Launched in 2008, the Adam Smith Awards are now in their 16th year and are a globally recognised endorsement of corporate treasury achievement. Competition is fierce and winning an Adam Smith Award is a true accolade.
The Adam Smith Awards are firmly established as the ultimate ‘benchmark’ for true treasury talent and our highly respected judging panel will be looking for innovation, creativity, outstanding insight, thinking ‘outside the box’ and, of course, real business impact.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) helped to develop modern economic theory and provided a rationale for free trade and the capitalist system. He was a leading innovator of free-market policies and an advocate of a free society and is perhaps best known for his series of books ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ normally referred to as ‘The Wealth of Nations’. This work advocates the division of labour and the benefits of competition and free trade and also has some wonderful observations on how markets work:
Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.
Adam Smith
The Adam Smith Awards are not just another industry event. They recognise excellence and achievement in the corporate treasury space. That is why they are named after Adam Smith who reminds us all what best practice is.