Breakout Sessions: Challenge, Debate and Insight

Participants at the EACT Summit chose to attend two in-depth workshops to learn from leading treasurers, debate and share experiences in some of the areas where treasurers add the most value to their organisations.

Operating in New and Challenging Markets

During this session, Robert van der Zee, Treasurer of the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN agency dedicated to alleviating hunger globally, and Lorcan Travers, Investment Manager at Johnson & Johnson and EACT board member, shared their diverse experiences of operating in challenging markets. For WFP, the primary challenge in many of the 80 countries in which they provide food assistance is to get cash into the country, with cash based transfers, such as prepaid cards and mobile money becoming increasingly important as a way of getting aid to people quickly. For Johnson & Johnson, an AAA-rated company with $40bn of cash, the issue is the opposite i.e., getting cash out of the countries in which they operate. This is critical to maintaining the group’s AAA rating, particularly bearing in mind their risk to banks and commercial counterparties that have a lower rating.

Download our Free Treasury App for mobile and tablet to read articles – no log in required.

Download Version Download Version