Adam Smith Awards
Many congratulations to all our 2026 Adam Smith Awards winners.
As the most coveted accolade in the Adam Smith Awards programme, the Top Treasury Team award is designed to recognise teams that have truly achieved something exceptional, whether that’s delivering a suite of solutions or integrating a new acquisition.
AstraZeneca’s treasury organisation needed a more reliable global view of short-term liquidity across a complex multi-ERP environment. At that time, cash management decisions were supported by a combination of manually aggregating multiple SAP payment run data together with manual overlays, which limited consistency and transparency.
Ahead of its April 2024 spin-off from 3M, Solventum faced the task of building a fully independent treasury infrastructure from the ground up. With only eight months to execute, the treasury team was required to stand up global operations across 30 banks, 75 entities in 33 countries, supporting activity in 20 currencies and opening 268 bank accounts.
Managing foreign exchange risk for 200+ markets, over 80 currencies, actively hedging almost 30 currency pairs and approximately US$3bn in net exposure, Colgate-Palmolive’s end-to-end FX lifecycle was highly localised and reliant on manual processes.
Only a short time after becoming independent, Siemens Energy faced an urgent challenge. It needed to stabilise funding and guarantee capacity while preserving operational continuity.
Before implementing the new solution, BHP was managing one of the most complex global liquidity and account structures in the industry. With operations spanning EMEA, North America, LATAM and APAC, more than 90% of global flows were concentrated in a single, centralised cash pool supported by automated FX and host-to-host connectivity.
PayPal operates one of the payments industry’s more demanding treasury environments – a global network spanning 200-plus markets and more than 100 currencies, with the scale, velocity and regulatory breadth that accompany it. Ahead of 2025, that environment was supported largely by traditional processes and manual workflows, which, while dependable, were increasingly stretched by the pace of a rapidly expanding global business.
Prior to this solution, the asset and liability team had to navigate multiple treasury-related risk/return topics – like counterparty risk, cash flow uncertainty, interest rate and FX price movements – simultaneously. The primary challenge was the sheer volume of variables: potential daily investment and funding actions can reach up to 70,000 distinct permutations across various products, counterparties, horizons and currencies.
Previously, Technip Energies’ (T.EN) payment and bank communication landscape reflected the complexity of a global organisation operating across multiple regions and systems. Payment initiation was managed through several enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, treasury management systems (TMS) and payroll platforms, with bank connectivity relying on host‑to‑host links, file transfers and others.
Before implementing the solution, Gedeon Richter faced an increasingly unsustainable risk landscape. For decades, electricity had been a stable, low volatility input managed by technical procurement teams.
Prior to implementing a centralised treasury solution, Armacell’s rapid international expansion had left treasury operating through 65 local banking partners, creating limited global cash visibility, constrained central control and reduced ability to deploy liquidity where it was needed.
Walmart’s supplier base is an important part of its operations. For many small and medium-sized suppliers, access to affordable working capital can influence their ability to fulfil purchase orders and support future growth.
Unilever launched its sustainability-linked supply chain finance (SCF) journey with a supply base known to have different levels of climate maturity, to provide support to its suppliers wherever they were on a climate action roadmap. As of 2025, the company’s growing Supplier Climate Programme now includes almost 200 partners and 40% of its raw material Scope 3 emissions.
Case study coming soon
Corporate treasury teams operate in an environment where market events, geopolitical shocks, counterparty concerns, liquidity signals and exposure data can move faster than traditional reporting cycles. Microsoft’s challenge was not a lack of data; it was the inability to connect external signals with treasury’s own financial exposures quickly enough to support proactive decisions.
As ServiceNow scaled rapidly across 40+ countries and 60+ legal entities, its treasury operations faced a fundamental data problem. Treasury data was fragmented across more than ten systems, banks, treasury management system (TMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), FX analytics, investment platforms, and financial planning tools, arriving via different channels, formats and destinations with no single source of truth.
Sofia joined Grupo Bimbo in late January 2020, just weeks before COVID-19 lockdowns began. She started her career almost entirely on video calls, learning the company and building relationships remotely during a period when Grupo Bimbo experienced a surge in demand and its treasury function faced rapid, real-time shifts in strategy. The fact that she built her career foundation under those conditions makes her subsequent rise all the more notable.
Growing up, Tony had no immediate mentors in finance. He originally wanted to be an engineer, inspired by the robotics in the Clairol factory where his father worked as a production manager. But in high school, he joined Junior Achievement, a youth-serving economic education organisation, where combustion engineering mentored his team. In his junior year, he excelled as a production supervisor, leveraging his father’s expertise. And as a senior, his peers elected him as Chief Financial Officer.
Unlike other categories in the Adam Smith Awards, Judges’ Choice is not open for nominations. Instead, the judges can select nominations that may not fit readily into the other categories, but that nevertheless demonstrate exceptional achievement.
Demonstrating that small treasury teams can achieve great things, Canadian real estate company Rohit Group was a Highly Commended Winner in this year’s hotly contested Top Treasury Team category.
Global energy services company Kent has been recognised in the 2026 Adam Smith Awards, with the company named as a Highly Commended Winner in the prestigious Top Treasury Team category – an accolade that requires evidence of an impressive team effort, alongside far-reaching technical achievements.
Highly Commended in this year’s Top Treasury Team category is global logistics provider DSV, which embarked on an ambitious project to fund and integrate a major M&A transaction.
Over decades, Siemens’ global cash management architecture evolved to maintain hundreds of bank accounts across numerous jurisdictions and banking partners, with differing connectivity models. Many financial processes still relied on invoices, payment runs and batch-based reconciliation.
The Expedia Group has undergone a significant transformation in its cash management strategy over the past year. Meanwhile, the travel industry has faced unprecedented challenges and opportunities, requiring companies to be highly adaptable and financially resilient.
Canary Wharf Group (CWG) offers a range of access to bars, cafes, restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies and health clubs in addition to workspace. CWG recorded its highest annual footfall of more than 76 million in 2025. High volumes of commercial tenants required a streamlined, efficient process for managing tenancy deposits and associated interest payments.
Before the transformation, Medtronic operated eight independent single currency notional pools (EUR, DKK, GBP, NOK, PLN, SEK, CHF, USD), each with its own governance model, forecasting routines and banking processes.
Due to rapid growth through acquisitions, Exponential Technology Group (XTG) managed over 80 accounts across 29 banks. Its treasury team had limited visibility into and control over global liquidity.
Tech Mahindra’s acquisitions created a complex financial ecosystem with more than 100 legal entities globally. This is exacerbated by the fact that most of the firm’s acquired entities continued to maintain their original banking relationships, ERP systems and financial processes post‑acquisition.
For companies, dynamics such as restructurings and changes in business operations can lead to material volatility in foreign currency assets. It can also impact the permitted capacity for net investment hedging – a type of hedging that allows companies to mitigate the exposure of net assets denominated in foreign currencies.
Facing a critical Q3 funding deadline, the treasury team needed to move funds between the US and Mexico rapidly. Stripe’s existing infrastructure was limited by traditional SWIFT wire transfers, which involved one-to-two-day settlement delays, opaque visibility and high FX costs.
Breitling’s most significant treasury challenge was managing its FX exposure amid unprecedented global expansion resulting from a business model transformation. Following a private equity acquisition in 2017, the company doubled its turnover as it pivoted from wholesale-only distribution to a multichannel strategy encompassing own‑branded boutiques, franchisee partnerships and traditional wholesale operations.
WPP entered 2025-26 facing a convergence of pressures: weakening working capital trends, reduced free cash flow projections, and a liquidity forecast sitting below the US$1bn internal target once short-term borrowings were considered.
Before implementing the EKN (Swedish Export Credit Agency)-backed solution, Play, a Polish mobile operator, was undertaking a 5G network expansion to deliver high-speed connectivity across all of Poland, including rural and smaller cities. This initiative required significant capital expenditure and a need for long-term (12-year), local currency financing to align with its revenue base and mitigate currency risks.
Following multiple acquisitions, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) had accumulated a long-term debt portfolio of more than $50bn which was almost 99% denominated in US dollar.
Following its spin-off from Honeywell, Solstice Advanced Materials, as a newly independent corporate, faced the challenge of building a standalone global treasury function from scratch. During the transition period, Solstice needed to establish legal entities, banking infrastructure, liquidity management frameworks and treasury governance in parallel, within a highly compressed timeline.
The Al Mulla Group was looking to redefine how treasury serves the business – how it protects value, enables growth and supports decision-making across a diverse, fast‑moving organisation.
Shamal’s business operations spanned five territories in North America, Europe and the Middle East, with cash and banking activities historically managed at the local level. As operations expanded internationally, opportunities emerged to further enhance liquidity management through greater centralisation and standardisation.
Prior to their recent treasury transformation, American Honda’s corporate headquarters controlled all strategic cash activities – including cash investments, all inter‑company funding flows to subsidiaries and all other corporate cash activities.
The company established its Missouri facility to capitalise on surging demand in the United States for power transmission cables, driven by data centre buildouts, grid expansion and vehicle electrification.
L’Oréal’s Brazil operations relied on a patchwork of local and global banks to manage its diverse transactions, maintaining multiple banking relationships, numerous accounts and separate connectivity to each institution. This fragmented structure created operational inefficiency, increased fraud risk and required the treasury approvers to log into multiple bank portals to authorise payments.
The OPEC Fund’s strategic target to evolve into a leading multilateral development bank created critical challenges for the treasury team.
In February 2024, Pluxee completed its carve-out from Sodexo and listing on Euronext Paris, requiring a fully autonomous finance function, including global treasury to support a newly independent, public company. Before the spin-off, treasury activities were partly centralised within Sodexo; Pluxee’s remit centred on operational cash management with limited asset management scope.
Jotun’s geographic footprint generates significant financial complexity. Jotun operates 56 distinct operating units, each with its own accounting function and back office, with no shared service centre.
The surprising market exit of Merck’s major supplier for corporate and lodge cards with very short notice and strict deadlines placed significant pressure on Merck. There was a severe risk of discontinued services for all central travel bookings and payments in 27 countries via Merck’s travel agencies, if treasury had not established an alternative solution within the tight timelines between three and six months.
Refunds represented a persistent and highly visible challenge for Massmart, particularly for exception scenarios where card details had expired or where e-commerce transactions could not be processed back to the original card.
SOCAR Türkiye treasury transformation was driven by the need to address operational inefficiencies and improve decision-making across the group. Previously, the financial processes of group companies, including PETKİM, STAR Refinery, SOCAR Türkiye Petrol Ticaret and SOCAR Türkiye Enerji A.Ş, were managed independently within each entity and relied heavily on manual tracking.
Before implementation, exposure measurement was largely manual and static, relying on MS Excel based processes. Data was fragmented across regions, with different data owners and systems, maintaining separate datasets and no central database providing a consolidated global view. As a result, transparency and timely oversight of total counterparty exposure were limited.
As a licensed e-money institution, Zalando Payments (ZPS) must strictly adhere to §17 ZAG, requiring the absolute segregation of third-party funds from corporate liquidity.
Northern Data’s international footprint was managed by a lean finance department of just 30 people, including only one treasurer and five support staff.
Eyewa sought a regional banking partner with global capabilities to optimise treasury transformation and simplification due to rapid regional growth.
Case study coming soon
Topsoe has committed significant capital to expand production capacity and advance key projects across its business. This required large investments.
Asahi had an incumbent programme with a fintech provider; however, Asahi was looking for growth in its programme due to continuous focus on working capital as well as operational efficiencies which the incumbent provider could not fully deliver.
The strategic objective of SSEN is to enable the transition to a low-carbon economy, supporting the UK’s clean power and energy security ambitions. This requires building the electricity transmission network infrastructure to connect and transport renewable electricity in northern Scotland to the towns, villages and cities where it’s needed, as it delivers a network for net zero emissions.
A rapidly expanding sustainable finance market has been accompanied by fragmentation and inconsistent disclosure practices, raising concerns around greenwashing and limiting investors’ ability to assess environmental performance.
Before implementing the solution, the company faced a challenging funding environment for large-scale investments in new bioenergy capacity. The expansion of the corn ethanol operation required significant long-term capital to support construction of new industrial infrastructure, some of the operational expenditure needs of the project, additional grain processing capacity and storage facilities.
Case study coming soon
Siemens Healthineers (SHS) acquired Varian in 2021, the largest acquisition in the history of the Siemens Group. Both organisations operated under different treasury operating models, systems and frameworks. Meanwhile, SHS treasury was re-organising its treasury target operating model (TOM) and implementing a treasury management system (TMS).
Galadari initiated a strategic transformation in 2023, which included rebranding and expansion into diverse verticals. As a result, turnover increased approximately 400% in five years. Yet this growth exacerbated underlying issues – mostly stemming from a reliance on legacy processes and ERP systems.
SiriusXM’s treasury team manages complex, idiosyncratic cash flows that create strategic financing challenges. For example, the company’s advertising revenue arrives on unpredictable schedules as agencies often pay at their discretion.
Before partnering with Avallone, Save the Children International (SCI) faced a treasury environment characterised by fragmented processes, manual workflows and limited real-time visibility over sharing KYC data with global banking partners.
Prior to the implementation of Microsoft Integrated Collections Solution (MICS 2.0), Microsoft’s global treasury operations faced growing structural challenges driven by scale, complexity and manual dependency. Rapid business growth significantly increased transaction volumes, customer inquiries and payment complexity across regions, systems and customer types.
Via real-time global cash visibility, centralised liquidity structures and executive-level reporting, Palo Alto Networks had access to clean, connected, available data. What they lacked was the ability to make that data truly intelligent, not just visible.
Prior to this transformational project, Diamondback Energy, a highly acquisitive oil and gas company with a lean treasury operations team, faced significant operational inefficiencies and vulnerabilities.
Bolt required a scalable treasury and payments infrastructure capable of managing high volume driver payouts, high velocity customer collections and real-time payment confirmation to maintain service availability and user satisfaction.
Treasury has always been the guardian of liquidity, risk management and financial control. But in today’s digital economy, the role is evolving rapidly. The modern treasurer must go far beyond traditional stewardship – combining strategic thinking, technological fluency and deep operational expertise to design the next generation of treasury structures.
Marianna Polykrati is the Group Treasurer of AVRAMAR Aquaculture, responsible for the group’s end-to-end treasury function across a highly complex, multi-entity and cross-border organisation.
Prior to 2024, Bacardi maintained strong working capital management and had achieved incremental improvements to its days sales outstanding (DSO) and days payable outstanding (DPO). However, these efforts were not tracked centrally, nor were they consistently structured across regions and business units to drive sustainable delivery.
Before the implementation, Valentino’s boutiques experienced material and recurring operational inefficiencies when receiving customer bank transfers, particularly during high value in store transactions for very important clients (VIC).
