The Adam Smith Awards Asia have been running since 2014 and this year a record-breaking 349 entries were received. This demonstrates the resilience, collaboration, creativity, cooperation, teamwork, innovation, value of relationships and sheer hard work during such unprecedented times for sure.
The successful companies in this year’s Adam Smith Awards Asia programme were announced on October 6th via a live video broadcast. For obvious reasons, the usual celebratory lunch we host in Singapore was unable to take place this year. Instead, the video stream also heralded the start of the first ever Adam Smith Awards Asia season.
The season will consist of the usual case studies, which follow in this 2020 Yearbook, illustrating just how corporate treasury has responded to these challenging times, as it always does. Additionally, a new Adam Smith Awards Asia podcast series is already under way, giving listeners the chance to hear about the award-winning solutions from the creators themselves. Whilst nominations needed to demonstrate solutions implemented, or in the process of being implemented, in 2019/20, the events of the last few months have certainly focused the minds. Several projects specifically respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as you will see in this Yearbook. To recognise this specifically, we introduced a new category this year, Best Crisis Management Solution; the overall winner is Darren Chua, VP Finance at ST Telemedia in Singapore.
These awards continue to be acknowledged as the industry benchmark for the corporate treasury profession and competition for these coveted awards was, once again, extremely strong. The Best ESG Solution, expanded from the previous Best Sustainable Finance Solution, received many more entries this time round. The winner is Selvan Paramasivam, M&A Analyst at Agrocorp International, who established ESG-linked facility covenants and sustainability metrics which help to provide training for farmers in Myanmar.
Our Judges’ Choice is Ganesh Karuppannan, Chief Financial Officer at Hetero Labs Limited, awarded by our judges for the company’s immediate, effective, and direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
Our 2020 individual winners are also worthy of a special mention; Woman of the Year is Tricia Ho-Hudson, Group Treasurer at Woolworths Group Limited in Australia, whilst Pulat Yunusmetov, Regional Treasury Manager at Danone, Singapore, is our Rising Star.
Finally, our most prestigious accolade, Treasury Today Asia’s Top Treasury Team 2020, goes to Jayant Parande, President & Global Head – Treasury, IR and TSF, Group Treasurer and the team at Olam International Limited, Singapore. A truly magnificent team effort spanning several key initiatives.
The entire team here at Treasury Today Group wish to extend our sincere thanks to all the companies who took part, and we offer our congratulations to all our winners and their partners.
