Editorial
In today’s competitive treasury recruitment market, knowledge is power. To reach the top of an increasingly complex corporate treasury profession, the budding treasurer needs strong technical acumen backed up by an elusive mix of strategic, management and influencing abilities.
This month’s Spotlight feature, ‘Pathways to Success’, looks at some of the challenges and opportunities facing the career treasurer in the current marketplace and explores some of the ways that treasury professionals can work to secure their place on the next rung of the ladder.
There is never a substitute for high-quality work experience in acquiring new skills. Therefore, selecting the treasury role which offers both a dynamic environment and a supportive attitude to personal development and professional progression is all important in planning a successful career. However, with the mobility of treasury staff to an extent restricted by the present constraints of the job market, where the perfect role may not yet be available, it is crucial for treasurers to explore any available opportunities to broaden their exposure within their current position.
This may involve taking on new responsibilities: for example, managing an implementation project, supervising staff or organising a secondment or job swap with a colleague. The focus should always be on nurturing transferable abilities – for example, in-depth knowledge of an in-house developed system will never be as marketable as a command of a widely used commercial package.
As a supplement to rewarding practical experience, it is also important to develop individual knowledge and skills on a proactive basis. This can open doors within the treasurer’s own organisation and also provide a platform for applying for the next key role. Transferable formal treasury qualifications are obvious tools in demonstrating to employers fundamental skills which can be brought to bear in any organisation. However, for those in more senior positions or with demanding lives outside work, a tailored programme of selfdevelopment may be most suitable.
Treasurers can make use of resources provided by the ACT, including events like our new 2004 Treasurers’ Conference, specialist training courses which are now expanded to cover a range of treasury-related skills, regional group meetings and publications like The Treasurer’s Handbook and, we trust, The Treasurer. There is also a wealth of self assessment and learning resources provided through the ACT’s CPD programme in conjunction with Standard & Poor’s.
And the reward for all this hard work? Well, a well-deserved rest over the summer with Mediterranean beaches,Wimbledon and no Tube strikes to look forward to would do for starters. After that, maybe that dream job in treasury…Yet to tide you over until then we can still offer you a lighter look at the treasurer’s world. JF returns on our back pages.
MIKE HENIGAN
Managing Editor
MONEY MARKET FUNDS (MMFs) are regularly referred to as liquidity funds and many of the firms that manage them cite daily liquidity as one of their key selling points. But how liquid are they in practice? And how can a treasurer assess whether the fund they are using will be able to cope with their liquidity requirements?
WE HAVE ALL READ MUCH about the growth of Money Market Funds (MMFs) and their various characteristics, but why have MMFs become so popular with corporate treasurers and how do treasurers compare the various MMFs with direct market instruments?
Global recession remains unlikely, but economic prospects are set to remain subdued. Fears of terrorism, Sars and wider economic imbalances will remain dampening factors. Britain will continue to enjoy satisfactory prospects in the nearterm, but there are serious risks that the UK’s longer-term position will gradually weaken, and euro entry will remain an unsettling issue.
These are a selection of bonds announced recently. The details, updated to the middle of last month, were supplied by Thomson Financial Securities Data and other sources.
ACT continues to lobby on IAS 39
The ACT continues to be concerned about several details of IAS 39 - which are stopping us giving the support we would like to give to the principles and the draft Standard generally.We continue to make representations.
Richard Raeburn explains the background to the ACT's plans for the major treasury conference in 2004.
In October 2002, the leisure group Six Continents PLC (Six Continents) announced its plans to divide its core businesses between two new, highly focused, listed companies. The UKbased pubs and restaurants business, which owns brands such as O’Neills, Harvester, Browns and All Bar One, was to be demerged to form a retail pub and restaurant company. The international hotels business (which would also retain the soft drinks business, Britvic) would continue to own, manage and franchise leading global hotel brands such as InterContinental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn.
Operational risk has become a defining issue of our times. As regulators have been voicing increased concern, so too has operating risk exposure been a key element in recent headlines concerning corporate governance and the increased threat of business disruption from terrorism.
The implementation of the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) two standards on financial instruments – IAS 32, Financial Instruments: Disclosure and Presentation and IAS 39, Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement – promises to be one of the most difficult issues treasury departments will face in the near future. The standards have yet to be finalised but on 1 January 2005 all listed companies in Europe will be required to be IAS-compliant, and if they are to show the right comparative information, they need to produce IAS information from 1 January 2004 – which is only a few short months from now.
From 1 December 2003, listed UK companies will be able to buy back their own shares and hold them ‘in treasury’ rather than cancelling them. The transaction will reduce distributable reserves, but when the shares are re-issued the reduction will be reversed. The re-issue of treasury shares will be subject to restrictions, as we will outline below.
Ronan Dunne of mmo2 thrives on change – which is a good thing as his career has certainly seen plenty of that since he started out as a trainee accountant in 1982.
The combination of P&O’s Tushar Patel ’s ACCA and ACT qualifications have given him a chance to really stand out from the increasingly competitive treasury crowd.
As the Director of Business Development at Manchester United Football Club, Ben Hatton must have one of the most enviable jobs in treasury. Here’s how he go there.
Swapping a city banking culture for a not-for-profit organisation is a move Piers Williamson of the Housing Finance Corporation definitely does not regret.
The recruitment market for treasurers has held up relatively well until recently. This is partly because treasury departments tend to have little room for redundancies. Treasury management systems (TMS) have become more high profile in recent years, further increasing the efficiency and cost effectiveness of treasury departments.
It is hard to believe that just two decades ago treasury was a relatively unknown profession. The treasury function, and its acceptance in the business world, grew from a new understanding of the importance of risk management for a company’s financial health and future success.
The poet John Donne wrote the immortal words that “No man is an island” in the 17th Century and there couldn’t be a more apt description of life in the 21st Century.We live and work in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, where our ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with a wide range of constituents, both internally and externally, has never been more critical to our professional success.
We all know people who, although technically brilliant, disappoint when they are given the opportunity for management responsibility. Perhaps it is easy to assume that technical competence alone will be sufficient. Given the number of years that professional experts study accounting, finance, law or engineering, it is surprising that both organisations and the individual pay so little attention and devote so little time to the question of leadership.
EXAM REPORT – APRIL 2003 SITTING
‘The successful candidates were those who could display practical solutions and good judgement based on critical analysis’
Nowadays, I get out of bed at three minutes to eight. From half past six, I will have lain there quietly, listening – with the volume turned well down – to James Naughtie and John Humphrys as they try to get politicians to answer their questions Come three minutes to eight, I realise that I do not want to hear yet another weather forecast and get up.
