Latha Visvendran, group treasurer of technology group Chemring – which supplies the defence and aviation industries, described her response to the raft of tariff announcements by US president Donald Trump, saying she initially undertook “a lot of strategic analysis as to how long that crisis was going to last”.
However, despite the volatility created by Trump’s tariffs and the retaliatory measures from multiple countries, Visvendran said she took the view that Chemring would need to keep investing at the same level “because there is a long-term need for some of the things that we do, particularly in Europe”.
And that meant maintain the same levels funding, reflected in the £80m UK Export Development Guarantee facility signed by Visvendran in October that pre-empted the second Trump presidency, and forms part of the group’s financing mix.
Visvendran was speaking at the ACT’s Annual Conference, as a member of a panel discussing: “A challenging world: how are treasurers reacting?”
She also explained that the FTSE-250 group is aligned with the current US defence strategy, one of its core markets, along with the UK, Australia and Norway. “They are driving forward with their strategies, we drive along with it,” she said.
Asked by session facilitator ACT President Tariq Kazi about range forecasting, and the balance between data and AI usage and her own intuition and judgment, Winny Li, group treasurer of drug research firm PPD, explained how a combination of factors was involved.
Li said PPD, part of biotech group Thermo Fisher Scientific, had been using a cash flow forecasting tool it had developed internally 12 years ago that is delivering insights on various assumptions on the changing macroeconomic environment.
“We’re putting some assumptions into the cash forecast model that are producing different results that we then utilise. Although there are some things you can’t put into the data, there will be some judgment on how we undertake cash flow forecasting.
“We would say that if we need to add in this risk, then potentially that would be further reducing or enhancing our position,” she added.
It is important not to be afraid of AI, digitisation, automation, to manage technology and make things happen
Kazi asked what skill set and personality requirements treasurers need to have in a challenging world and how they would need to change in response to new developments.
Li, who is responsible for managing the cash, funding and banking needs of PPD’s concerns across 46 countries, said: “That's something we are always debating internally when we're trying to look for good treasury professionals.
“They have to have a lot of curiosity about the world in general, but also around technology in order to understand what is going to happen in the future.
“It is important not to be afraid of AI, digitisation, automation, to manage technology and make things happen,” said Li, whose career in treasury began when she joined PPD in 2006, after working in accountancy firms Arthur Andersen and Deloitte.
Lawrie Holmes is a business and finance journalist