Ramez Sabawi explains how corporate treasury has shifted from back-office accounting to a strategic function that shapes risk management and company decisions. Treasury now sits at the center of corporate governance, handling everything from cash flow to capital allocation in ways that directly impact the business.
Treasury how I see it, Mike, is basically we are the window for the company where actually all banks look through. So we are the first point of focal point between the company and the banks. If you manage to handle this relationship and know exactly how to deal with the banks, this will open a lot of opportunities for the companies. And this is where I feel that my previous banking experience really helped me to create this link between the banking side, banking industry and the corporate treasury. Because there is very strong link and should be very like a natural sync and harmony between both. If you understand the psychology of both sides, you can actually manage it well. We are no longer just, you know, just checking and counting money coming in and out. We are now involved more and more into strategic decision making in planning and creating value where we can streamline our financing in order to create savings every possible way. And I'm very happy to see that. I always have this idea of not pushing but basically to put the seat of treasure in the proper place where I believe that it's becoming more at a strategic decision making rather than operational level. Recently I just came back from Paris where we attended the board meeting and I was very proud to be presenting in front of the board the cash flow and liquidity mitigation presentation there. So going ahead, we are always planning to put the treasurer position in a more focused strategic be involved in the decision making. And this is where I believe it should be always, especially with what happened in 2008 and this global crisis. If you look at it, Mike, if Treasury had more say in such situation, which errors happened, I think would have had better results coming out of that. Nowadays major corporates, they rely more and more on the Treasury Department which is becoming now fully fledged department. It used to be an offshoot from the accounting basically or the finance department. Nowadays I think we earned our legitimate role and our glorified position where we actually have more risk control, more measures put in place. We are more involved into managing risk not just within the corporate, but you are talking about geography, political, national. We look around us and we try to protect the company from all possible risks. Not necessarily what we used to do before, which is very classic that only the FX rate and interest rate. Now we are looking at much, much more challenges. I think the treasury role will expand and grow more in the future. I believe it will be a focal point when it comes to managing corporates. Definitely they'll have a seat on the board. I can see it very, very soon.
