Most of us are so caught up in the moment of the day that it is hard for us to lift our eyes from our PC or Blackberry to try to glimpse the horizon in an effort to put professional work and life in some sort of perspective.
Anyone with the tendency to be short-sighted can only admire Peter Hickson, Chairman of AWG, who in delivering the ACT Winter Paper 2007, sponsored by Barclays Capital, managed to give both a personal and a universal perspective of the key factors and forces that have driven the economy and business over the last three decades.
It is inevitable that treasurers, like everyone else, are caught up with fashions. If everyone is talking about private equity, share buybacks or takeovers by large foreign corporates, then it is hard and often futile to resist. And perhaps the point is not necessarily to resist these fashions; rather it is to possess the experience and wisdom to look beyond the latest trends and products to see what is in the longer-term interest of the shareholders.
That may not mean saying no, but it may involve trying to work out and then point out the downsides. But when a business is swept up with a particular corporate vision or vaulting ambition, it is not easy for treasurers to see where the elephant traps lie or where a sudden unexpected turn of events will hijack the whole scheme.
One of the dangers of the job of the treasurer is that it is possible to become caught up in the technical financial detail and forget that there are human actions and motives which play on the work of all treasurers. One of the roles of the treasurer is to keep a professional detachment and not be completely taken over by these motives. As Hickson reminded us, participation in a scene does not stop us from being intelligent observers of it.
The Winter Paper summed up the 1970s as a decade of high inflation and high interest rates, the late 1980s as a time of recession, the 1990s as the age of the dotcom boom, before – with hindsight at least – the seemingly inevitable dotcom bust.
The next question is simple to ask but harder to answer: what is the key theme that will emerge from the 2000s? In some ways the answer to that question can be left to financial historians. Whatever the events which shape corporate life and the work of the treasurer, there are some fundamentals which all treasurers should ensure that they and the organisations they work for hold amid the ebb and flow of corporate crises and disasters.
PETER WILLIAMS
Editor
