Metsä Group Financial Services Goes Live with @GlobalTrade Export LC System

Toronto, Canada, June 23, 2008 – GlobalTrade Corporation (GTC) today announced that Metsäliitto Group has centralized its global letter-of-credit handling using the @GlobalTrade Export LC System. In total 21 Metsäliitto Group Business Units, and their major banks, are now live on the system. The system is hosted by HypoVereinsbank (HVB) in Munich and is accessed freely by all of Metsä’s banks. The banks upload electronic export letter-of-credit messages to the system that are automatically allocated to designated business units.

‘We have successfully completed phase one of the project enabling our banks, Metsäliitto Group´s business units, to collaborate on a global electronic letter-of-credit data base,’ said, Kimmo Helle, Vice President, Trade Finance, Metsä Finance. ‘The next step is to standardize the document preparation process leading to a faster and discrepancy free presentation of documents,’ he added.

´ Metsäliitto Group wanted to have complete visibility over all letter-of-credit transactions,’ said Nick Pachnev, GTC’s CTO. ‘The technology had to support transactions where LCs are electronically uploaded into the system at Metsäliitto in Finland, invoices and other documents created in 21 locations globally, and documents presented to banks in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.’

‘One key aspect of UniCredit Group’s Global Trade Management concept is to provide its customers with trade services holding a genuine surplus value,’ states Markus Wohlgeschaffen, Head of Global Trade Finance & Services of UniCredit Group. ‘The biggest potential for enhancing value is to focus on holistic solutions rather than on offering single products. This, however, implies one fundamental prerequisite: the thorough understanding that our customers are the driving force in all foreign trade processes and that all other parties, including banks, are only subordinated participants. For this reason, we believe in customer-oriented multi-bank and multi-entity solutions like @GlobalTrade that safeguard easy-to-use and easy-to-implement process improvements.’

About Metsäliitto Group

Metsäliitto Group is the eighth largest forest industry group in the world. Its five business areas include wood supply, wood products, pulp, board and paper, and tissue and cooking paper. Its sales are 8.0 billion euro. With 20,000 employees, the Metsäliitto Group parent company Metsäliitto Cooperative and subsidiaries Metsä-Botnia, M-real, and Metsä Tissue operate in 30 countries. Metsäliitto Cooperative is a cooperative organization for Finnish forest owners and has over 131,000 members.

About UniCredit Group

UniCredit Group is one of the largest banks in Europe with over 10,300 branches servicing over 40 Mio clients in 23 countries and with an international network of branches, representative offices, and banking subsidiaries in 50 countries worldwide. The group’s ability to serve financial institutions and corporates is enhanced by Global Transaction Banking (GTB), the global business line of international transaction services in trade & export finance, cash management, and e-Banking areas. GTB covers International Correspondent Banking and Trade Finance Business via Global Financial Institutions & Trade Finance.

About GTC

GlobalTrade Corporation (GTC) is a software developer and applications service provider whose product solutions improve the world of trade finance and trade services. Our @GlobalTrade systems help buyers, sellers, traders, and financial institutions communicate faster and more efficiently while reducing risk and improving monitoring and control. Our customers are business enterprises that need consolidated access to multiple banks and financial institutions that require supply chain finance solutions to meet their clients’ needs. @GlobalTradeTM is the registered trademark of GlobalTrade Corporation.

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