Agriculture

Dean Scoble

Dean has extensive experience in Structured Trade, Commodity Finance and Physical Trading of Agricultural Commodities. He's a specialist in SAFEX traded Agri commodities. His career in Agri Commodities started in 2000 when he joined the Soft Commodity Trading and Financing division of Rand Merchant Bank. As a Senior Transactor, he was responsible for Grain and Oil Seed financing in Southern Africa. In 2007 he joined Standard Bank as a trader where he was instrumental in setting up their Structured Commodity Finance Business within Global Markets, building it to become a market leader in the financing of SAFEX traded Agri commodities.

Pieter de Kock

Pieter has more than 14 years' experience in structured finance across the agricultural and soft commodity value chain. His involvement includes exposure to the retail, commercial, corporate and merchant banking divisions within FirstRand Bank.

Pieter was instrumental in building FNB's Agri business during the 90's. He joined Rand Merchant Bank in 2002 in the Soft Commodity Trading and Financing division. As senior transactor in the Structured Trade & Commodity division he played a key role in establishing RMB as a leading player in this sector.

Pieter holds B Agric and B. Comm degrees from the University of Stellenbosch and a Diploma in Banking from CAIB.

Prieur du Plessis

Prieur has more than 10 years of experience in the commodities trading and financial services arena. His career includes head of structured trade and commodity finance at Absa Corporate and Merchant Bank, a subsidiary of Barclays Bank Plc. Prieur managed the treasury operations of Rand Merchant Bank's commodities trading desk, before moving into a structured commodity finance deal-making role at the bank.

During his tenure at Rand Merchant Bank he was a key member of the team that completed the first successful grain securitisation in the world and led the team that established the third largest crop insurance company in Africa. He then joined Standard Bank South Africa as Head Originations Soft Commodities. He led the Standard Bank team responsible for the launch of a three-year Jatropha production finance product, the first bio-fuel finance product of its kind and also developed the first Sharia-compliant commodity backed product for Standard Bank South Africa. Prieur is a qualified chartered accountant and completed his articles with PricewaterhouseCoopers.