John Macnamara started work in a London commodity trading company in 1982, where he specialised in Islamic trade finance before moving onto countertrade and prefinance. He crossed the counter to banking in 1990 and was a mainstream corporate banker for a period before returning to trade finance. Since 2000 he has been Head of Structured Commodity Finance at Deutsche Bank AG in Amsterdam, part of Deutsche's Structured Export Finance division. Previously he was Head of Structured Trade and Commodity Finance at Banco Santander Central Hispano (BSCH) in London, where he set up this product and was active in the structured trade finance market throughout the period of the emerging markets crisis in 1996-99 without a single loss on his portfolio. During this period his department was merged with the in-house US-incorporated investment bank. This background has given him an unusual level of insight into commodity trading companies, commercial corporate banking and US-style investment banking, combined with long-term exposure to the emerging markets.