About

Rolf Tjugum has worked at GIEK for his entire career. Since he started seven years ago, he has been promoted to deputy director and now deputy legal director. Although he does not have employees report directly to him, he is a mentor for the legal team and he supports them when difficulties arise. Tjugum works on cases ranging from USD 1 million to USD 1 billion, with oil and gas fulfilling 80-90% of his portfolio. The importance of his cases means that he gets ‘to work together with the top lawyers and advisors within their field’. During his career, GIEK has developed from a traditional export credit agency, guaranteeing sovereign risk and a few project finance deals with very limited bank participation to becoming, in terms of exposure, one of the largest banks with respect to financing of offshore vessels. ‘Financing of a ship is far more complicated than lending to the ministry of finance and it therefore became apparent that our guarantee products and approach to the loan documentation needed to change. We decided to participate in the documentation process ourselves with the aim of taking a similar role as any other participating bank in a syndicate’. His decision to become more involved in the loan documentation and the new buyer credit guarantee were big steps and he believes that this has made it easier to have a good dialogue with the other involved parties, ultimately producing better results all around.