Adam Smith Awards 2016 winners

Our Top Treasury Team accolade in 2016 goes to Etihad Airways’ who also shone in the Best Cash Management and Best Financing Solution categories. Under the leadership of Ricky Thirion, Group Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer Adam Ben Boukadida, the company has delivered a multi-disciplined program covering payment processing, liquidity management, collections and supply chain finance ahead of a scheduled change to the ERP platform in H216. This was a cross-functional team effort involving treasury, finance and IT.

This year’s Treasury Today Woman of the Year Rana Fayez El-Hajjar is a role model for women in the world of treasury and finance. She was appointed Head of Cash Management in 2007 and she has continued to achieve since her promotion to the position of Treasurer in June 2014. She is a real advocate and practitioner of coaching and mentoring and a most deserving winner this year.

The continual quest for access to the most effective funding sources, combined with a strong company diversity programme, has resulted in a unique and innovative project from Toyota Financial Services (TFS). Utilising TFS’s Diversity and Inclusion Bond Platform with a unique structure, pairing a two-year fixed and floating rate bond with a five-year tranche to help drive broader demand, this is a most deserved winner of our 2016 Judges’ Choice category.

This is a classic lesson in how to issue a Global Cash Management Request for Proposal (RFP) to accommodate the company’s requirements across 71 countries. Having selected two key partner banks, one to cover the Middle East and the other as international partner, some impressive benefits accrued.

This solution addresses the stress in the money market fund arena and the emergence of negative interest rates for euro balances which solved the company’s €100m investment challenge.

This solution is all about how Toyota Motor Credit Corporation addressed the SEC’s new regulations in the prime money market fund operating structure. Although these regulations are not due to take effect until October 2016, TMCC is already very well-prepared to leverage the opportunity to enhance yield on its substantial investment portfolio without compromising liquidity or credit quality.

DS Smith Plc has implemented a robust supply chain finance (SCF) programme which includes all of its suppliers including many SMEs that were unfamiliar with SCF. Hear how they have onboarded 270 suppliers in just 12 months with their preferred provider.

The corporate finance team at this household name used to spend about a third of their working hours with banks and the boss wanted to know why? They implemented a bank relationship tracker to monitor bank engagement and improved their ROI considerably as a result.

This solution enables Volvo Cars to connect to their core banks by deploying a single supply chain finance web-based online platform which has improved the company’s working capital management KPIs. Hear how they achieved this.

This company needed a new solution to remove the need to issue cheques in Brazil. They worked with their bank to introduce a prepaid card under the VISA label and are now in the process of consolidating all their daily cash operations to their banking partner.

You may recall this company has won previously with a most innovative solution whereby it used landing rights at London’s Heathrow airport to secure finance. Well, this time it has managed to secure financing ($700,000 6.875% Notes due 2020) along with its equity partners (namely Alitalia, Air Berlin, JetAirways and Air Seychelles) for capital expenditure and investment in fleet as well as for refinancing depending on each airline’s needs.

Ericsson has operations in all countries except North Korea. This means operations in 180 countries with exposures to 100+ currencies and more than 500 currency pairs. Their exposures are massive. Hear how they implemented a currency analytics platform to address the situation.

When the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) came into effect in February 2014 requiring dual reporting of all over-the-counter (OTC) and exchange traded derivatives (ETD) by both buy and sell side firms, it changed the landscape of regulatory reporting requirements. Microsoft has implemented a solution to respond.

Horizon Pharma addressed the challenge of managing 15 different banks, seven different bank platforms while making payments to 3,000 suppliers in seven separate currencies with an ambitious bank rationalisation and global ERP project. They predict cost savings of $1.5m over the next five years.

Microsoft Treasury continues to demonstrate innovative spirit in leveraging leading edge technology trends to drive business impact. In their latest project they are looking at blockchain and the scenarios where this latest technology could help corporate treasury. This is certainly One to Watch.

This demonstrates the company’s opportunistic approach to leverage the recent oil price collapse. They have identified Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE as the specific countries requiring a financing solution and are implementing a solution with one of their global partner banks (GPB) which will buy receivables on a non-recourse basis.

This relates to an e-Billspay solution that enables Total Nigeria’s merchants to lodge payments via 8,000 bank branches across Nigeria irrespective of Total’s relationship banks. The solution has addressed many of the challenges faced by the company when collecting from its 500+ service stations across the country

This is not just about SWIFT as the company was also implementing a new ERP platform. They now cover the whole world (and they are present in 100+ countries) with just eight banks. The SWIFT solution is now live in more than 50 countries and they expect to complete the project in the summer 2017.

Anna Kotina is Treasury Manager at Hasbro in Switzerland. Her approach to continuous learning, team development and her focus on delivering financial benefits are the main reasons for her being chosen as Treasury Today’s Rising Star for 2016.

The treasury team at Royal FrieslandCampina has demonstrated you don’t have to be a big team to make a real impact. They have implemented several projects in just 16 months across a broad spectrum of cash, treasury, technology and financing areas.

Kate Oddo is an inspiring leader and has a major role to play in how Toyota Financial Services is funded. Her main achievements are highlighted by her commitment to diversity. She is also recognised as Judges’ Choice for the Diversity and Inclusion Bond programme. Our judges also wanted to recognise her as the Highly Commended Winner in the Woman of the Year category.

This solution leverages Roche’s in-house bank and introduces the POBO/COBO model to its affiliates in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The successful model is now being rolled out in the Asia Pacific region with a pilot in Hong Kong.

This solution extends this company’s global cash factory programme into Russia/CIS. The solution implemented includes RUB cash pooling, standardised payment processes, an optimal bank account structure and SAP cash management, bank communication manager, IHB and bank account management (BAM) tool.

This project uses a new International Treasury Centre in Luxembourg to centralise international cash management, investments, FX and internal financing. The benefits are simple: control visibility, simplification and scalability.

This solution was recognised in last year’s Adam Smith Awards as One to Watch – Project Rio 4 has now come to fruition with this impressive global cash applications solution.

This project was smartly executed as it fell right in the middle of Chubb being acquired by ACE Ltd to create one of the largest propertycasualty insurance companies in the world. The project demonstrates the importance of a long-standing relationship with the chosen banking partner.

This is a good example of managing relationships with investors, banks, bond holders and the wider equity market when executing funding transactions. Rolls-Royce demonstrates the value of such relationship management when they raised a total of $3.2bn of funding recently.

This is a bank rationalisation project (BRP) covering 58 countries which were divided into ‘clusters’ – eight global banks were selected and the project demonstrates best practices not only in cash management but in relationship and change management.

This project set out to shift documentary/trade clearance cycles to an entirely electronic process for the huge volume of customs transactions being managed by Abu Dhabi Customs. This flagship project is forecast to have a profound impact on governance, financial and process efficiencies both in the UAE and wider GCC.

Boeing has over 75,000 cardholders with cards in over 20 currencies generating $700m+ in spend globally. Hear how they deployed a virtual card account (VCA) programme with their banking partner to deliver some impressive benefits.

The nuclear decommissioning sector is highly regulated and has come under increasing pressure in recent years to seek increased value both in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of sourcing activity. The government is looking for tangible evidence of innovation across this activity. This solution addresses this with a bespoke card solution.

In 2015, the appreciation of the Swiss franc led this Geneva-headquartered company to review their hedging and collection policy, and the card acquiring business was one of key components included in the scope of the project. Hear how they appointed a pan European banking partner to deliver a card acquiring and cash management solution.

This solution was required to finance a $6.4bn acquisition within a very tight timeline from start to finish. The financing was arranged in euros but the acquisition was in US dollars so contingent forwards and currency swaps were used to manage FX risk.

Royal FrieslandCampina is an unrated company which makes this financing solution a little different. This solution includes a Schuldschein, a type of privately-placed German debt similar to a mid-term note and is the first green debt instrument to be issued by a dairy company and the first issued by a non-German issuer. Read how they did this.

Regulatory changes in Taiwan (June 2014) made the Formosa bond qualify as a domestic investment for Taiwanese institutional investors, even though the denomination of the bond is in a foreign currency. This provided an attractive and alternative source of funding for TFS who raised $750m via its inaugural offering in August 2015.

This is an impressive joint initiative involving the treasury and enterprise risk management departments which addresses the company’s material FX exposures within a broader financial risk management (FRM) Transformation Project.

This is a combined foreign exchange and virtual card accounts (VCA) solution which this company has deployed and which has enabled it to leapfrog its peers. The company has grown at a phenomenal rate since it launched in 2012. Hear what they have done with one global bank.

This company generates over 75% of its sales (totalling around £22bn in its last financial year) outside the UK resulting in large currency exposures which it hedges. Its mix of sales is broadly 20% from each of its US, Chinese, European, UK and other markets. It also hedges commodities such as aluminium, copper and PGMs. The company decided on a cloud-based hedge accounting solution.

Hilton’s story is noteworthy in the degree of turnaround relative to the original problem. They had a large, complex portfolio of intercompany loans, maintained in multiple databases and without a policy governing associated transactions. It had no comprehensive visibility to aggregate positions or exposures. Hilton had no prospective sense of potential FX risk to earnings or cash flow. Lacking that information, it had no ability to mitigate either risk. Today, Hilton’s intercompany loan portfolio has been reorganised and dramatically simplified. Read how they did it.

Microsoft’s traditional business has largely been with big original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Dell and HP. With the emergence of cloud solutions, their business model is changing necessitating the onboarding of thousands of distributors and resellers across 180+ countries. Project Apollo, leverages the leading credit intelligence agencies, D&B and Experian, plus their BPO partner Accenture, to deliver a solution to support the company’s cloud business growth ambitions.

This global cloud-based SaaS addresses this company’s fragmented technology and highly manual operations to gain greater visibility into the company cash and introduce a much more streamlined approach within treasury.

This company most certainly harnesses the power of technology to drive the ‘Power of Dreams’. The solution includes SAP TRM, CM, BCM and SWIFT Alliance Lite2 – read how they delivered all this in less than six months.

This One to Watch is recognised for the solution it was forced to implement when its encumbant banking provider decided to exit the transaction banking business. The company took the opportunity to rationalise its 1,700 bank accounts to two global banking partners without compromising its business as usual or KYC processes.

This solution uses the services of a cloud-based treasury management solution provider to help them implement a cash management solution, incorporating SWIFT, in just six months.

This is a solution for the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the body charged with the responsibility of collecting revenue on behalf of the Government of Kenya. The chosen bank has integrated its systems with KRA’s tax validation interfaces, Payment Gateway and CCRS for customs taxes. In 2015, the bank collected the KES equivalent of $1.55bn in taxes on behalf of KRA.

This solution leverages SWIFT to deliver an alternative source of funding which, since September 2015, has successfully accomplished half a billion euro with multiple repo trades. This is an innovative project.