Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi, I`m not sure if I am in the right place. I teach mainly kids but do have some adult classes. One of my students works for a bank and he likes talking about his work (of course). So, I am not sure if I am completely stupid (which is quite possible indeed) or my student has learnt himself some incorrect terminology for his work life. He writes a diary and if I may share with you an extract, and if anyone can help me out as to what he means, it would be muchly appreciated. Oh, I am in Japan.

"I work for the Japanese bank. Usually Japanese bank have the deposit work, the lend work, and the consulting word for people or companies. But our bank work for farmers, fishermen, the people in the forest. That is to say our bank is cooperative bank, not commercial bank. Our shareholder is the such people.
My customers are alot of banks. They syndicate some loans and place our bank. Syndicated loan started in US about 100yrs ago. Arranger gathers severals banks or investors and sell the loans for them. Arranger plays the roll that it takes mandate from the borrower and distributes some loans to banks. Our bank is sometimes arranger, sometimes lender........................................."

And it goes on and on.... I really dont understand. If anyone can shed any light on any of it I will be a happy girl, and I can finally either help my student or understand what he is trying to say.
Thank you in advance.

Looks like you need some information on banking. I googled "arranger bank" and got this as the first hit:
http://www.unitar.org/dfm/Resource_Cent ... ctionI.htm

Not the most readable of explanations, but it's clear there is such a thing a a sydicate bank, which arranges things. You might have better luck checking some other things in Google.

thanks for your help.. its a great start......

I used to work in international lending so maybe can explain. A big bank, like the one your student works for, can syndicate loans, which means it talks to a borrower and arranges the loan, say for $100 million. Not wishing to lend all of this to one company, the bank goes out to other banks and asks them if they want to participate, and if so, for how much: 5, 10, 20 million etc. Participating banks get to make a loan, which gives them interest income, without much effort (no contact with the customer, minimal paperwork); the syndicating bank gets interest income plus a nice fat fee up front.
There's a book I used to use sometimes, "English for International Banking" (or maybe International Finance)--don't know if it's still in print, but if so, it's helpful.