade & Commodities

We cover all aspects of trade and commodities, including:

  • Advising on day to day trading and operational matters
  • Advising on storage and transportation issues
  • Anti-dumping duties on commodities 
  • Carriage and transhipment issues
  • Carriage of goods by road (CMR) issues
  • Counselling our clients on WTO and NAFTA disputes 
  • Crisis management and emergency response
  • Customs and duty issues
  • Dispute resolution, including arbitration (CIArb, GAFTA, FOSFA, IGPA, and LMAA), litigation and mediation 
  • Hazardous cargo disputes 
  • Incoterms standard terms
  • International trade on shipment terms, i.e. cif, c&f, fob 
  • Laytime and demurrage matters on trade law
  • Letters of indemnity (LOI) 
  • Sanctions and regulatory issues – duty matters 

Acting across the spectrum of the international sale of goods, including:

  • Hard commodities, e.g. aluminium, coal, metals, steel, iron ore, etc. 
  • Oil & Gas 
  • Precious metals, e.g. gold, silver, platinum, palladium, etc. 
  • Soft commodities, e.g. cocoa, coffee, cotton, edible oils, fruit, grains, sugar, rice, nuts, soya, tea, wheat, etc.

Advising, drafting and negotiating for all trade and commodity contracts, including:

  • All types of domestic and international sale contracts 
  • Carriage contracts 
  • Derivatives and futures contracts
  • FOSFA and GAFTA contracts
  • Freight and forward freight agreements (FFAs)
  • ISDA contracts 
  • Long/short-term supply and spot trading contracts
  • Storage and throughput contracts 
  • Time/voyage charterparty contracts
  • TRIPS agreements and other regional and bilateral trade agreements

Trade and Commodity Finance

  • Advising on finance documentation and financial trading terms
  • Borrowing, reserving and selling based facilities
  • Countertrade 
  • Discounting, forfaiting and debt
  • ECA (Export credit agency) finance
  • Inventory finance 
  • Islamic trade finance
  • Letters of credit, UCP 600 and bank guarantees
  • Over the counter (OTC) cleared trades and derivatives 
  • Performance bonds
  • Pre-export finance
  • Promissory notes, bill of exchange, etc. 
  • Revolving secured and unsecured credit facilities and syndicated transactions
  • Structured commodity finance, i.e. liquidity management and risk mitigation
  • Supply chain finance 
  • Swaps, hedges and derivatives
  • Trade credits 
  • Warehouse stock and inventory financing