(Business Finance, 4 May 2012) In Brief: Last month, Ford Motor Co. announced that, during a specific period of time, some 90,000 retirees and current employees could opt to take their pensions as a lump sum payout instead of a monthly benefit. The auto maker’s offer is an attempt to downsize the pension plan and [...]
Read moreOur recent research evaluated policy aspects such as hedging effectiveness and the cost of hedging. Data from polling suggests that answering key questions: “Do we need an FX policy?” and “How can I improve compliance with our existing policy?” can improve the caliber of your policy and heighten the overall effectiveness of the FX process. [...]
Read more(Dealbook, 26 April 2012) In Brief: Responding to a recent announcement by regulators that banks could wait until 2014 to comply with the Volcker Rule, 22 US senators urged adoption by July of a version “free from loopholes and concessions.” The five federal agencies responsible for writing the final rule have been slowed by its [...]
Read more(CFO, 26 April 2012) In Brief: Many treasurers are looking to boost their returns on short-term cash – as long as the associated risks are reasonable and don’t fall outside of corporate investment policies. However, some companies are loosening their “extremely conservative attitude” and altering their policies to accommodate longer maturity dates, according to this [...]
Read more(Business Finance, 26 April 2012) In Brief: Forty percent of corporations increased their cash balances in Q1-2012, while 27% reduced them, according to a new study. While this ratio has narrowed, the growth in excess corporate cash “shows no signs of letting up,” this writer says. One consultant cited in this article attributes rising cash [...]
Read more(Reuters, 16 April 2012) In Brief: The rise in the implied volatility of FX options indicates that investors are increasingly worried about a fall in the value of the euro in coming months. Our View: The ongoing EU debt crisis is prompting many corporate treasurers to ask, “What are we going to do if the [...]
Read more(CFO, 10 April 2012) In Brief: MF Global’s decline, and the company’s loss of $1.6 billion in customer funds, may have been set off by a poorly organized and insufficiently automated treasury department that simply lost track of “whose cash was whose,” one expert says. Weaknesses in the company’s Treasury were exposed during a last-stand [...]
Read moreThe new risk environment is changing the way chief financial officers, corporate treasurers, risk officers, and other finance executives think about bank relationship management. The Treasury Leadership Roundtable has observed a trend of greater scrutiny of bank health as an important component of credit facility decisions as well as the distribution of corporate banking business. [...]
Read more(Reuters, 10 April 2012) In Brief: While US banks performed relatively well under the Federal Reserve’s stress tests earlier this year, some still have a “significant amount of work to do” before they have sufficient capital to withstand severe recessions, according to Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo. Our View: In an environment of heightened counterparty risks, [...]
Read more(Financial Times, 8 April 2012) In Brief: US labor unions are facing a $369 billion funding gap in their multi-employer pension schemes, according to a new analysis by Credit Suisse. While S&P 500 companies only have an obligation of about $43 billion, several have liabilities that represent a “significant proportion of their market capitalization.” Moreover, [...]
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