About us

Niklaus Hasler joined Nordkap as its Chief Executive Officer in 2003 after 20 years in executive risk management and lending positions in Zurich and Munich with ABB, Marc Rich, Swiss Bank Corporation, Deutsche Bank and Bayerische Hypotheken und Wechsel-Bank. He is a graduate of the University of Munich.

We were established in 1963 as Export Finanzierungs AG (EFAG) by Switzerland's Brown Boveri Corporation, which later became ABB, the corporate entity, within which a number of Nordkap Bank AG's staff spent much of their professional lives. For the first thirty plus years of our existence, our goal was to facilitate sales of ABB equipment by arranging export credit and similar facilities for equipment purchasers.

However, in 1996, after the completion of the merger that created ABB, we received a Swiss banking license and renamed ourselves ABB Export Bank, a part of ABB Financial Services. As such, our mandate expanded to include many other infrastructure and industrial financial products and services. Given our successes and growing reputation in the marketplace, we also took mandates, not linked to ABB industrial content, and grew our balance sheet to over CHF 1 billion.

During ABB's financial difficulties in the early part of the new century, ABB Structured Finance (including some of our staff) was sold to GE for USD 2.7 billion, but ABB Export Bank was sold separately in 2003 to a consortium of Swedish private investors. When the new shareholders asked me to rejoin the newly renamed Nordkap Bank AG as Chief Executive Officer, I gladly accepted the opportunity.

In 2003, my CFO, Alois Alig, and I focused on the challenges of getting the bank up and running as a newly independent enterprise.

In 2004, we focused on building our balance sheet by purchasing an emerging markets portfolio of almost USD 400 million, securing a funding facility of USD 300 million, and formalising a long-term strategy. Also in 2004, our Chief Investment Officer, Stefan Gerig, joined Nordkap Bank AG and began to develop the strategy of focusing Nordkap Bank AG as a provider of infrastructure lending, debt-arrangement and advisory services.

2005 was another year marked by success as we increased our funding facility to USD 400 million and won our first arranging mandate (which completed successfully).

2006 continued this early success as we closed six more arranging mandates, growing our portfolio to more than CHF 550 million and securing our first financial advisory mandate.

In 2007, we expanded our funding facility to USD 500 million, continued to grow our advisory and arranging business, closed several more arranging mandates, secured three more advisory mandates for some of the largest and most interesting Russian and East European projects in the market, and took on a commitment from our shareholders to be a leader in renewables project finance.

In 2008, Jeff Riopelle joined as Senior Vice President, after many years of experience with major banks and financial companies, to help overall coordination and execution of our growing transaction pipeline. At the beginning of 2011, Jeff became Chief Risk Officer of the Bank, responsible also for the entire portfolio of Nordkap Bank AG.

2009 showed that Nordkap Bank AG was also not going to escape the dramatic financial turmoil, which had enveloped world markets.  Due to one of the Bank’s focuses on global trade flows, the sudden reduction of working capital and liquidity available to this vital international business activity had a major impact on the ability of many of these companies to continue “business as usual”, including a number of our customers.

Nordkap Bank AG has worked intensively with these borrowers to find solutions, which endeavour to ensure the borrowers’ long-term recovery, while restructuring indebtedness, which would return Nordkap Bank AG’s investment under acceptable terms.  Needless to say, this has absorbed much effort and time in 2009 and was also our focus during 2010. However, our efforts have been rewarded with substantial forecast recoveries for most of these effected exposures.  Increasingly, now, the full internal resources of the bank are returning to our core activities and, accordingly, to a normalisation of our business.

As we have done since the beginning of our existence, we take considerable pride in being able to deliver to our clients top calibre advice and services without the impediments that so often come along with larger institutions. We have demonstrated – through “thick and thin” - our dedication and commitment to our key businesses and customers.  We are fast, we are responsive, and we are a team of professionals, each having spent most of his or her professional life in structured commercial lending.

What can we do for you?