While a Connecticut agency has yet to establish a formal partnership with the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Fairfield County exported one of its own last summer right into the inner circles of the international trade agency.
Diane Farrell, a Democrat who twice lost campaigns to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, booked a return trip last week to address the Stamford Chamber of Commerce.
In an interview with the Fairfield County Business Journal, Farrell said she hopes to drum up awareness of Ex-Im Bank”™s programs assisting exporters large and small.
Ex-Im Bank guarantees invoices companies issue for products and services provided overseas, a particularly valuable function for large projects in countries that represent significant credit risks.
For instance, in mid-November Westport-based Terex Corp. won financial assurances for the sale of construction equipment to an Argentina buyer. The bank does not wield a rubber stamp ”“ the week before, the bank declined backing a $3.4 million sale of plastic injection molding equipment to a Mexican buyer.
In addition to conglomerates like Terex, Fairfield-based General Electric Co. and Hartford-based United Technologies Corp., Ex-Im Bank is actively soliciting small-business owners to make more use of its various programs.
That is where Farrell enters the picture. She was nominated last May to replace former director Max Cleland, a onetime U.S. senator from Georgia. In August, the U.S. Senate confirmed Farrell”™s appointment; she joins fellow Democrat and former New Hampshire gubernatorial candidate Joseph Grandmaison among five directors.
Whereas Grandmaison has extensive experience in international trade, having led the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, Farrell”™s trade experience pales next to his resume and those of Ex-Im”™s other three directors.
Farrell fostered powerful acquaintances during her campaigns against Shays, however, including U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi; Sen. Hillary Clinton; and Sen. Chris Dodd and his wife Jackie Clegg Dodd, who before marrying Dodd in 1999 was appointed vice chair of the Export-Import Bank by President Bill Clinton.
Farrell chose to make small business a focal point in her quest to become an Ex-Im Bank director, and this month was rewarded for that focus by being named the director overseeing the agency”™s initiatives for small businesses.
“We really have to let (small businesses) know about our products,” Farrell said. “We really have the ability to help get a business off the ground ”“ in some cases it”™s as simple as providing (an Ex-Im Bank) letter of interest and contact, if needed for extra impetus.”
Ex-Im Bank”™s local outreach efforts could be helped by establishing a formal state partnership with a Connecticut agency, similar to those it has crafted with organizations in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Ex-Im Bank authorized $3.6 billion last year to support exports by small businesses, 26 percent of the total amount of transactions for which it greased the skids. Some 450 small companies used Ex-Im Bank guarantees for the first time last year.
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“Obviously she doesn”™t have a banking background (and) she doesn”™t have an international trade background,” said Stephen Sohn, a member of Export-Import Bank”™s advisory board and president of Westport trade consultancy Global Services Inc. “That”™s why I felt small business was perfect, because it”™s a different kind of issue than your larger-transaction issues. The small guys need some help, they need some assistance ”¦ If someone like Diane can pull that together, she can become an incredible asset.”
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