Few people can claim to have created a new debt market. Andreas Petrie is one of them. And more than two decades after his breakthrough deal, he is once again pioneering a transformation. Petrie wants to see Europe’s largest private debt market escape a tangled web of phone calls, e-mails and faxes by shifting to digital platforms within five years. The technology drive is also a key part of efforts to expand so-called Schuldschein lending beyond the German heartland and into global markets. "The room for growth is huge," says Petrie, the Frankfurt-based head of primary markets at Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen, or Helaba. "The world is constantly moving towards a digital age, and we need to be creative." Petrie’s original brain wave in 1996 was to introduce corporate borrowers to Schuldschein, a bond-loan hybrid then mainly used by European sovereign and financial institutions. German banks led by Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (LBBW), Helaba and Bayerische Landesbank have since built...
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