London, 4 March 2011

Standard Bank has entered into a two year agreement with Pareto Commodities LLC (“Pareto”), a boutique commodities advisory firm, to jointly structure, originate and execute structured commodity transactions in the Americas.

Pareto has an experienced management team with a comprehensive understanding of the physical commodities markets, extensive experience in all forms of capital raising and has completed a number of commodities origination transactions across multiple regions. Pareto is led by Rolando Hermoso, Richard Jefferis and Roy Piskadlo.

Jefferis and Piskadlo were most recently at Entergy-Koch Trading and Merrill Lynch where the two originated, structured and executed Merrill Lynch’s largest and most successful commodity based structured finance transactions. Mr. Hermoso ran Investment Banking in several countries in Latin America for Citicorp and was Head of Corporate Finance for Latin America for BofA.

Mike Jakubik, Managing Director at Standard Bank, commented: “This joint venture provides Standard Bank with an unprecedented opportunity to leverage Pareto’s depth of knowledge and wealth of experience in the structured commodities markets with Standard Bank’s existing resources and capabilities throughout the region.”

Roy Piskadlo, Managing Partner at Pareto added: “Standard Bank’s global footprint, combined with the international repute of their commodities proposition makes this a very exciting prospect for us both going forward.”

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