A quick look at what’s on International Treasurer’s radar screen this week.
Several topics came up at this week’s editorial meeting that International Treasurer will explore in the coming days and weeks, including:
AT30 Working Agenda
The NeuGroup’s Assistant Treasurers’ Group of Thirty (AT30) will be meeting in early May 2014 and is currently creating its agenda. Topics that are in the lead to make it to the final agenda include:
- Managing the balance sheet: Including discussions on capital allocation and asset liability management. As the market environment is changing to one of rising interest rates, how are companies looking at their fix/floating debt mix and targets?
- Employee development: Treasury requires specialized skills and is typically a small group, making rotations in and out of the department more challenging. This discussion is on methods members utilize to effectively develop their staff, maximize their contributions to the dept. and company, advance their careers, and retain them.
- Training others about treasury: One member has offered to demonstrate his interactive Treasury 101 presentation he uses to inform others in the company about who treasury is, what they do, why it is important, and what he gains by doing this training.
- Managing FX risk: This discussion would cover a broad set of FX topics including knowing exposures at the corporate and subsidiary level, appropriate systems, data gathering processes, being ready for executive queries about exposures, cash flows vs P&L vs balance sheet exposures, dealing with substantial forecast variance, and where derivatives are useful and not useful.
Camp’s Plan a little damp
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman David Camp released his corporate tax reform proposal on February 26. The discussion draft, which Camp had hoped to float last year, has only one real appeal to MNCs – a tax rate lowered to 25 percent. Beyond that it’s a mixed bag and not much for MNCs to get too excited about.
eBAM issues
Companies that use e-banking services have to typically sign waivers that allow banks to avoid liability for losses due to fraudulent withdrawals if the banks’ security systems are “commercially reasonable.” A Federal court recently ruled that one bank that failed to tell its corporate client of repeated alerts kicked up by its security system was responsible for the losses, even though the system itself was reasonably standard.