Max Niesert, Executive Director, Head of Trade & Export Finance at WestLB says: "We are aware of the growing demand from our corporate customers for true multi-banked trade finance solutions. There is some history in Germany with standardisation of the Letter of Credit which has allowed us to quickly appreciate the need to support a secure, automated multi-bank platform which operates on a global basis and provides broader standardisation including Guarantees."

The Bolero multi-bank service automates the end-to-end lifecycle of the Letter of Credit and Guarantee instruments for both Importers and Exporters removing substantially the costs complexity, discrepancies and time delays associated with the traditional paper based or partially electronic processes. As a neutral third party messaging platform it ensures ease of inter-operability for both Corporate and its Banks and a high level of straight through automation and eliminates the need for the corporate or the bank to build multiple expensive peer-to-peer integration connections.

By automating the Trade Finance Process including the electronic channel to its multiple banking partners, a corporate can have the benefit of a risk mitigation instrument without the majority of costs and issues traditionally associated with the Letter of Credit. This allows a corporate to reduce time, cost and complexity providing visibility and certainty, eliminating errors and allowing it to manage working capital more effectively.

"As banks acknowledge the need to offer multi-bank trade finance solutions, they are also recognizing the substantial risk in supporting customer-specific platforms or solutions." said Arthur Vonchek, CEO of Bolero. "By selecting Bolero, WestLB are protecting themselves against this risk and adding their significant support for the broader adoption of Bolero as the default standard for Multi-Bank Trade Finance services. We are delighted to be working closely with WestLB"

About WestLB
WestLB AG is a European wholesale and commercial bank with firm roots in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany´s most densely populated federal state. With Group total assets of € 288.3 billion as of March 31, 2007 it is one of Germany´s leading financial services providers. It is the central institution for the roughly 125 savings banks in North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg, serving more than 11.5 million clients, and as an internationally operating commercial bank it acts as their link to the global financial markets.

Working in close partnership with the savings banks, WestLB offers the full range of products and services of a universal bank, focusing on lending, structured finance, capital market and private equity products, asset management, transaction services and real estate finance. WestLB AG is rated A1 by Moody's, A- by Standard & Poor's and A (high) by DBRS.

About Bolero
Bolero was created as a neutral, trusted third party to develop a comprehensive set of standards that would remove the barriers to global, cross-enterprise business. Bolero implements and enforces these standards in an open platform to enable paperless trading between buyers, sellers, logistics, banks, agencies and regulatory authorities anywhere in the world, delivering transaction visibility, predictability, speed, accuracy and security.
Building on this platform, Bolero delivers applications that enable the merging of the Physical and Financial Supply Chains, allowing companies to fundamentally re-engineer the way that business is done and take advantage of electronic trading. Customers and their trade partners are rapidly deploying Bolero solutions delivering significant reductions in cost and working capital, increased visibility and improvements in operating efficiency.
For more information, please visit www.bolero.net