Major consumer brands are increasingly creating online stores selling directly to their consumers.

J.P. Morgan speakers Sara Castelhano – MD, EMEA Head of Core Cash Management, and Brian Gaynor – Head of Product and Strategy, EU Merchant Services, discussed the key drivers behind this evolution, technology and emerging banking needs.

Steven Swientozielskyj, Immediate Past President CIMA, looked at the impact of the digital world on treasury activities and the skills required to embrace this change and the impact on companies and people.

Tram Anh Nguyen, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship, focused on how organizational transformation requires people transformation and the biggest challenges to this transformation. 

This was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Caroline Stockman, ACT CEO. Questions were posed from Dublin, New York and Edinburgh.  This was followed by a networking reception at each location.  The Dublin event was facilitated by Arthur Cox.

Dr. Loretta O’Sullivan, Group Chief Economist with Bank of Ireland, provided an outlook for the Irish economy in 2020 and the international environment including Brexit, trade tensions and the international tax landscape.  Loretta’s insight into consumer, business and investment confidence survey’s highlighted the positive outlook while also highlighting potential risks and constraints within the economy.

HSBC presented to our southern region members at the recent Roundtable in the River Lee Hotel in Cork.

IACT and CIMA co-hosted their annual Southern Region Winter Economic Briefing and Outlook on 26th November in Cork.

Dr Loretta O’Sullivan, Group Chief Economist of Bank of Ireland gave a talk on the economic outlook for 2020.

A huge success again this year with 230 delegates signed up for this year’s 2019 conference This was up more than 15% on last year’s event, making it the biggest attendee level ever.  The audience was made up of an almost 50/50 split of treasurers and service providers and the 2019 conference speakers were again outstanding this year.  

http://www.corporatetreasury.ie

Peter Shea of Salmon Software discussed the factors that a Treasurer should consider while transitioning to Sonia. The presentation included the following:

• Brief history of SONIA
• Background of Salmon Software
• Collaboration with UK clients to understand the SONIA requirements
• Development of new modules to accommodate SONIA (interest calculations and accruals)
• Live demo of the Salmon Treasurer application which show how the SONIA interest and accruals are managed:

o             Daily SONIA interest Rates

o             Loan Management

o             Interest Accruals

o             Interest Dashboards

The purpose of the demo highlighted the many challenges that need to be overcome for people considering using Excel as a tool to manage SONIA based instruments.

This roundtable meeting was hosted by Publicis. 

Topics  discussed included:

1) Implementation of centralised cash management, hedging combined with payments and receivables on behalf of (POBO/ROBO)

2) brief overview of funding and extracting cash from complex countries.

With this initiative the IACT hopes to further promote treasury best practice among our corporate members.

The theme for this breakfast meeting was FX Risk and Effective FX Risk Management and  covered the topics below.

• The trader’s view on significant geo-political events & dealing with market shocks
• Hedging Strategies utilised to support clients - from portfolio to basic
• Availability of current research and existing tools to clients.

Speakers were Johnny Grimes, Global Head of GTB FX, Head of GTB Ireland, David Leigh, Global Head of FX Spot and eTrading and Konrad Haunit, Head of FX, Institutional & Treasury Coverage