Synthomer’s group treasury took the award for best Medium Team of the year. The company’s six-strong treasury team embarked on two key transformative treasury projects, as well as a debt refinancing/balance sheet optimisation project. Notably, all this was achieved by a team that was only established at the end of 2022, with several people recruited in the course of 2023.
The treasury team implemented Kyriba – the company’s first treasury management system – in order to enhance cash visibility, improve controls and reporting, and reduce dependency on spreadsheets. This involved collecting and cleansing data which was kept in multiple spreadsheets across the group.
At the same time, the team worked on its Global Banking Program, a project which involved reducing the number of banks from 32 to three and closing 53 bank accounts – thereby improving cash management and gaining more visibility over cash. The company’s working capital was also optimised through the implementation of a €200m committed factoring programme to include around 2,500 factored customers.
Synthomer’s treasury team refinanced $560m term loans with proceeds from a large divestment and drawings under the new UKEF facility, and replaced the existing €460m revolving credit facility with a new $480m RCF, the tenor of which was subsequently extended from two to four years – an exercise that involved intensive negotiations with the bank group.
As well as these notable achievements, the treasury team has also improved its interactions with other departments in the group, creating effective working relationships with departments including accounting, finance, IT, customer services, external communication, customer credit control, trade finance and legal.
Last but not least, all of this was achieved while training new team members and building new skills – a true team effort which has enabled them to achieve so much in such a short time..
An excellent submission which touched many different parts of treasury, from implementing Kyriba and reducing bank relationships to refinancing debt.