Standard Chartered, a UK-based multinational banking and financial services company with $688 billion in assets, announced on Thursday its strategic investment into Linklogis, a Chinese supply chain financing platform, to enhance its joint supply chain ecosystem proposition and provide suppliers with access to affordable and convenient financing.
According to Standard Chartered, the purchase of the equity stake also builds on Standard Chartered’s ongoing partnership with Linklogis, which started in February 2019 with the signing of a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop and deliver a supply chain financing proposition, and the completion of several joint deep-tier supply chain financing transactions.
“Standard Chartered will continue to leverage Linklogis’ technology and expertise to provide large corporate buyers with greater visibility and transparency of their extensive network of suppliers, as well as cheaper and easier access to financing for suppliers further upstream. In addition to offering these capabilities to onshore customers, both parties will explore new opportunities, including the extension of these solutions to support cross-border flows.”
While speaking about the investment, Benjamin Hung, Regional CEO for Greater China and North Asia at Standard Chartered, stated:
“Corporate clients globally are increasingly looking for efficient and secure digital platforms to meet their supply chain financing needs. Our strategic investment into Linklogis not only allows us to better serve our clients by being a part of their integrated ecosystem, it also reinforces our efforts to support China’s opening by facilitating the flow of capital, particularly for the Greater Bay Area.”
Charles Song, Chairman and CEO of Linklogis, added:
“We are much delighted with the deepening of partnership with Standard Chartered which shall invariably complement each other’s effort in the offering of supply chain financing solutions to the suppliers’ ecosystem. It has always been the strategic goal of Linklogis to develop innovative tech-enabled supply chain financing platform for the betterment of market efficiency and in support of real economy.”
The investment amount was not disclosed.