Bolero has signed an agreement with commodities firm Noble Group, which will enable the company to implement Bolero's multi-bank trade finance service on a global basis in support of both Letters of Credit and Guarantees.

The global roll-out will start in Hong Kong and will then expand to Noble's other primary centres in Singapore, Lausanne, Stamford, USA and London. The Bolero multi-bank service enables the automation of the end-to-end lifecycle of the Letter of Credit and Guarantee instruments for both Importers and Exporters and their banks.

The roll-out of this solution will allow Noble Group to better manage its Trade Finance operations and significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of communication with its partner banks on a global basis. By standardising on the use of Bolero with all core banks, Noble has the opportunity to provide regional and global consolidation and standardisation of its trade finance operations as well as removing time, cost and inefficiency from the processes. By using Bolero, Noble will ensure efficiency and standardisation benefits for its banks partners at the same time.

"A significant number of our core partner banks are already live on the Bolero channel and we anticipate our decision will help to strengthen this commitment as well as to influence other banks to adopt this open platform," says says a spokesperson from Noble Group's Treasury Department.

"Noble Group is a recognized leader with global presence that will add to the significant number of global corporates standardising on the Bolero channel. This, in turn will help to signal to banks globally the increased convergence on Bolero and the benefits to both communities in adoption of a common open multi-bank channel," says Claire Buchanan,, SVP, Global Field Operations at Bolero.

"We are delighted to be partnering with Noble Group. Noble is particularly important to us at Bolero because of its global presence as well as its significant operations in Asia where we are seeing a rapidly increasing focus on multi-bank trade finance from both corporates and their banks," says Arthur Vonchek, CEO of Bolero. *

Nope, nothing to do with Ravel or Bo Derek.

BOLERO is about electronic transfers of title in respect of goods in transit, and the arcane legal documents known as 'Bills of Lading', Letters of Credit and so on. This is the sort of global legal plumbing that you don't notice until it clogs up and the shit overflows, as it briefly did a year or so ago.

I was in there in the beginning maybe about 15 years ago, because at the IPE I dealt with transfers of title relating to barge deliveries of gas oil in the Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp area and down the Rhine.

The BOLERO Rule Book is a document (which they even patented I think....) which comprises a globally valid contractual framework for transfers of title.

Not a million miles away from the sort of stuff I'm doing today, actually.

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky