By Ted Howard

Our lead story in the June issue of iTreasurer details two main takeaways from NeuGroup’s two Asia peer group meetings in April—the Asia Treasurers’ Peer Group (ATPG) and the Asia CFOs’ Peer Group (AsiaCFO).

The first takeaway revolves around trapped cash in China and the structures needed to facilitate flows in and out of the country. The upshot is that having multiple structures “will allow corporates to take maximum advantage of both official regulatory changes and unofficial window guidance. These structures include in-country and cross-border pooling, cross-border sweeping arrangements, centralized cross-border payments (aka payment factories using POBO/ROBO and virtual accounts) and outbound/inbound intercompany loan programs.”

The second is about something we’ve written about before in iTreasurer. And that is, is the future of the treasury role in danger? Will the role be reduced to lines of code that manage risk, cash, bank accounts and the host of other duties?

Likely not yet, perhaps not ever. But for Asia treasurers, the question has cropped up now and again.

“There is no problem in treasury that cannot be solved with better coding,” said one member of the ATPG. “That provocative statement raised a few eyebrows at a recent meeting,” Mr. Neu writes. However, “the member who said it, paraphrasing a leading proponent of digital transformation of treasury, clarified that it applies more to treasury operations than treasury’s role in business support. But still.”

In our Anticipated Exposures section, we discuss how Kyriba and J.P. Morgan are partnering to offer real-time payment capabilities to Kyriba’s clients; how the “preeminent power of data within today’s multinational corporations means that business units—often under pressure to meet ambitious growth targets—are increasingly demanding that finance teams gather, read and analyze more data at faster speeds to help the business achieve its goals.” Also, there’s a short piece about Medtronic’s debut eurobond offering, which “underscores the significant savings in borrowing costs Europe continues to offer US multinationals.” Finally, Fitch Ratings warns that shadow banking once again poses a looming threat to the financial system.

We also feature a compilation of stories sourced from NeuGroup’s Treasurers’ Group of Thirty meeting, including, How to Bring Method to Metrics Madness, Squeezing More Benefits from a Captive Insurer, Calibrating Capital Structure as a Downturn Looms, Avoiding Missteps on the Road to Treasury Automation, Tier-3 CP Market Remains Small but Offers Liquidity—For Now, and Tales from the Cybercrypt.

We discuss the role treasuries are playing in cyberrisk reduction. And we look at how corporates must make their voices heard when it comes to formulating the phase-in of the Federal Reserve’s Secured Overnight Financing Rate, which will soon become one replacement for the scandal-prone London Interbank Offered Rate, aka Libor. Finally, there’s a quick take on a Protiviti study that shows increased corporate investment in robotic process automation.