Firstly, I would like to say welcome back to The Treasurer. The February issue of this magazinis always special, not only because it is our first issue to come out in the year, but also because it features the winners and runners-up of our annual Deals of the Year Awards. These awards are a celebration of some of the most talented individuals working in the European treasury profession today. They are particularly prestigious because practising treasurers who work for some of the world’s largest companies sit on the judging panel.
The standard of entries in the 2013 awards was very high, with more than 120 deals being
nominated and the nominees managing to raise over £150bn between them. In her introductionto the awards, Lesley Flowerdew, chair of the judging panel and tax and treasury director at engineering and design consultancy WS Atkins, comments on how corporate treasury is becoming ever more professional and treasurers are increasingly adept at executing bold and ambitious deals. Indeed, there are some examples of real executional brilliance among this year’s winners – in particular the winner of our corporate finance category, which also landed the overall Deal ofthe Year accolade. I would like to off er my congratulations to all the winners and runners-up fortheir impressive accomplishments in 2013. You can read about their feats, starting on page 19.
We tend to think of the new year as a new beginning and one man who will be starting afreshthis year is Humbert de Wendel, the group treasurer of oil and gas giant Total. He has been tasked with relocating Total’s treasury team to London from Paris during 2014.
What’s the treasury of a major French company doing in the UK capital, you may ask? Well, you can fi nd out for yourself by reading our profile interview with him, on page 30.
Regulation continues to dominate the fi nancial landscape and our new year’s gift in 2014 is theCapital Requirements Directive IV, which took effect at the beginning of January.
These prudential rules implement the Basel III agreement on bank capital requirements in the EU and they impose strict capital and liquidity restrictions on banks, building societies and investment fi rms. We explore them in more detail in our feature starting on page 36.
I wish you the best of luck for 2014.