It wouldn’t be Manchester if it wasn’t raining and true to form we’re having our fair share today before the ACT Annual Conference 2017! That won’t dampen our spirits though and I am privileged once again to be the Chair and to work with so many talented treasury professionals.
I can’t remember a conference time when so much stuff was happening to impact the corporate world. Brexit, President DJ Trump (on the decks?!), difficult elections across the EU in France, Germany and Austria and continuing conflicts in the Middle East and tensions in north Asia. Not to mention the drip-drip of financial regulation. And yet against this backdrop we have OECD economies that are showing positive if modest growth, the ViX is at all-time lows and major stock markets are touching record highs. How to make treasury sense of it?
Well I can’t promise I have all (or even any!) of the answers but as the saying goes, I know someone who can.
We’ve just recently completed our annual survey, previously called the Contemporary Treasurer now renamed the Business of Treasury. This fifth year of the survey is revealing critical insights from nearly 200 treasurers worldwide which reflect widespread Board, CEO and CFO concerns about what’s happening in financial markets, where and how will regulation impact business growth and what are the next-gen challenges businesses will face. The executive summary will be exclusively available to delegates at the conference but by visiting treasurers.org/treasurytrends readers can register for the full report which is published in June.
What those treasurers are telling us is that now, more than ever, an overwhelming majority of treasurers see the treasury function as a strategic business partner for their organisation. The survey clearly demonstrates that the skills of today’s treasury professional are about identifying risks to the health of an organisation and then proposing responses to those risks – whatever they may be.
So in the next two days we are going to be debating, challenging and exploring all the issues that treasurers have to deal with. Funding, professional development, cyber security, emerging markets and many more besides which our survey identified as key will keep us all busy through the days and long into the evenings!