As companies’ cash positions take on greater significance in board-level discussions, there is a growing demand for treasury functions to be fully equipped to navigate potential geopolitical risks and their implications. This includes understanding how such risks can affect liquidity, insurance coverage, and supply chain financing, ensuring treasury is prepared to manage these challenges effectively.

With significant consensus that geopolitical and economic volatility is on the rise, treasury groups must be adept at managing risk, as events ranging from political instability, through to trade conflicts and regulatory changes, impact currency markets, interest rates and supply chains. The ability to quickly assess and mitigate these risks is paramount to safeguarding liquidity, protecting against adverse market movements, and ensuring smooth operations across borders. To support strategic growth, event in turbulent times, this panel will discuss:

• In the event of geopolitical disputes: How can treasury pre-plan against conflicts to ensure agility and continuous operations?
• How can treasury do better scenario analysis, to be readily reactive with contingency plans in place?
• In what ways can treasury balance financial risk for company projects with broader financial strategies?
• Reflections: What do our panellists wish they had handled better when reacting to geopolitical instability? Protect against pitfalls. 

The volatility of global interest rates over the past year has posed a major issue for treasures, and while there are signs these may be going down, the fluctuations and rises have brought interest rates high up the priority list of treasurers, as the necessity to make decisions quickly on debt structures whilst balancing capital needs is creating workload constraints in teams.

As such, better preparedness for future hikes is a must. This panel is designed to pick the brains of industry thought-leaders on current practices mitigating risks and forward thinking approaches:

• What processes & hedging strategies can be put in place to more effectively weigh up interest rates
• Analysis of the varying perspectives on interest rates and strategies businesses can adopt to safeguard themselves against rate hikes
• In what ways can businesses offset interest rates and make the most of rises?