Europe the key focus of the NeuGroup’s Global Cash and Banking Group’s next meeting.
European economic risk is of highest concern for members of the NeuGroup’s Global Cash and Banking Group (GCBG), which is preparing for its next meeting March 21-22, 2012. In creating the agenda for the meeting, members plan to focus more time than usual to topics associated with Europe, including assessing risk exposures and implementing mitigation strategies.
After a mild panic over the holidays, when a flurry of stories and other events caused many to believe the eurozone was on the brink of collapse, most members now believe they have adequately identified the direct exposures that exist. As such, they have, among other things, implemented new strategies to sweep funds away from the region and limit cash balances held in European banks (see “Will Europe Steal Christmas?” IT, December 2011).
The focus now shifts to identifying the indirect exposures that may exist within contract terms with key customers and supplies to ensure a euro redenomination would not trigger negative impacts of material adverse change clauses or other default events.
Outside of Europe. Addressing challenges outside of the European zone GCBG members will discuss Asia and what is happening in the world’s fastest growing region. The internationalization of the RMB and the concurrent problems with USD liquidity promises to bring continued change to the way global organizations operate and manage their daily tactical treasury activities in Asia.
Banking relations. As credit relationships continue to evolve, many banks are taking a more active role in discussions with clients about the allocation of ancillary business and fees for other ‘non-credit’ services. Treasury managers continue to balance the allocation of these bank services and are looking for new ways to efficiently manage the overall treasury wallet. There will be a session dedicated to the topic of managing the treasury wallet and will discuss ways to most efficiently allocate business to your banking partners.
Cloud and mobile banking. The group will also focus on the latest trends in next-generation treasury solutions including cloud computing and mobile banking as examples of ways to more efficiently manage daily tactical treasury operations. We look forward to hearing the latest updates from our sponsor. We will also discuss members’ adoption of SWIFT and XML conversion.
Acquisition integration.
One of the most important keys to success of a merger or acquisition is how quickly and efficiently the target’s processes and procedures can be integrated into the purchaser’s processes so that projected synergies can be realized both from a system and staff perspective. The longer integration drags on, the more likely it will have a negative impact on the purchaser’s balance sheet. The group will spend time discussing how best to create an M&A Integration Handbook to most efficiently facilitate the integration. We will focus on lessons learned from members most familiar with M&A treasury integration.