U.K. EXPORTS BODY GETS NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

  Export Credits Guarantee Department has
  named Malcolm Stephens, director of export finance at Barclay's
  Bank Plc and a former career civil servant at ECGD for 17
  years, to the post of executive director, a department
  spokesman said.
      Stephens replaces Jack Gill, who is retiring early aged 57.
      A drop in the ECGD's business volume and a rise in its debt
  to the Exchequer have led to criticism in Parliament in recent
  years.
      Stephens said the fall in business volume was a top
  convern, adding that the department may have to compete more
  aggressively with private insurance firms providing similar
  services.
      The department's annual report for the year ended March 31,
  1986, showed exports insured by the department fell to 15.7
  billion stg from 17.4 billion the year before, while its debt
  to the Exchequer almost doubled to 756 mln stg.
      Stephens said he had no specific list of changes. But among
  his chief concerns was the weakened condition of lesser
  developed countries and their ability to pay for their imports.
      The agency will have to review its policies on insuring
  export credits to lesser credits on a country by country basis,
  he said. "Large lump political risk insurance is the sort of
  thing we want to take a look at."
      "You have to try to look forward to see if you are simply in
  a peak and trough situation or it is a more long term thing,"
  Stephens said, in response to a qustion about whether ECGD will
  strike more countries from its list of political risk insurance
  recipients.
      He noted that certain countries have already been removed
  from the list.
  

