Cash & Liquidity Management
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Looking into the Crystal Ball: the future of global liquidity management

by Swee Siong Lee, Global Head of Liquidity Management, Transaction Banking, Standard Chartered Bank

The next few years look set to usher in major changes in the way in which corporations manage their global liquidity. While some of the factors likely to drive these changes have been present for a while, the economic environment plus recent developments in regulation and technology will have a significant impact too. Swee Siong Lee, Global Head of Liquidity Management, Transaction Banking at Standard Chartered, examines how treasuries may need to revise their global liquidity management strategies in the light of these developments.

In the current credit-constrained environment, corporations are understandably focusing harder than ever on maximising the efficient usage of their own internal liquidity. Accomplishing that against a static backdrop is challenging enough, but looking ahead there are several likely changes to the liquidity management environment – both positive and negative – that will also need to be considered and accommodated.

Regulatory and tax environment

Exchange control regulations pose a major challenge to corporates’ global liquidity management strategies, by restricting either the extent to which corporates can sweep funds centrally, or to which they can notionally pool balances residing in multiple locations.  Recent years have seen a gradual relaxation of these regulations in many markets, including some of the fastest growing such as China, Thailand and Korea. In general, regulators in these countries have become increasingly aware of, and comfortable with, the range of liquidity management techniques used by the most sophisticated multinationals. In addition, corporate treasuries have typically been relatively conservative in how they operate within existing regulatory constraints, which has further helped to foster more relaxed regulation. The net effect has been that optimising global liquidity has gradually become less onerous from a regulatory perspective.

Exchange control regulations pose a major challenge to corporates’ global liquidity management strategies.