Peter Matza's Blog

The first panel discussion at this year's ACT Annual Conference looked at the theme of the conference, clarity in a complex world, by asking whether the economic focus of the world is shifting from W...

Having spent a lot of time with treasurers recently, both in the UK and the Middle East, there is definitely a theme emerging in one particular area of treasury life: relationship management. Once up...

When governments suggest that they are looking to increase funding access for smaller businesses because bank lending has slowed (or even stopped), my first thought tends to be whether treasurers / fi...

The recent comment on the ‘surprise fall’ in the share price of a recent IPO seems to blame almost everyone: the company’s management and major owner-shareholders, its bankers and its IPO lead m...

The impact of unilateral action by the German financial regulator BaFin on various trading activities is reasonably clear. What is less so is the motivation and, by extension, the level of understand...

One of the aspects of a return to stability in the banking sector is the availability of financing for M&A activity. Treasurers at the ACT Annual Conference are expecting growth in M&A from the low ye...

One important theme already emerging from the ACT Annual Conference is that, when faced with a sizeable and growing range of funding alternatives to bank debt, treasurers must involve themselves in th...

The welcome stabilising of the recent financial and economic crisis does not seem to have raised the level of economic awareness and literacy in our press and news media. A recent press article tha...

I make no apologies for returning to an issue I have commented on before – both in these blogs and in the editorials of The Treasurer. The reaction to the announcement by Dubai World of a standstill...

It may just be me, but it appears that the language of this credit crisis / recession has not only been mangled in the press and by commentators but at the same time entered public consciousness in w...

Irrespective of the size of a company, its geographic location or its range of business, it needs to answer the following questions... what treasury activities does it have? who is responsible f...

It occurs to me, writes Peter Matza, that many treasurers will have taken on a role during the economic crisis of the past 18 months for which they may be ‘the last man standing’. They have bec...

In amongst the current financial market turmoil, suggests Peter Matza, there has been plenty of press comment about financial engineering, leverage and a whole host of other terms, familiar to treasur...