Business Credit Magazine May 2014 | Page 24

M E M B E R P R O F ILE FCIB Member Profile: David Vermylen I It’s often the challenges and overcoming those challenges that provide the greatest levels of motivation and satisfaction in a job or career. David Vermylen, BP Chemicals’ global credit manager for petrochemicals and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) finance manager for aromatics agrees with this. “The unknown, the surprise, the added complexity, the new cultures and trying to find a solution with a couple of factors you’re not familiar with, all of that is what is fun about working in credit,” said Vermylen, who presently serves as vice chairman of FCIB’s European Advisory Council. Vermylen got his foothold at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, where he studied business engineering and international business, trade and commerce. This enabled him to launch into business first as an auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC and then briefly as a power market trader at a Europeanbased branch of Enron. But he recognized that the versatility and range of tasks needed to thrive in credit offered a much more interesting path, so he began his career in credit as an analyst