Several topics for further exploration came up in International Treasurer’s editorial meeting today, including how corporate cash is becoming a bigger target for agitators and politicians, resources to manage the company’s portfolio and Bloomberg’s growing capabilities. Also discussed were the lack of big tech upgrade plans for 2013 and mobile treasury.
Corporate cash a pejorative.
There is a growing chorus of investors and politicians that are agitating for companies to release their stockpiles of cash to investors and/or governments for tax purposes. Recently hedge fund notable David Einhorn filed suit against Apple to get the tech giant to release some of its $137bn in cash. To be sure, the debate over corporate cash is fraught with dangers for companies – from reputation to tax consequences. Throw in the cash that is parked overseas “avoiding” US taxes and a toxic brew is created – note that on February 7, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill that would eliminate companies’ ability to defer taxes on income deemed permanently reinvested.
The broader press and pop culture already view corporations suspiciously if not downright disdainfully, so could the continued piling up of cash for no good reason (or as it’s perceived) come back to haunt companies?
Portfolio resource management.
While corporate cash may or may not be under attack, those charged with managing it wonder what amount of resources should be dedicated to that task. In a recent agenda planning call for the NeuGroup’s Treasury Investment Managers’ Peer Group (TIMPG), the question of what amount of resources do others dedicate to managing the company’s portfolio was a popular one. Members wondered about staffing levels and what tools to use along with other questions. These questions arose whether companies outsourced portfolio management or not.
Bloomberg capabilities.
Another topic that arose in the TIMPG meeting planning call was that of Bloomberg’s capabilities. According to one member, Bloomberg is widening its offerings to include portfolio management, money fund data and other functions – all scalable and at, reportedly, at no further cost. This company claimed that it was able to manage nearly all of its portfolio regardless of where the money was.
In 2010, iTreasurer wrote about Bloomberg’s growing capacity to do Value-at-Risk (VaR) calculations as well as hedge accounting and how some companies were eschewing the traditional purveyors of these services for the Bloomberg offerings, which at the time were no extra cost (see related story here)
Mobile treasury.
The idea of the traveling treasurer isn’t new but what is new is the continued development of the capabilities. As computers increasingly go the way of the dodo, and as treasurers hit the road more often, the need for robust mobile treasury offerings has increased. Treasurers want all the functions available on their office desktop (or laptop) on their mobile devices. Mobile tech firm Fundtech has been a leader in this area (see related story here) but we’ll look into what’s happening more recently when it comes to BYOD.