By Ted Howard
In this month’s issue, NeuGroup Peer Leader Barb Shegog explores the problems investment managers encounter when it comes to risk and reporting systems. Our featured summary is The NeuGroup’s Tech20 Treasurers’ Peer Group spring meeting. Other stories include a look at how Scottish breakaway jitters have people on edge, particularly hedgers; how companies are beginning to include disasters in their financials and finally, a look at a software company that’s helping add more dimension to spread sheets.
Risk and Reporting. Before the crisis, treasury investment managers were in a comfortable state of isolation; that is, their portfolios were stocked full of high- quality assets that they didn’t worry too much about. Furthermore, the common wisdom was that “fixed-income mistakes mature,” so why worry now? Not the case anymore, points out Ms. Shegog. Today “Management wants to see what is at stake and what the impact is to the portfolio under stressful scenarios,” she writes in this month’s Peer Leader View. Unfortunately, as in most systems, there is no off-the-shelf solution. And investment managers have to use guile. “In the TIMPG,” she writes, “each member has a unique combination of systems that ultimately allow him or her to end up where they want to go.” Her story offers up a few of those combinations.
Featured Meeting Summary: Tech20. With no repatriation deal in the works, i.e., a HIA 2.0, and activist investors getting pushy, tech companies have repeatedly looked to the capital markets for “synthetic repatriation” —to raise cash to increase dividends or buy back shares. As a result, writes Joseph Neu, “Tech20 members remain focused on not only returning cash to shareholders but on becoming increasingly transparent in communicating plans to do so going forward. Thus, debt issuance is largely a form of synthetic repatriation with proceeds used to return cash to shareholders without the tax consequences.” Their hope is that this faux repatriation “will placate activists sufficiently to avoid a tax haircut on offshore cash until such time as US tax reform is implemented.”
The Hadrian Hedge. Also in this issue, with the possibility of Scotland breaking away from England growing by the day, we discuss some of currency implications. In “The Hadrian Hedge and the ‘95 Yen,” we discuss the worries associated with a split. Because of them, hedging for protection against the swings in the pound sterling is getting very expensive. This is something treasurers ran up against nearly 20 years ago when the dollar was tanking and the yen soaring.
Disaster Risk. In “Incorporating Disaster Risk into Financials” we discuss how some companies aren’t waiting around for definitive proof of climate change and incorporating disaster risks into their financial planning. One such company, Walmart, showed how severe weather had an impact of several cents on its per share earnings.
Spreadsheet Dimensions. Finally, in “Making Spreadsheets for FX Multidimensional” we discuss how one company, AtlasFX, is trying to make spreadsheets better by adding more breadth. As highlighted in the sidebar, sometimes the best tool treasurers possess is their Excel spreadsheet. Unfortunately, despite their strength as go-to work horses, they are still limited.