Abundant liquidity in capital markets has made organizations acquisitive of big and small companies. Integrating the cash management systems and operations with those of an acquired company can be challenging process.
One of the keynotes at the conference Cash & Treasury Management 2018 on the 5th and 6th of March is Gautam Gupta, Global TaO Treasury Lead at British American Tobacco. He will describe the journey of cash management systems and processes while integrating an acquisition in a large corporate. In that regard, we asked him about his expectations for the conference.
What learnings or knowledge are you hoping the delegates will bring home from your keynote?
The delegates will be able to bring home experiences that will be handy for them in their own steps of acquisition integration while focusing on cash management.
In the next couple of years, what are the biggest challenge for the Treasury function?
The economic environment surrounding us could develop in one of two ways. Firstly, it could continue to benign. In that case, there will be a greater demand for Treasury functions to support growth in their organizations, e.g. higher levels of financing, supporting new business models by collecting money for e-commerce sales using some of the innovative fintech players. On the other hand, the economic environment could become difficult. In that case, Treasury functions will have to manage turbulence with innovative financing and superior risk management techniques.
What is the next step for you? If you come back in five years, what would your keynote be about?
The pace of change in Treasury is accelerating rapidly. If I come back in five years, it would not surprise me if I would be speaking about how to integrate with our list of ever changing banks in many countries through API aggregation. This would be a remarkably different experience in comparison with our previous journey getting onto a SWIFT-based platform with our banks.
Read more about the Cash & Treasury Management 2018 conference.