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Case Study: Streamlining Bank Relationships in Record Time In 2010, Bombardier’s treasury group was presented with an all-too-common challenge: migrate a global banking infrastructure for a legal entity holding restructuration. And, they wanted results in one calendar year.
Apr 03, 2013
Cote Discusses Financial Market Infrastructure at AFPC Montreal Agathe Côté, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, spoke at Association for Financial Professionals of Canada-Montreal on Tuesday. She discussed the critical role of the Canadian financial market infrastructure, and the steps that the central bank, regulators and the industry are taking to strengthen that system.
Mar 26, 2013
This Week in Corporate Finance: Cyprus Shake-Up We spent most of the week going back-and-forth as to whether Cyprus could be another Greece. The debt and equity markets rallied and fell depending on the latest news out of Nicosia. The general feeling at week’s end was that while this was probably not going to be a major disruption to the world financial markets.
Mar 25, 2013
Case Study: Building a Treasury Team from Scratch Three years ago, Cardinal Health spun off its $4 billion medical device subsidiary. As a newly independent conglomerate of semi‐integrated businesses with a global manufacturing and sales footprint, CareFusion had all the complexities of a major multinational corporation. The challenge and opportunity was setting up an effective but lean treasury function within uncompromising deadlines.
Mar 06, 2013
Basel III Update: EU Agrees to Bank Bonus Cap It was a big week for Basel III news. The European Union agreed to cap bank bonuses, the Banco Central do Brasil announced its new capital rules, and the U.S. Federal Reserve made clear its intent to finalize rules.
Mar 01, 2013
Economists Predict 2 Percent Domestic Growth in 2013 Uncertainty still reigns supreme on the economic landscape as we begin 2013. AFP asked banks and financial services providers for fearless forecasts—and they had plenty to say.
Jan 03, 2013
Achieving Treasury Success in Latin America Operating in Latin America can prove problematic due to a scarcity of banks with a full regional presence, disparate banking regulations, nuances in services and solutions and relationship issues. The question becomes: “How does a treasury department with limited resources function efficiently in the region?”
Oct 10, 2012
Case Study: A Greek Treasurer Prepares for the Worst The collapse of the Greek economy has treasurers there under excruciating pressure to perform basic, but critical, tasks such as payroll, A/P and A/R without the tools that most treasurers take for granted. No one knows this harsh reality better than Marianna Polykrati, group treasurer at Greek food conglomerate Vivartia.
Oct 04, 2012
BofA’s Sweeney on Moving from Corporate Treasury to Banking After two decades in corporate treasury, Dennis Sweeney has moved into banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. AFP recently spoke with Sweeney about making the transition.
Sep 25, 2012
Case Study: Restructured Corporate Finance at Cone Health Cone Health Foundation had issued all of its tax‐exempt debt as variable rate, with $85.6 million swapped to a fixed rate, resulting in a very low cost of capital. But issues in the capital markets negatively impacted its debt portfolio, a portion of which was in auction rate mode and needed to be re-marketed. Meanwhile, some of the liquidity providers for the variable rate debt were of concern.
Sep 10, 2012
This Week in Corporate Finance: Emerging from the Doldrums This week seems to be shaping up to be a watershed moment in what seems to be a more clearly defined narrative of the U.S. economy. We may now be advancing out of the financial doldrums of the past several years, possibly into a period of sustained and even robust economic activity.
Mar 19, 2012
Stress Test: What if Your Bank Didn’t Pass? The results from the Federal Reserve’s latest stress test were seemingly positive, as 15 out of 19 of the nation’s largest financial institutions were deemed to have enough capital that they could adequately hold up against a tough recession. While that is comforting information, what if your bank failed to make the grade?
Mar 15, 2012
This Week in Corporate Finance: Largest Sovereign Debt Restructuring Ever The big news out of Greece this week was the announcement of the largest sovereign debt restructuring in history.
Mar 12, 2012
Flaherty: Volcker Rule Could Hinder Canadian Progress Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner over concerns that the proposed Volcker Rule could hinder Canada’s post-crisis efforts to strengthen its financial system.
Feb 13, 2012
Investment-Grade Lending Remains Strong in 2012 At $845 billion, U.S. investment-grade lending hit an all-time record in 2011, far outpacing the prior 2006 peak of $721 billion. But this level of activity will not be sustainable in 2012.
Feb 10, 2012
Corporates Asking Banks for Automation, Liquidity and Global Advice As Europe struggles to rid itself of sovereign debt and the U.S. attempts to kick-start its economy, treasury and finance departments face their own challenges—risk management, liquidity management and fraud, to name a few. To help AFP members better understand what their peers will contend with in 2012, AFP turned to a party uniquely positioned for this task—banks.
Feb 02, 2012
Risk & Reward: Ontario Power Generation Wins Pinnacle Grand Prize Sometimes tackling a mammoth project involves taking a mammoth risk. For the treasury department of Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG), that risk was introducing an innovative new financing technique and obtaining senior management, stakeholders and investor buy-in. The reward: Savings of $300 million, not to mention the 2011 AFP Pinnacle Award Grand Prize for excellence in treasury.
Feb 01, 2012
Canadian Financial System Gets High Marks from Peers Canada’s Financial Stability Board (FSB) praised the resilience of the Canadian financial system throughout turbulent economic times in its latest review.
Jan 30, 2012
SWIFT Calls on Banks to Be More Customer Focused SWIFT challenged banks to concentrate less on proprietary products and more on simplified services that are client-oriented in a new white paper released Monday.
Jan 10, 2012
This Week in Corporate Finance: Continued Uncertainty Headed into 2012 Congratulations to all, as we have survived yet another year of the “Times of Trouble” (see Russia 1598 – 1613). 2011 was a year that started out on a positive note only to suffer through the trials and tribulations of economic, political and even environmental challenges.
Jan 03, 2012
AFP Annual Conference Attendees Look to 2012 Another successful AFP Annual Conference has come and gone. Like the 6,000 conference attendees, my focus now shifts to the outlook and prospects for the treasury industry of the coming year.
Dec 13, 2011
Survey: Canadian Banks Top List of North America’s Safest According to a recent survey by Global Finance, six of the 10 safest banks in the North America are Canadian, with U.S. banks rounding out the rest of the group.
Oct 24, 2011
BAFT-IFSA: Basel III Could Severely Hinder Trade Finance The sagging global economy could lose further momentum if new regulations under Basel III take effect, according to BAFT-IFSA. In particular, certain capital restrictions for banks as mandated by Basel III could greatly harm the funding of trade finance.
Sep 30, 2011
Six Banking Executives Look Forward to 2011 2010 was certainly better for banks than the previous two years. To learn more about their outlook for 2011, Exchange spoke with six banking executives.
Dec 22, 2010
A Tasty Deal: Yum! Brands Treasury Cooks up a Great Capital Structure Plan In Yum! Brands Treasury, we manage the cash and debt of the world's largest restaurant company in terms of system restaurants with more than 37,000 restaurants in more than 110 countries and territories, and annual revenues of nearly $11 billion.
Sep 27, 2010

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