in association with BNP Paribas
by Helen Sanders, Editor
TMI has an established reputation for promoting best practices and innovation in cash and treasury management and recognising the achievements of corporate treasurers globally. As a leading cash management bank both on a pan-European basis and throughout its global network, BNP Paribas espouses these same principles. This year, therefore, TMI has been delighted to present the TMI Star Awards in association with BNP Paribas. The awards were open to corporate treasurers globally and decided in three regional categories by an independent panel of experts chaired by Helen Sanders, Editor of TMI. Award winners for each region were then put forward for the Global TMI Star Awards.
Awards were presented at the EuroFinance Conference in Miami (North America Awards) and at BNP Paribas’ Cash Management University in Paris (Europe and Asia Pacific Awards). The TMI Star Global Awards were also presented at the Cash Management University.
Campofrio Food Group
(Working Capital)
Readers of TMI will already be familiar with Campofrio’s working capital initiative (edition 232) for which its treasury team has won a TMI Star Award. Like many companies, Campofrio Food Group had to reinvent its treasury activities as a result of the global financial crisis. Despite the Group non-investment grade rating and extremely adverse financial markets conditions for periphery-based companies, under Luis Montesinos’ leadership the company has reinvented its treasury activities both to overcome the immediate crisis, and ultimately to benefit from a virtuous cash flow cycle, as well as a responsible attitude to financing.
Firmenich
(Cash Management)
Firmenich has developed a sophisticated in-house bank over the past two years, leveraging the implementation of a single SAP instance which is recognised by the TMI Star Award for cash management. The in-house bank includes a zero-balancing global cash pool across 26 entities, operates an intercompany netting process, and centralises payments through a payments factory operating on a payments-on-behalf-of (POBO) basis.
Honeywell
(Liquidity Management)
Honeywell was recognised as a TMI Star in liquidity management. Since the financial crisis, Honeywell has built a cash balance of $8.4bn, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage credit risk to its 363 counterparties. Treasury has worked with its technology providers, SunGard, Reuters and SAP to develop a sophisticated cash and investment reporting tool that has enabled Honeywell to take a more strategic approach to liquidity management. This includes unlocking trapped cash, reducing idle cash balances, diversifying investments and revising the investment policy in line with Basel III requirements.
Lafarge
(Technology)
Lafarge was the winner of the TMI Star Award for technology for its Connect project. This involved implementing a single group connectivity hub based on SWIFT connecting to each of Lafarge’s cash management banks for payments processing whether these are conducted centrally or by local business units. Users have a single sign-in and single approval tool, enabling consistent controls. The payments hub is configured to convert the file formats of each originating system to the relevant bank format, so that existing formats and local payment processes remain unaffected. Security, process efficiency and business continuity have been greatly enhanced, with significant cost savings as a result of eliminating a large number of local banking systems and interfaces.
Lafarge is currently in the process of merging with Holcim, a leading supplier of cement and aggregates.
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Abbvie
(Technology)
Abbvie has faced the challenging and exciting task of building its treasury organisation from the ground up after completing the spin-off from Abbott Laboratories. With a strategic long-term vision in mind, Abbvie has demonstrated the benefits of taking a ‘blank sheet’ approach to the design and implementation of a best-in-class treasury platform with a focus on transparency of information, processes, automation, standardisation and control. Abbvie treasury has been able to take advantage of innovative product opportunities such as SWIFT connectivity / XML; a global approach to payments, card programmes, expense management, payroll and cash concentration products to fully support a best-in-class treasury organisation.
Albemarle
(Liquidity Management)
Albemarle is an excellent example of a next-generation treasury function that recognised that its liquidity management structure that was fit for purpose when it was first implemented was no longer meeting its needs as the business had grown and changed. Consequently, treasury replaced a notional pooling structure with a physical (zero balancing) cash pool, resulting in considerable liquidity improvements.
Future Electronics
(Liquidity Management)
A global distributor of electronic components, Future Electronics, headquartered in Quebec, Canada, has successfully optimised its global cash and liquidity structure. This has included reducing banking partners from 13 banks in Asia and 25 in EMEA to one in Asia and one in EMEA. Future Electronics has implemented a multi-entity, multi-currency cash pool in each region, with timely and complete visibility over its global cash position. Several million dollars of liquidity has been extracted, enabling the company to reduce borrowings. Treasury processes at Future Electronics such as reporting and reconciliation have been automated and harmonised globally, which has reduced costs and improved efficiencies.
McCain
(Bank Relationship Management)
McCain Foods, a frozen French fries and potato specialties company with global footprint was an early adopter of sophisticated, centralised treasury management, with a highly effective treasury organisation with a Switzerland-based treasury centre, treasury back office in Dublin and Finance SSC in India. The TMI Star Award recognises how treasury has successfully rationalised its banking partners from 14 to 1, across 12 countries, and implemented a highly efficient approach to transaction processing, liquidity management, bank account management, reporting and integration. This has resulted in major improvements to liquidity, operational efficiency and control, and a reduction in both internal and external costs.
Sealed Air Corporation
(Working Capital)
As a global leader in a highly competitive marketplace for food safety and security, facility hygiene and product protection, Sealed Air recognised the need to optimise working capital and unlock trapped cash to maintain its leading market position. Sealed Air worked with its four relationship banks using a SWIFT, ERP and TMS infrastructure with a view to accelerating and standardising processes, accessing liquidity across the group and lowering costs.
Vale
(Cash Management)
Brazilian mining giant Vale’s Global Cash project has resulted in an efficient and well-implemented centralised banking, cash management and SSC strategy. Bearing in mind the diverse, complex nature of the business across Latin America, Africa & Middle East and Asia Pacific in particular, the success of the project has been enhanced by the treasury’s ability to integrate some of the more challenging countries within its centralised treasury framework, with the help of its global banking partners. In addition, Vale has successfully concentrated USD liquidity in the United States with an efficient account structure to enable payments between entities to be treated as book transfers rather than international payments, simplifying liquidity management and effectively supporting the needs of the wider business.[[[PAGE]]]
Helloworld
(Technology)
Australian travel group Helloworld had a clear vision of its automation, efficiency and data integrity objectives, but quickly recognised that it could not achieve these objectives without a transformation of its treasury processes and infrastructure. The company therefore decided to implement Finpacific’s cloud-based MyTreasur-e.com solution in conjunction with Kondor Trade Processing (KTP) in order to achieve better visibility of cash and liquidity, enhance risk management and hedge accounting, improve audit and compliance, automate processes and facilitate better collaboration across the group. Following a two-phase project spanning four months, Helloworld has successfully achieved its objectives whilst also providing the team with a real-time view of current and future cash positions, and supporting flexible reporting needs.
Ingram Micro
(Innovation)
Readers of TMI will be familiar with Ingram Micro’s collections project (edition 230) for which it has been awarded a TMI Award for innovation. Ingram Micro India has worked closely with partner bank BNP Paribas to implement a sophisticated payments, collections and cash visibility project across thousands of distributors and 37 locations in India. In collections, for example, Ingram Micro India outsourced current and post-dated cheque collection and processing to BNP Paribas, and implemented virtual accounts, known as eReceipt, for timely reconciliation, freeing up credit lines more quickly.
In addition to winning TMI Star Awards in the relevant regional categories, we would like to congratulate the following for winning TMI Global Star Awards.
The quality was very high and we would like to thank everyone who put the time and effort into producing such compelling submissions. We look forward to featuring case studies with our award winners in future editions of TMI and presenting projects that are still at too early a stage to win an award on this occasion, but look set to deliver considerable value in the coming months.
With many thanks too to BNP Paribas for hosting the award ceremonies at the Cash Management University and for partnering TMI on such a successful awards programme.
