Do your treasury skills deserve to be recognised? Do you think a colleague’s excellence should be rewarded? Is your company doing great things? Here’s the perfect opportunity to celebrate all of this – by entering the ACT Middle East Treasury Awards.
Nominations have just opened for what has been described as “the Oscars for the corporate treasurer”. So if you or anyone else in your organisation is doing work that deserves to be noticed, the judges want to hear about it.
“If you’ve done something that’s interesting or you’ve been through a particular experience, share it,” says Andrew McMichael, group treasurer of Agility and co-chair of this year’s panel of seven judges.
Nominating your organisation doesn’t just highlight your achievements. It also showcases your impact and leadership; boosts credibility with peers, stakeholders and senior leadership; motivates your team; and positions you or your colleagues as shaping the future or treasury.
The 10 categories include treasury systems, cash management capital raising (bonds/loans), working capital solutions (such as supply chain finance (SCF), trade finance, and revolving credit facilities (RCFs)), sustainability and treasury transformation. There are also awards for treasury teams and individuals, with winners to be announced at the ACT Middle East Treasury Summit, taking place at the Grand Hyatt in Dubai on 22-23 September. Pictured above are the winners of last year's Sustainability award, Masdar.
From an individual to a multi-million-dollar corporation, anyone can win. “We’ve seen things from very small companies just doing something we’ve really liked,” adds McMichael. “In terms of what we [as judges] are doing, which is to look to encourage professional treasury operations, we love to see all of the range.”
This means it’s “not necessarily about the big multinationals,” says his fellow judge Laura Ford, director – treasury at Majid Al Futtaim. “Of course those are important and absolutely deserve a seat at the table. But we’ve seen small SMEs win awards. It’s not necessarily a matter of the size or scale of the deal, but the context.”
Above all, their work needs to have had an impact. Former winners include a female cabin crew member at Etihad, who was named Treasury Professional Of The Year after gaining ACT qualifications and within a few years was a key member of the airline’s treasury department.
Another was a small taxi firm that helped thousands of drivers open their own bank accounts to move the business cashless – an entry the judges liked so much they created a new SME category to award it. "The story and the complete range of the solution just stuck," says McMichael. “They were a winner and very deservedly.”
Judges want to hear how projects were implemented and delivered value to the organisation. Therefore, says McMichael, individuals and companies give themselves the best chance of winning by making their entries succinct – but with as much information as possible.
“Somebody who gives two lines about a company that’s not well known… and just writes ‘we moved all our bank accounts to bank X and we saved amount Y and we did this in six months’ is not really giving us enough information to judge,” he says. “But we’ve also seen submissions where you’re like, ‘have I really got to try to read and summarise 40 pages?’ But three lines is just insufficient. It depends on the project but three, four, five pages of good information is probably ideal.”
Ford says the judges are “very keen” to see the submissions, and in particular, submissions from all countries in the region. “These are regional awards. And so we strongly encourage people to do the submissions from any country in the region.
“If anyone’s thinking they’re still not sure, that their team is big enough, or their project is not worthy enough, that’s absolutely not the case. If you feel you’ve done good, impactful work in your organisation, you’ve earned the right to nominate yourself or your team. This is about celebrating achievements, so people should not hesitate.”
Eligible projects must have been completed in the last 12 months. You can enter here and the closing date is 24 August. This article is based on an episode of the MEA Treasurers podcast.
Peter Taylor-Whiffen is a writer at CPL One
