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-- WITH PHOTO -- TO BUSINESS, AND NATIONAL EDITORS:
SBA Honors 2014 Export Lenders of the Year
WASHINGTON, April 23, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today,Citibank,
N.A. and GBC International Bank were honored as the top 2014 Export
Lenders of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration, for
large and small lending institutions, respectively. The awards were
presented by Luz Hopewell, Deputy Associate Administrator and Dennis
Chrisbaum, Director International Trade Financing, Office of
International Trade, during a ceremony at the 7th annual SBA Exports
Lender Roundtable, in Washington, D.C.
Donna Marie Donaldson, Vice President and Export Finance Manager at
Citibank, and Annie Pen, Executive Vice President at GBC International
Bank received the awards on behalf of their institutions.
"To succeed in the global marketplace, America's small businesses
require capital to access overseas markets, fund their export
transactions, and expand their local operations to meet overseas
demand. All this will create jobs here at home. SBA and its lending
partners are ready and willing to meet those capital needs with
specially-designed export loans, and I want to congratulate these
winners for actively supporting their exporting customers," said SBA
Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet.
U.S. exports are proving increasingly important to the nation's
economy, and SBA export lenders play a pivotal role in helping small
business exporters to compete and succeed in the global market.
Between FY 2012 and FY 2013, the dollar volume of SBA's "core" export
loans increased by 64.8 percent, while all SBA loans to exporters
experienced an increase of more than 28 percent and enabled a 71
percent increase in the dollar value of exports supported by
financing.
In 2011, Citibank began including the SBA Export Working Capital
program in its strategic plan, offering asset-based lines of credit
between $1 million and $5 million. Citi has shown remarkable growth in
SBA export financing, moving from three Export Working Capital loans
for $6.1 million in 2012 to 17 such loans for $73 million in 2013.
That growth earned the bank the SBA2014 Export Lender of the Year
award for large institutions.
GBC International Bank is a privately held bank with long-standing
expertise in handling international trade. The bank is headquartered
in Los Angeles and has offices in both southern and northern
California, as well as in Washington state. GBC uses all three of
SBA's "core" export loans, which resulted in a significant increase in
their support for exporting customers in FY 2013, going from 11 loans
for $9.7 million in 2012 to 20 loans for $17 million in 2013, and, as
a result, they stood out as a clear winner for SBA's 2014 Export
Lender of the Year award for small institutions.
The Export Lenders Roundtable is an annual event sponsored by the SBA
Office of International Trade, where export lenders and other experts
come together to share good practices and get acquainted with new
regulations and procedures to encourage increased export financing to
small businesses.
For more information about SBA's export lending programs, visit
www.sba.gov/international
Contact: David Hall (202) 205-6697 Internet
Address:http://www.sba.gov/news Follow us on Twitter, Facebook& Blogs
Release Number: 14-15
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110909/DC65875LOGO
SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration
-0- 04/23/2014
/Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110909/DC65875LOGO
/Web Site: http://www.sba.gov
CO: U.S. Small Business Administration
ST: District of Columbia
IN: FIN
SU: AWD LEG SBS
PRN
-- DC10976 --
0000 04/23/2014 13:56:00 EDT http://www.prnewswire.com
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