Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions
6
Jason Batman
Asia Pacific Industrials,
Energy, Power and
Chemicals Sector Head
Treasury and Trade
Solutions, Citi
Treasurers’ Agility in Focus
In today’s uncertain markets, treasurers need to
be agile and responsive to the fast evolving
needs of their companies — whether they are
managing acquisitions or divestitures, expanding
into new markets, taking part in enterprise-wide
technology transformation, or just improving the
way treasury serves the organization.
The demand for agile treasurers comes as no
surprise. Requirements for increased
transparency and control have led to a global
trend towards centralization. Treasury is
increasingly seen as an internal center of
excellence serving the company’s global, regional
and local business activities, often with very
well-defined risk policies to guarantee the
financial safety of business flows, and to
maximize shareholder returns.
As treasury’s role continues to expand into
business flows, treasurers are also playing an
increasingly influential and direct role in the
working capital metrics. This includes facilitating
collaboration across the financial supply chain
and aligning cash flow efficiency more closely
with real-time liquidity needs of the business.
Through the Financial Looking Glass
Most of Citi’s clients are multinational and large
corporations with wide geographic sales
footprints. Treasurers at these organizations
are looking at optimization strategies across
multiple balance sheets, and in turn, have set up
a re-invoicing or shared services center (SSC)
arrangement, thus enabling tax-efficient
cross-border finance structures.
The Agile Treasurer:
Making Working Capital Work Harder
One simple way to assess the impact of any treasury and finance function is to answer the
question: how effective is working capital being managed? For treasurers faced with growing
competitive pressures in today’s real-time decision making environment, the need to make
working capital work harder has never been more important.
