Our new treasury quiz will earn you CPD points – but only if you answer (a) every time
Q1. Your banker wants to tell you about their new, tax-efficient, cross-border, cash-pooling tool for Turkey. Your company has never had any operations in Turkey. Do you…
- Listen anyway – it might be useful some day;
- Tell him to go away and read your annual report; or
- Ask him to explain it in great detail to your colleague – then give the banker the phone number for your local kebab house.
Q2. HR says it wants to send you on a three-day ‘team management’ course. Do you…
- Think that ‘people skills’ are the way of the future in treasury;
- Glance over at the East End barrow boy who is your market dealer and sole colleague and say to HR: “‘Team management’? Are you giving me a team to manage?”; or
- Ask HR how big the drinks budget is at this off-site event.
Q3. The CFO has suddenly had a great idea: the company needs a new treasury management system. Do you…
- Put together the finishing touches to a proposal you’ve been working on, providing a cost-benefit analysis, the pros and cons of the main vendors’ different systems and a draft implementation timeline;
- Say: “I’ve been asking for this for six years and I’ve now lost the will to live”; or
- Ask: “Is this because we can no longer afford the staples to hold all of our spreadsheets together?”
Q4. The CEO tells you that the company is about to acquire a large but financially troubled rival. He asks you to prepare a report on the target’s cash position. Do you…
- Compile a report using industry data you’ve been tracking on your key customers, suppliers and competitors;
- Ask the CEO: “Does the fact that they’re financially troubled not tell you everything you need to know already?”; or
- Ask the CEO: “Is it too late to sell my shares in our own company, then?”
Q5. The CFO wants to instil a greater ‘cash culture’ in the company. Do you…
- Prepare a rollout of a company-wide training programme and talk to HR about how some cash-related incentives might be built into people’s bonus schemes;
- Say: “Excellent. Let’s pay everyone’s salaries only after our customers pay us”; or
- Say: “Excellent. We’ll scrap paying people by bank transfer and pay them in crisp £10 notes instead.”
Q6. The board wants you to do a presentation about the risks in the company’s derivatives exposures. Do you…
- Prepare no more than 10 slides explaining simply and in clear English what the key risks are and what their financial impact might be;
- Prepare a detailed analysis of every single derivatives position using as many mathematical formulae and Greek letters as possible – just to make sure they never ask you to do that again; or
- Say: “Well, actually, it is rocket science! Darned if I can make head or tail of it!”
Your score:
Mostly (a)s – You’re a proactive, strategic treasurer and you’ll be promoted to CFO soon.
Mostly (b)s – You think treasury is far too important for anyone outside of treasury to be allowed anywhere near it because they will only mess it all up.
Mostly (c)s – Who wants to be CFO, anyway? Treasury is so much more fun!
About the author
Andrew Sawers is a freelance business and financial journalist. He is a former editor
of Financial Director
and has worked on Accountancy Age, Business Age and Commercial Lawyer. He tweets as @Mr_Numbers
