Treasury Today’s Adam Smith Awards 2022 show treasury’s supportive and strategic role within an organisation is more important and vibrant than ever.
Scrutinising, discussing and finally picking the winners of Treasury Today’s Adam Smith Awards has been a highlight of our year for the 15 years we’ve hosted the awards. Once again selecting this year’s winners, drawn from 230 submissions from 34 countries, has afforded a privileged deep dive into the workings of corporate treasury across every type of company, regardless of its size or industry sector. Across this year’s 18 categories, the role of treasury as a strategic partner, constantly challenged to deliver better and more innovative solutions to support corporate growth in a particularly challenging business environment, shines brighter than ever.
Like this year’s Overall Winner of our Treasury Today’s Top Treasury Team category, AstraZeneca, where treasury played a pivotal role overseeing the company’s acquisition of US biotech group Alexion. With a team of just 19 – small for the size and complexity of a group with over US$37bn turnover – treasury ran complex elements of the process spanning structuring the financing at competitive rates to implementing a cross-border cash pool and adding new banks to its relationship group. “Sometimes, the team even slept!” recalls Jonathan Slade, Group Treasurer at the company.
Elsewhere, transport and services group FedEx scooped Overall Winner, Best Cash Pooling Solution, after integrating two legacy global cash management structures in a transformation that brings visibility and control of global liquidity, also laying the foundations for automated and scalable cash management processes globally. Other big-name winners include Japanese tech giant Sony which was awarded Overall Winner, Best Treasury Transformation Project for an innovative overhaul of its treasury processes to improve capital market access in each region.
Newer corporate names also caught our attention. Like Pepco, Europe’s fast-growing chain of discount shops, awarded Overall Winner, Best Supply Chain Solution for a programme that has extended payment terms to its 115 strategic suppliers in China, India and Bangladesh. Elsewhere, Masterworks, the first company to allow investors to buy and trade shares in multi-million-dollar art works, scooped Judges’ Choice for a developing an in-house payments system to support timely reconciliation and processes.
Other notable 2022 winners include the International Organization of Migration for implementing a digitisation funding solution across 170 countries and 200 relationship banks. Our Overall Winner, Best in Class in Country Treasury Solution award went to Greenlight Planet Kenya, an early pioneer in the off-grid solar industry working to replace kerosene lanterns, for treasury’s role structuring an inaugural US$75m club facility in local currency. Henkel, Germany’s chemical and consumer goods company, won Highly Commended in the same category for rolling out a sustainable supply chain finance solution in its Algerian business.
Other Highly Commended Winners include L’Oréal, Fertiglobe – the nitrogen fertilizer and ammonia producer and distributer – Comcast and Careem Egypt, part of the Dubai-based ridesharing company with operations in over 100 cities. Indicative of this year’s strong cohort of Middle East award contenders, Emirates Global Aluminium’s Head of Treasury Toby Shore won Corporate Treasurer of the Year for his decade-long contribution to treasury at the company.
Following our live winners announcement on 12th May, the Adam Smith Awards season has now begun. It includes a prestigious Adam Smith Awards Celebration Dinner in London, to take place on the evening of Tuesday 14th June from 6pm to 10pm at St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. As part of our Adam Smith Awards 2022 programme, we will run our series of winner podcasts, delving deeper into each winning solution with our Overall Winners, Highly Commended Winners and their key partners. We will also produce case studies on all our award winners, which will appear on our website later this year.
The Adam Smith Awards is globally recognised as the industry benchmark for best practice and exceptional solutions in treasury, and this year will be no exception. We look forward to celebrating our winners’ achievements and to bringing our formidable community together once again.
See 2022 winners
