Margrith Lutschg-Emmenegger has quit as global head of forfaiting - a form of debt discounting - in the trade and commodity finance group at WestLB, the number one bank in the sector.

She will join FIM Bank, a trade finance specialist in Malta. Lutschg-Emmenegger, who was a managing director and has worked at WestLB for 13 years, is highly regarded in the $50bn (€46.5bn) forfaiting industry, according to sources close to the German bank.