India takes skittish view of fairly chaotic creation/implementation of FinReg in Europe, US.
Depending upon one’s view, the push for financial regulation is either spreading like the plague or like a much-needed cultural advancement. Whatever that view, the drive for regulation has arrived in the financial centers of India. But there has been some push back on what form regulations should take. This, as well as funding and enterprise risk management, were popular topics at EuroFinance India this week.
Mr. Naresh Pandey, head of finance and control at Nokia Siemens Networks India, in a presentation urged regulators not to copy too closely the rules adopted by, for example, the United States, but instead to regulate in a way that will suit India’s circumstances and policy goals. After all, India’s conservatively-managed banking system emerged from the crisis unscathed, Mr. Pandey noted. Mumbai-based PwC partner Kumar Dasgupta emphasized the need for clarity in regulations and how they will work so that companies don’t fall afoul of the rules and risk fines or tax exposures.
Shallow debt markets
On the fundraising side, Mr. Jitendra Jain, CFO of the GMR Group in Mumbai, said the state of the corporate debt market in India is “very shallow” and as a result, inefficient. This made the cost of capital high, he said. But evolution in this market is likely, as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI, India’s central bank) starts to deregulate it a bit. However, “the RBI is silent” on the possible introduction of mechanisms to hedge rupee debt, Mr. Jain noted.
While the local equity market is relatively accessible to Indian corporates, the high cost of borrowing, shallow markets and the lack of hedge instruments for debt has promoted an increased interest among the larger Indian corporates to raise funds outside of India (FX hedging, after all, is available, and euro and dollar debt is cheaper than rupee debt).
ERM
Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a nascent discipline in India but it is increasingly gaining attention and becoming more closely linked to the business-planning process, as demonstrated in a case presentation by Dalmia Cement’s CFO Mr. Vipin Agarwal. By identifying and measuring different strategic, operational and financial risks facing the company, it has taken mitigating steps like market clustering, seeking out export opportunities, negotiating long-term procurement contracts and some outsourcing, to name a few risk-reducing actions.
On the financial risk management side, GMR Group’s Mr. Jain noted that Indian corporates collectively suffered derivatives losses of $5bn in 2008, 75 percent of which hit large corporates. In the aftermath of the crisis, corporates have reined in the use of exotic products in favor of simpler (easy to understand and price) derivatives to hedge business risk, and have strengthened their credit and financial risk management procedures significantly.
Bad news looming?
Finally, as is customary at EuroFinance events, the audience (73 percent corporates) was polled on a number of items: two-thirds thought “more bad news” was coming in the global economy, but over 80 percent were bullish on the prospects of their own company (likely reflecting the relative robustness of the Indian economy as a whole).
Inflation was also a concern, and about a third of the audience feared that it would be difficult to pass on cost increases to customers, and a significant minority noted that local interest rates are too low to compensate for inflation. It also complicates cash-flow forecasting. Only a lucky 5 percent thought that inflation actually was helpful to their business.
In closing the circle of the conference, they got back to the theme of working capital improvements: 38 percent of conference attendees are collecting receivables earlier, 30 percent are paying their bills later, and 59 percent report increasing stashes of excess cash. They reported that the main use of this cash would be reinvested in the business and used for M&A; meanwhile, safeguarding the cash is imperative: the preferred investment vehicles for the cash were treasuries and cash. Indian treasurers confirm: cash is still king.