Le magazine du trésorier - n°69 - 1er trimestre 2010 - (Page 18)

FOCUS Treasury management in Latin America: still as complex as that? Florent Michel, Managing Partner at Latina Finance & Co is providing us with his views on the latest trends in Latin American cash management for European corporates. The Latin American Region has been impacted by the 2009 crisis, what are the lessons learned in terms of managing liquidity in such an environment? Despite the relatively better situation of Brazil, the region has clearly suffered from the overall crisis with a drop in GDP of around 2%, a 40 % fall in foreign direct investments, a reduction of export by 25 % and imports by 24 %. Only few countries such as Brazil, Peru, Chile or Panama have managed to survive the crisis in a better way than others.As a direct result of this adverse environment, governments and regulatory bodies have taken more stringent and res- trictive measures as regards to financial flows or at the best have put a halt to some liberalization plans. This is obviously of no help for treasury management bringing more restrictions for moving funds in and out of countries. One lesson learned is that thanks to a well organized and centralized cash management organization some multinationals have managed to seize opportunities in this volatile environment. For example by increasing their borrowings in local currencies taking advantage of higher local currency liquidity and falling interest rates in 2009 (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru). Those multinationals have also managed to adapt more rapidly their working capital needs and more efficiently repatriate dividends and royalties. So having the right cash management infrastructure has been a clear success factor for them to ride to navigate in the crisis more efficiently. How are European companies managing their cash in the region today? European multinationals are far from their home base and while they all recognize that Latin America represents for them an area of growth and a profitable region it is still for most of them (except in some specific sectors) a region that would represent somewhere between 3 to 7 % of their overall sales. Most of them are still struggling to organize and improve their treasury operations given the complexity of the environment. I would say that it really depends on the nature and scale of the business and country of presence. To start with, there are the top 40 European companies in Latam which are the one making regional sales of Euro 1 bio and above (Telefonica, Shell, Carrefour, 18 Crédit Photo : Latina Finance & Co

Table des matières de la publication Le magazine du trésorier - n°69 - 1er trimestre 2010

Couverture
Sommaire
EDITORIAL
- Mesures et contre-mesures, jusqu'où aller sans aller trop loin ?
FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
INTERVIEW
- Tachfine Bekkari, Directeur trésorerie, ALD Automotive
FOCUS
- Les entreprises seront-elles les victimes collatérales de la régulation de la finance ?
- Overhaul of IAS 39: revolution or simplification ?
- Treasury management in Latin America: still as complex as that?
FORUM OF ADVERTISERS
- Les anciens employés mécontents, un risque croissant pour la sécurité des systèmes d’information
- Above E-invoicing
- 15 minutes with… The Corporate Funding Association Project
TREASURERS' ASSOCIATIONS
- 13th IGTA meeting Paris - November 2009
- Leading European companies unite against proposed derivatives regulation
- Formation Chambre de Commerce de Luxembourg
NEWS

Le magazine du trésorier - n°69 - 1er trimestre 2010