You don’t need me to tell you that the role of the treasurer changed profoundly that fateful day in September 2008 when the personnel of Lehman Brothers were seen spilling out onto Canary Wharf, carrying their belongings in cardboard boxes. Once upon a time, treasury may have been dismissed as a largely back-office function that spent its time shuffling money between subsidiaries, producing exhaustive cash flow forecasts (which hardly anyone else in the organisation paid attention to) and making the occasional foray into the FX markets. But that time has gone. Over the past five years, the profile of treasury has been raised enormously due to it being the guardian of an organisation’s liquidity. Boards now know how crucial it is to have the right amount of money in the right place, at the right time. Not only that, but treasurers have been called upon to assess the risks posed by the company’s counterparties, particularly its banks, and to negotiate new funding arrangements in what have been some very difficult circumstances. These are the very themes that we examine in our cover feature, starting on page 20. We look at how the treasurer’s role is becoming more strategic and less operational, as boards increasingly seek advice on everything from ballooning cash piles to the company pension scheme. There has never been a more exciting time to work in treasury. In this issue, we also meet Paul Edwards, group financial controller of bus and rail operator Go-Ahead. As he spends a lot of his life shuttling between Newcastle and London, it made sense to interview him on the train. He talks about his career journey and his experience of working for Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne, on page 26. We also bring you our quarterly 16-page special supplement on cash and liquidity management, starting on page 31. This month’s topics include procurement cards (which were recently the subject of a very lively discussion on the ACT’s LinkedIn group), working capital management and multilateral netting. Then, on page 48, we turn to the thorny issue of debt transfer pricing and offer some suggestions on how you can avoid some of the pitfalls that await you when planning intercompany loan arrangements. I hope that there is plenty in this issue to interest and inform you. As always, I enjoy hearing your feedback, so please get in touch.