The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 21st October 2019

Four questions to keep workplace conflict from boiling over

A quick sweep around the web on the cost of workplace conflict typically unearths two figures: one from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), stating that UK businesses lose £33bn per year to the effects of disputes, and one from US company CPP Inc, noting that internal strife

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 18th October 2019

Five tips for smashing your first board presentation

You could be forgiven if the thought of making your first presentation to a corporate board of directors evokes feelings of helplessness and inarticulacy – but it doesn’t have to be that way: the moment is yours to own, and you are the one with the greatest control over what

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 17th October 2019

Getting to grips with the blockchain basics

Use cases for blockchain have been claimed for almost every industry you could think of, with leading proponents citing applications for healthcare, media, real estate and even sports – as well as the sector to which the software is most frequently attached, finance. But what does using blockchain actually feel like? What

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 19th September 2019

Five minutes on… the Strong Customer Authentication holdup

It was all going relatively well. In November 2017, the European Commission notified Member States that the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) would apply from January 2018 – with a cornerstone measure, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), to follow suit in September this year.

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 16th August 2019

How to trade on the power of your personal brand

In our careers interview last month with entrepreneur Samuel Leach, we charted his journey from financial hardship in his teens to huge success as head of Samuel & Co Trading – a firm that not only surfs the ebb and flow of the FX and equity markets, but trains people from all walks of life to do the same. One of the interview’s biggest

14th August 2019

Corporate blockchain projects: are we having fun yet?

Barely a month goes by without the announcement of a high-profile corporate project that’s seeking to harness and exploit the power of blockchain technology. Typically, these projects take the form of joint ventures between financial and non-financial entities that are looking to develop solutions with highly specific purposes

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 19th July 2019

How Samuel Leach traded his way to TED Talk status

It’s an old adage of storytelling that if you want to understand someone’s motivation, you should get to grips with their formative years – and that is entirely true of FX and equity trading entrepreneur Samuel Leach. His stratospheric rise over the past seven years, complete with that badge of honour awarded to any business brain that makes

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 18th July 2019

Why corporates must master the art of ESG reporting

Proof that green investment is becoming steadily more mainstream emerged early this year with the launch of the Corporate Forum on Sustainable Finance: a group of major companies that have joined forces to devise best-practice methods for nudging financial markets towards encouraging

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 17th July 2019

Five minutes on… the dark web

Bodies of data comprising sometimes thousands of personal login details are on sale on the dark web in generous batches. If cybercriminals who are preparing to infiltrate a company’s systems find that a set of details in one of their batches doesn’t work, no problem: dark web vendors can always rustle up another

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 14th June 2019

Five minutes on… the surge in anti-money laundering fines

A startling picture of the current scale of anti-money laundering (AML) fines has emerged from a leading compliance technology firm. In an empirical study of AML penalties from 2002 to the present, Encompass Corporation – a provider of know your customer process-automation

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 12th June 2019

Lessons from the ACT Annual Conference 2019

Opening the ACT Annual Conference, journalist and broadcaster Jon Snow fully engaged the audience with his take on the impact of the digital age on business and society. “Embracing disruption?” he asked, “that’s my day job.” Beginning with a moving account of reporting the Grenfell Tower disaster and tracing a path from the tragic

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 17th March 2019

Five minutes on… the code designed to quash APP scams

Regular readers of The Treasurer’s online articles may remember that, in early 2017, we highlighted regulatory moves to tackle the scourge of authorised push-payment (APP) scams. At that point, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) was lobbying the banking industry to roll up its collective sleeves and take decisive action against

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 15th March 2019

Who are activist shareholders and what do they want?

Activist shareholders have become one of the most significant forces in the field of corporate investment, and their influence deserves some analysis. Firstly, though, it is important to set out exactly what an activist shareholder is – and isn’t. The label instantly conjures up images of social or political activism, involving large marches

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 13th March 2019

How to optimise meetings – and be a star attendee

Of all the people in the human race who have ever held a job, only a very few could honestly say that they’ve never experienced a bad meeting. Meetings have become a baleful bugbear of organisational life. Countless leaders have tried to crack the riddle of how to make them more interesting and effective, before throwing their hands up in defeat and simply

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 11th February 2019

Five minutes on… the FCA’s approach to cryptoassets

Back in October, the government’s special Cryptoassets Taskforce published its final report on the potential impacts of blockchain-powered digital coins and tokens on the wider UK economy. Comprised of experts from HM Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Taskforce was

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 7th January 2019

How to be an effective people person

One of the potential snags with an article entitled ‘How to be an effective people person’ is that it risks putting people on the spot. We all like to think that we get on pretty well with other people, because most of us have intricate webs of relationships covering our family members and friends, and most of us are on decent terms with our desk buddies. So, when a

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 3rd January 2019

Why corporates must mind their cybersecurity gaps in 2019

For a select group of corporates, 2018 was anything but a banner year for cybersecurity. Indeed, one of the year’s worst data breaches shook the foundations of a brand that touts itself as a world leader in the digital field, casting doubt over its internal safeguards. Another exposed to anyone who cared to look the

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 15th November 2018

Six tips for effective conflict resolution

Our tolerance for workplace tensions is being sorely tested. According to figures released in late October by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), in 2017/18 the UK lost a total 15.4 million working days to work-related stress, depression or anxiety. That’s a huge rise on the 12.5 million recorded for 2016/17. The HSE attributes 13% of that suffering to the spectres of

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 13th November 2018

Definitive guide to intangible assets

Mention the term ‘intangible assets’ to many finance professionals, and in all likelihood you will be met with a faint nod of recognition and/or subtle glazing of the eyes, followed by a swift entreaty to move on to ‘core’ matters, such as traditional financial instruments or physical property. As distinct from tangible assets – such as vehicle fleets, computer hardware, factory

The Treasurer online (Association of Corporate Treasurers) • 13th November 2018

A few words with… Suzanne Perry

Back in 2000, I qualified as a chartered accountant at Deloitte, thinking that I wanted to do something in business. But I realised once I’d qualified that I didn’t know which role to seek out. As such, I asked my recruitment consultant to send me for a range of roles. I didn’t really know about treasury – at Deloitte, I’d worked in the middle-market team. But I went along for