Man on a mission: Axel van Nederveen, swaps evangelist

It’s hard to imagine there’s ever a time Axel van Nederveen isn’t poised to proselytise for derivatives hedging. And in almost two decades as treasurer at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he’s made a good number of converts.

In the early 2010s, for example, en route to an International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, DC, van Nederveen recognised the man in front of him at passport control. It was Archil Mestvirishvili, vice-governor of the National Bank of Georgia. For