PowerChina’s Global Treasury Centre provides laser focus on risk
Published: Feb 2026
Best Risk Management Solution
Highly Commended Winner
Power Construction Corporation of China
Photo of Huang Feiqian, Power Construction Corporation of China, Winnie Yap, HSBC and Wang Wei, Power Construction Corporation of China.
Mr Wang Wei
Director Group Treasury
Headquartered in Beijing, Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina) is a leading global integrated construction group and a key player in China’s infrastructure development.
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The challenge
PowerChina is one of the largest power design and contracting firms globally, managing some of the world’s largest infrastructure, energy and hydropower developments. With major sub-brands like SinoHydro, HydroChina and SEPCO, the company operates close to 780 entities in 130 countries.
This resulted in a highly decentralised treasury structure, with each of PowerChina’s sub-brands and overseas subsidiaries handling cash, payments and FX as well as managing risks at the in-country entity levels. This fragmented set-up posed significant FX risks and regulatory compliance challenges, as well as difficulties in implementing a consistent set of policies and achieving economies of scale.
Furthermore, the lack of visibility and control as well as sub-optimal use of cash at the group level impacted PowerChina’s overall profitability that affected the financial viability of new projects.
The project-based nature of the construction industry also meant payments could only be invoiced upon meeting certain milestones, so any delays to project timelines could significantly impact working capital cycles. This led to high levels of external borrowing in certain areas of the business resulting in a higher interest burden that exposed the company to rate fluctuations and refinancing risks, while other parts of the organisation held excess funds.
PowerChina sought to set-up a global treasury hub to better manage its offshore treasury activities and strengthen the firm’s overall risk management across cash, liquidity, payments and FX. With its many mega‑projects involving significant capital, the firm sought to establish an optimised liquidity structure to mobilise funds across entities and locations, including in restricted and politically sensitive markets.
The solution
PowerChina collaborated with HSBC to establish a Global Treasury Centre (GTC) in Singapore – which serves as the firm’s offshore treasury hub responsible for optimising cash activities across all PowerChina’s overseas entities.
A critical enabler for the GTC is the deployment of a sophisticated multi-country cash concentration structure that automatically sweeps surplus funds across PowerChina’s offshore entities to the GTC, transforming idle local balances into a consolidated actionable pool of liquidity. By setting a target balance for each local account, the GTC gains real‑time visibility and control over PowerChina’s global liquidity, ensuring funds are centrally managed and readily available. The structure is currently under implementation in six markets and will eventually support sweeps from 23 markets across four regions including Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.
By consolidating cash into a single location in Singapore, PowerChina’s aggregated balances are notionally pooled to yield additional interest income via a notional credit interest enhancement solution. This allows the firm to earn enhanced interest on its global balances without physical movement of funds from certain restricted jurisdictions, ensuring regulatory compliance.
The establishment of H2H and API connectivity between PowerChina’s ERP and HSBC enables the GTC to improve control over cash across 150 entities. This includes automating payments initiation to move away from manual batch processing, obtaining real-time balance reporting and enabling seamless reconciliation across the entities to mitigate risks, improve data accuracy and accelerate cash cycles. Integration for the remaining entities is expected to be completed by end of 2025. PowerChina will also be adopting a next generation virtual account management structure under its GTC to centralise payments and collections in the UAE as a next step.
With a clearer view of global cash, the GTC will be able to drive greater optimisation of group funds by seamlessly mobilising cash across entities to meet working capital needs, reducing the need for local entities to borrow externally. Currency exposures are also centralised and managed by the GTC, enabling more strategic and efficient hedging decisions. The real-time data flow from its ERP integration further supports this by providing timely information to the GTC on upcoming foreign currency payments and receipts.
Best practice and innovation
With risk management being a top priority for PowerChina, the firm acknowledged the need to setup a centralised global treasury function equipped with best in class treasury solutions to drive optimisation of cash, liquidity and FX for its offshore entities.
The true impact of the solution lies in its ability to transform PowerChina’s treasury from a highly decentralised, reactive function into a centralised, proactive strategic asset.
Key benefits
Cost savings.
Number of banking partners/bank accounts reduced.
Process efficiencies.
Return on investment.
Increased automation.
Risk mitigated.
Improved visibility.
Errors reduced.
Manual intervention reduced.
Increased system connectivity.
Future-proof solution.
Nicole Lin
Head of Global Corporates and International Mid-Market Sales North China, Global Payments Solutions, HSBC China
Congratulations to PowerChina on the establishment of their global treasury centre (GTC) and for being recognised for this remarkable achievement. The outcome of their transformation is a centralised, agile treasury function that prioritises process automation and liquidity efficiencies across over 20 markets in four regions, to strengthen risk management for the firm. The impact of the GTC goes beyond driving strategic growth for the business: employees benefit from more valuable tasks, while enhanced cash management accelerates critical infrastructure development and supports job creation in local economies. A truly inspiring story of how treasury can unlock a world of opportunities.
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