2022 was an incredibly busy year for IHG Hotels & Resorts’ nine-strong treasury team as the hotel industry faced the ongoing impact of COVID-19. Refinancing existing RCFs, a credit rating upgrade and an exit from Russia were just some of the challenges. At the same time, there were several changes within the team, which created new opportunities for existing team members, with internal recruitment and secondments helping to fill new roles.
During 2022, the team’s achievements included a successful refinancing of its RCFs, an improvement in its credit rating, a UK cash management RFP and managing an exit from Russia.
The refinancing of IHG’s existing $1.35bn RCFs required a large amount of advance work, both with the bank group and prep for the CFO/Board, due to the ongoing impact of COVID on the hotel industry. The team successfully completed a full $1.35bn 5+1+1 facility, reducing pricing back to pre-COVID levels.
In 2020, S&P (the group’s only rating) downgraded IHG from BBB to BBB- with a negative outlook during 2020. Post the 2021 results in March 2022 the team held detailed management meetings about the path to a potential change in outlook and eventual upgrade. The outlook was amended to positive in April 2022 with an upgrade back to BBB in October 2022.
The treasury team was involved at a very early stage with the global legal and compliance teams to manage the business and subsequent exit from Russia.
In August 2022, when IHG announced a $500m share buy-back the team worked with the wider IHG teams to ensure the funding process agreed with the brokers running the programme was efficient, and developed the most appropriate FX hedging strategy.
Other highlights included completion of Kyriba TMS & payments platform implementation, integration of 45 US loans into the Kyriba system, an RFP for IHG’s UK treasury and UK payments cash management, M&A integration, fraud awareness heightening and education in the US, reduction of translational FX accounting issues across Asia, commencement of investment in sustainable finance deposits and funds.
During this time, the treasury team also completed various volunteering activities, including helping with COVID vaccinations, as well as engaging in a number of employee resource groups, including Lean In and Out & Open, the Group’s LGBTQ+ group.
“This was a brilliant nomination. The RCFs, a rating upgrade, a share buy-back, hedging, the Russia exit, team development and community outreach all contributed to this winning entry.”
Pepco Group
While continuing with a treasury transformation programme in 2022, Pepco’s nine-strong treasury team, based in London and Poland, has stepped out of its comfort zone on many occasions during the last 12 months, demonstrating a willingness to change and improve. A full implementation of a TMS, bank rationalisation and cash management overhaul, supply chain finance improvements, a restructuring of the treasury team and the implementation of a full treasury policy were just some of its highlights in 2022.
