FASB to Simplify Hedge Accounting

Issue 21 | 20 November 2014
Content
FASB to Simplify Hedge
Accounting
2
New standard would bring US GAAP more in line
with what IASB has done with IFRS 9
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) prepares
to revamp the standard for hedge accounting. According
to the plans of the US accounting rule maker that were
discussed at the FASB meeting on 5 November, corporate
treasurers can hope that hedges under US GAAP will be
dealt with more simply if certain requirements are met.
According to FASB Chairman Russell Golden, the current
GAAP on the topic were “overly restrictive”.
3
6
7
Gordon Hurst to Leave Capita
Finance director retires after almost three decades with the company and will hand over his
position to Nick Greatorex in ­February of 2015.
E-Transfer for Bank Account Management
A group of major transaction banks have recently
defined a harmonised format for bank-agnostic
electronic bank account management.
China Extends Shanghai FTZ
Cross-border RMB cash pooling is now possible
nationwide as the People’s Bank of China
expands the scope of cross-border settlements.
Leader
Cash Management
2
FASB to Simplify Hedge Accounting
New standard would bring US GAAP more in
line with what IASB has done with IFRS 9
Moody’s: Loan Market to Become More
Fickle
Investors cautious of eurozone weakness
Software
3
Gordon Hurst to Leave Capita
After almost three decades Hurst will hand
over his position to Nick Greatorex
5
Latest Updates from Reval
New version of TRM
Bloomberg’s New TRM
Job Openings
4
Top Transaction
Finnvera has launched a government-backed
€750 million bond
Guest Contribution
6
Treasurers Reluctant to Adapt the
Renminbi
Results of the thirteenth Treasurer Panel
China Extends Shanghai FTZ
Cross-border RMB cash pooling now
possible nationwide
Financing Round-Up
People
Financing
7
Electronic Data Transfer for Bank
Account Management
A group of banks is trying to implement
electronic banking account management
Leader 2
NorthernStock/Thinkstock/Getty Images
Issue 21 | 20 November 2014
The FASB hedge accounting project will narrow the differences between US GAAP and IFRS.
FASB to Simplify Hedge Accounting
New standard would bring US GAAP more in line with what IASB has done with IFRS 9
T
he Financial Accounting Standards Board
(FASB) prepares to revamp the standard for
hedge accounting. According to the plans of
the US accounting rule maker that were discussed
at the FASB meeting on 5 November, corporate
treasurers can hope that hedges under US GAAP
will be dealt with more simply if certain requirements are met. According to FASB Chairman Russell Golden, the current GAAP on the topic were
“overly restrictive”.
The current situation is unsatisfactory for
many businesses: Corporate treasurers frequently
get into trouble because of the lack of hedge accounting opportunities and the corresponding
volatility in earning statements. Some companies
try to fix the problem with adjusted EBIT figures:
a solution that investors do not necessarily appreciate because of its subjectivity. Others give up
economically reasonable hedges completely.
The issues that FASB plans to address – internally called “component hedging” – are those
found in transactions involving financial as well
as non-financial instruments. However, the Board
plans to focus more on non-financial items, such
as commodity hedges, a FASB staff accountant
noted. A company’s ability to adopt hedge ac-
counting in commodity hedges can have a major
impact on its financial reporting. The FASB approach would bring US GAAP more in line with
what the international standard setter IASB has
done with IFRS 9. The international standard allows components hedging of non-financial assets,
asset groups, liabilities and net positions. Corporate treasurers especially appreciate the fact that
»»The hedge accounting project
will narrow the differences
between US GAAP and IFRS.«
measuring effectiveness of hedges is now simpler.
Under IFRS 9, only the ineffective portion of the
hedge will appear on earning statements. ”The
new rules will facilitate corporate risk management,” says Klaus Gerdes, Head of Corporate Finance and Treasury at German specialty chemicals
group Altana. Less effective hedges may also be
taken into account in the future. The proposed
accounting standards update would furthermore
eliminate two unpopular hedge accounting components: the so-called “shortcut” method of
measuring the effectiveness of hedges and the
”critical terms match” that is used to qualify financial instruments for hedge accounting. The
update also calls for lower threshold application
in determining whether a hedge is effective. Until now, a derivative instrument has to offset a
price change of an underlying between 80% and
125%.
”Eliminating the shortcut method and critical terms match would greatly simplify hedge
accounting for many businesses,” says a consultant. Corporate treasurers will not have to measure precisely how well a derivative instrument
matches an asset’s or liability’s specific cash flow
or fair value features, calculate the difference or
adjust earnings. However, their duties still remain
unclear. Despite a growing importance of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
for European businesses over the last few years,
US GAAP are still important. This is especially the
case for subsidiaries of US companies as well as
European companies listed in the US that have
decided to prepare US GAAP consolidated financial statements.ank
People 3
Issue 21 | 20 November 2014
Mats Aström will take over
as the new CFO of Swedish engineering consultancy
Reijlers at the beginning
of December, the company
announced. He will be replacing Mikael Lingefelt, who will
return to his previous role as
Group Controller. Previously,
Aström was the CFO of Danir,
a Swedish holding of the
Olofsson family.
AA
Martin Clarke has been
appointed
CFO of UK
Automobile
Association
(AA) with
immediate
effect. He succeeds Andy
Boland, who will leave the
company in December after a
handover period, AA announced. Clarke has been
serving as Executive Director
since June. According to AA,
he also has considerable
private equity experience.
End of an Era: Gordon Hurst to Leave Capita
FD leaves after 27 years with the company / Nick Greatorex to take over
G
ordon Hurst, Group Finance Direc- then, he will be employed as a contor of business process manage- sultant for the group.
ment provider Capita, will leave the
His successor has also been
company at the end of February after named: Nick Greatorex is being pro27 years – 19
moted and will
of which were
join the group’s
spent as Finance
board. The curDirector. The FTSE
rent
Executive
100-listed enterDirector of Insurprise announced
ance & Benefits
the
manageServices will start
ment change last
his new job at
week.
the beginning of
According
March. He will
to Capita, Hurst Hurst leaves Capita after almost three decades.
leave his current
is leaving the
position at the
company to pursue a number of other end of the year to provide a smooth
“non-executive opportunities”. This transition into his new role.
includes his involvement with FeaGreatorex has been with the comturespace, a Cambridge-based tech- pany since 2006 and has held several
nology company.
executive positions. Previously, he was
“[Hurst] has built a strong team CFO at British business process service
of legal, commercial and financial ex- provider Liberata. Greatorex also held
perts both centrally and across the di- several M&A roles at companies such
visions,” says Capita CEO Andy Parker. as energy multinational Centrica.
Hurst’s departure, however, won’t
Greatorex will take over Capita’s
happen until September 2015. Until finances under seemingly favourable
Capita
News
market conditions. Capita will achieve
at least 8% of organic growth in
2014, the company said last week. The
London-based company sees the UK
customer and business process management market as “highly active”
and therefore expects further revenue
and profit growth for next year.jae
Job Openings
BP: is looking for a Senior NIKE
Finance Process Expert in Budapest,
Hungary
Lend Lease: is looking for a
Treasury Analyst Europe in London,
UK
Pentland: is looking for a Treasury
Analyst – Entry Appointment in
London, UK
PwC: is looking for a Treasury
Senior Associate in London, UK
Shell: is looking for an Officer
Cash & Settlements in Rijswijk,
Netherlands
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22.05.14 11:04
Financing 4
Issue 21 | 20 November 2014
News
Top Transaction
S&P: Investment-grade
debt in demand
Finnvera has launched a government-backed €750 million bond
Verbund places €500m
green bond
Austrian Verbund has placed
a green bond worth €500m.
As the electricity company
announced, the issuance is
the first of its kind in a German-speaking country. The
BBB+ (S&P) rated bond is set
to mature in 2024 and carries
a coupon of 1.5%.
Rollercoaster ride for
Abengoa
Abengoa
Spanish Abengoa’s bonds
have been on a rollercoaster
ride this past week. The
energy company’s bonds
first plunged after investors
became confused over the
offered securities, Bloomberg
reported. Intermittently,
Abengoa’s €500m of 8.5%
notes lost more than 35%
Abengoa HQ Seville, Spain
and fell to 76 cents. However, the numbers almost
completely rebounded when
Abengoa reassured its investors with an announced bond
buyback.
LMA’s new term sheet
The Loan Market Association (LMA) has launched a
term sheet created by an
experienced working party
for use in real estate finance
transactions (REF term sheet).
The sections set out the
provisions of senior loans and
mezzanine terms as well as
deals with the intercreditor
agreement.
F
innish company Finnvera has successfully placed a €750 million
bond. The emission, priced at midswap plus 1 basis point, carries a maturity of seven years and a coupon set
at 0.625%. Joint lead managers were
Citi, Crédit Agricole and Deutsche
Bank. The completely state-owned
company specialises in export and
SME financing. The Finnish government also “irrevocably guarantees”
the company’s debt obligations.
The bond issue is part of Finnvera’s Euro Medium Term Note (EMTN)
programme, which has been in operation since 2012. Moody’s and S&P rate
the debt programme at Aaa and AA+,
respectively.
This bond marks Finnvera’s third
emission in 2014 under its EMTN programme. The Finnish company issued
a €500 million bond at a coupon of
0.875% in April and a $500 million
bond at a coupon of 1.875% in Sep-
tember. The April emission is currently
priced at approximately 102.5.
The most recent bond issue appears to be attractive to investors.
The transaction was significantly over-
Finnvera
The market’s high demand for
investment-grade corporate
debt might support debtfunded M&A deals over the
coming months, according to
a report by S&P. This year’s
deal volume has been strong
as EU corporate deal flow
totalled €237bn until September – up 14% during the
same time-span in 2013.
Finnvera office in Helsinki
subscribed, reaching more than €1.6
billion within the first 30 minutes of
official book building. The overall demand exceeded €1.9 billion at the
end, according to Finnvera.
“Due to the general decline of
interest rates during the year, this
represents the lowest coupon for the
year,” says Mikael Nordgren, Head of
Treasury at Finnvera. However, Nordgren continues, saying that the issue
carries the lowest coupon on any of
Finnvera’s currently outstanding fixed
rate debts.
The company benefits from a recent change in regulation. In June, the
Finnish government increased Finnvera’s authority to provide financing to
export credits from €3 billion to €7
billion. “Due to changing regulation
for banks, we have noted an increase
in the demand for funding of export
credits,” says Nordgren.
The company distributes almost
90% of its cash within Europe. Around
40% of the recipients are banks. Until
the end of September, SMEs had outstanding commitments worth €2.6 billion while export financing accounted
for €12.5 billion of indebtedness towards Finnvera.jae
Moody’s: Loan Market to Become More Fickle
Investors cautious of eurozone weakness / Interest rates to stay low
H
igh-yield (HY) bond and leveraged loan issuances will probably
become more volatile in 2015. Investors have become more cautious due
to recent signs of Europe’s weakening
economic performance, rating agency
Moody’s writes in its EMEA leveraged
finance outlook for next year. The report also sees the escalation of geopolitical events as a potential risk.
For the rest of the year, Moody’s
expects a “continued flow of bond and
loan issuances”, deeming a repetition
of last year’s end-year rush unlikely.
“Pockets of confidence allow issuance
for established and known names in
the market, some M&A-driven issuance, cross-border deals and smaller
add-on transactions,” says Peter
Firth, Associate Managing Director of
Moody’s EU leveraged finance team.
The overall debt issuance volume
of 2014 so far is higher than the anticipated predictions from last year. Cumulative issuance in Europe through
September amounted to $206 billion,
whereas Moody’s originally predicted
a number somewhere near the $188
billion volume of 2013. The rating
agency names stronger liquidity and
an uptick in cross-border financing involving US investors as reasons for the
underestimate.
Moody’s expects the prices of HY
bonds and leveraged loans to be adjusted downward as investors switch
to less risky assets. In September,
the administration of phone retailer
Phones 4u, among others, caused investors to refocus on greater returns
and a better risk/reward analysis.
Due to widening spreads, the HY
market will need steady issuances
driven by M&A deals as well as pri-
mary LBOs and a new wave of SMEs
tapping the debt markets in order to
reach the same volumes in 2015 compared to this year.
Meanwhile, yields will be pushed
down by low overall default rates in
the eurozone. Speculative-grade default rates will be set at just 2.3% at
the end of this year, much lower than
the historical average of 4.7% since
1983. However, more small-scale issuers with weak business models have
recently entered capital debt markets,
possibly making defaults more common next year.jae
Financing Round-Up
Spanish Gas Natural Fenosa has priced a €1bn hybrid bond with a coupon of
4.125% +++ Swiss Glencore has launched a CHF 500 bond with a coupon of
1.25% set to mature in 2021 rated BBB by S&P +++ German BMW has placed a
£300m five-year bond with a coupon of 2% rated A2 (Moody’s) +++ Swiss Roche
has issued a $350m bond with a maturity of ten years and a coupon of 3.35% rated
AA (S&P) +++ PTL Holdings has announced the issue of €36m in unsecured bonds
with a coupon of 5.1% redeemable in 2024 +++ Moody’s has downgraded ABS of
British Aerco worth approximately $106m
Software 5
Issue 21 | 20 November 2014
News
Latest Updates from Reval
Bloomberg’s TRM
US Dataworks launches
new solution
New version of TRM / New bank fee analysis from Fiserv
B
Bad data management
About 80% of polled financial professionals see fragmented data management
processes and a reliance on
manual onboarding processes
as the greatest data management challenges. This is a
key finding of a study by Aite
Group. More than 88% of
respondents are considering
implementing a utility model
to simplify and standardise
the client onboarding and
management process.
R
eval clients received a Mon- new entities and define their own
day morning surprise when they controls,” says Reval Chief Technology
logged into the treasury and risk Officer Philip Pettinato. Treasurers only
management (TRM) platform earlier need to subscribe to the modules that
this month. That previous Friday, Reval are relevant to their work functions,
had just released
and as their comthe latest version
panies grow, they
of its TRM solucan add more cation: Reval 14.1.
pabilities to meet
Since the solutheir needs.
tion is delivered
Furthermore,
as Software-asReval and finana-Service (SaaS),
cial tech services
the
following
provider Fiserv
workweek saw
have
recently
all of Reval’s cli- SaaS Reval 14.1 can be accessed from anywhere.
announced
a
ents trying out
partnership. They
the new capabilities that the updated want to deliver bank fee analysis to
TRM solution has to offer.
Reval’s corporate treasury clients.
An important component of Reval Through the partnership, treasurers
14.1 is configurability. Reval’s clients will have access to Fiserv’s bank fee
amount to more than 600 compa- analysis solution Weiland BRMedge.
nies, ranging from smaller businesses The system scans statements for errors
to corporates with turnovers of more and notifies banks if any are identithan €1 billion. “Our SaaS TRM so- fied. Charges are then forwarded to
lution enables growing treasuries business units, and fees are posted to
to assimilate the operations of their corporates’ general ledgers.jko
iStock/Thinkstock/Getty Images
Payment processing solutions
provider US Dataworks has
introduced Clearingworks –
Integrated Receivables. The
solution promises to display
the entire receivables function by integrating accounting information and payment
transactions. Clearingworks
claims to speed up accurate
bill payment postings.
loomberg will be launching its own
self-developed treasury management system: Bloomberg Treasury and
Risk Management (BTRM). BTRM is
reportedly fully integrated, covering all
aspects of treasury management: risk,
cash and lifecycle management; trade
execution; and hedge and treasury accounting. With this sort of consolidation, complete cash and risk visibility
can be called up instantly, Bloomberg
states. BTRM wants to provide access
to financial exposures and related
hedging as well as better forecasting
and decision-making. The solution
also offers enterprise resource planning systems and SWIFT integration.
Along with treasury and risk,
BTRM manages time as well. BTRM
provides process automation and
claims to get rid of time-consuming
processes. It also trims down on operational risks and manual errors by
streamlining workflow. Currently,
there are no clients using the solution,
but Bloomberg is arranging demos
for financial professionals on request.
BTRM will be in general availability
before the end of this year.jko
ADVERTISEMENT
Issue 12
| 26 Jun
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Guest Contribution 6
Issue 21 | 20 November 2014
Electronic Data Transfer for Bank Account Management
Clients and banks still rely on old-fashioned methods when it comes to bank account management processes.
A
group of major transaction banks, vendors
and corporates recently defined a harmonised format for electronic bank account management (EBAM) and submitted the proposal to the
SWIFT Common Global Implementation – Market
Practice (CGI-MP) for approval. The harmonised
format is expected to be approved and become
publicly available in Q4 of 2014. The group’s activities form part of SWIFT’s CGI-MP. CGI-MP aims
to define harmonised field usage, so that information can be easily and consistently exchanged
among all participants. The publication will form
the basis for the implementation of CGI-MP compliant EBAM messages.
What is the background of the initiative? A
significant increase in transaction banking efficiency has been achieved by the introduction
of SEPA and the move towards ISO 20022 XML
message standardisation. The aforementioned
developments have revealed the potential for
standardising and digitising data exchange.
The group, which was established in 2013,
now wants to take advantage of the situation
as it aims to define a harmonised set of rules on
how to fill and interpret ISO 20022 account management (acmt) messages. Thereby, the members
intend to avoid diverse and inconsistent interpretation of the message content.
This initiative is long overdue. When taking
a closer look at the processes around bank account management, clients and banks still often rely on tried and trusted workflow methods.
There is a preference for paper-based processes,
and although the exchange of information has
gravitated towards email, there is still a large
percentage of postal mail communication. As a
consequence, these tasks are often time consuming, difficult to trace and result in multiple feedback loops and inaccuracies. More importantly for
an organisation, they promote a lack of clarity
around critical questions such as: Who has access
to bank accounts? Have the account mandates of
former employees really been suspended? What
type of accounts do we actually have? Which
banks do we work with?
Corporates are justifiably concerned about
these risks and are looking for solutions to help
them meet regulatory requirements, minimise the
potential of internal account fraud and optimise
account management within the group.
Another requirement is the faster processing
of administrative tasks such as the opening of
accounts. Moreover, the maintenance of accurate
records of authorised personnel as well as other
»»EBAM has the the potential
to deliver significant efficiency
gains.«
basic customer information, with each step traceable and visible, are also important.
To address these concerns, there has been an
increase in the use of treasury management systems (TMS) that combine bank account management (BAM) features. These TMSs facilitate better
control of BAM within the group and provide a
framework for decision-making by the treasury,
an important first step towards introducing EBAM
– the “E” being key for the integration of group
internal data exchange with banking p­ artners.
But how does information flow from and to
banks? There are, in essence, two options: The
first is the use of proprietary online tools provided by the individual bank; the second is the
exchange of standardised messages.
Similar to the exchange of electronic payment data, standardised and integrated solutions,
which work with multiple banks, offer certain ad-
vantages over individual bank proprietary solutions. With the definition of the ISO 20022 acmt
message set, SWIFT has characterised a message standard that caters to the bank-agnostic
­exchange of information for bank account management instructions. In order to protect the
investments made by clients and banks already
using ISO 20022 acmt messages, the group is
focussed on maintaining all technical XML rules
on mandatory and optional fields as well as field
lengths to avoid any modification of the XMLscheme itself.
This will pave the way for the implementation
of a truly bank-agnostic EBAM. The structured exchange of data has the potential to deliver significant efficiency gains by creating standardised requests. These can then be processed electronically
across banks and clients. Bank responses can also
be converted and reconciled by TMSs to ensure an
up-to-date and accurate view of bank accounts
managed by the group. Within this scheme, each
bank has the ability to define its own service level
with respect to turnaround times and automated
data processing. This can be complemented by the
exchange of scanned documents supporting bank
account management instructioms or by integrating the acmt messages into an online interactive
tool to complement and enhance the process. The
use of the SWIFT PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
guarantees a secure data and document transfer
and safely identifies the partners.
As of now, there are only few clients currently
using ISO 20022 acmt messages. However, there
is growing interest, particularly among clients
in Europe and the US, who need to manage a
large number of accounts internationally across
multiple banks. Through format harmonisation,
service levels can now be defined to improve today’s rather cumbersome process for managing
accounts.
Going forward, the EBAM concept could
potentially support the utilisation of digital personalised signatures, an example being SWIFT’s
3SKey. Depending on local legal and regulatory
requirements, this also provides the opportunity
to authorise changes on bank account set-up
without the exchange of paper-based documents
and to replace handwritten signatures with digital
ones. This will eventually evolve into a complete
and efficient straight-through processing of bank
account management, which already exists in the
payments area.
Deutsche Bank
Thinkstock / Getty Images
A group of banks is trying to implement bank-agnostic, electronic banking account management. Challenges lie
ahead, but first steps are being made.
Alexander Reinecke,
Senior Vice President, Business
Product Management, Client Access &
Transaction Products, Global Transaction
Banking Deutsche Bank
Cash Management 7
Issue 21 | 20 November 2014
News
New regulatory
framework for UK
payments
The UK’s new payments
watchdog PSR has outlined
how it plans to regulate the
£75tn payment industry.
Amongst others, the PSR
aims at improving access
to payment and interbank
systems like BACS, CHAPS,
Faster Payments by forcing
their operators to implement
objective, risk-based access
requirements that need to
be publicly disclosed. The
industry will need to develop
a PSR-approved code of
conduct. The full package of
measures is open for consultation until 12 January 2015.
The new regulator will be
fully operational next April.
QQ7/Thinkstock/GettyImages
SWIFT extents KnowYour-Customer offering
Banks support KYC Register.
SWIFT has announced it will
launch a new service that
provides a global overview
of correspondent banking
activities in January 2015.
The so-called SWIFT Profile
will enable banks to better
assess their counterparties’
own declared behaviours and
gain insights into potential
risks posed by the activities
of their counterparties and
those institutions’ customers. It will be part of the
Know-Your-Customer-(KYC)offering.
Renminbi clearing in
Frankfurt launched
This week, the Bank of
China has officially opened
its renminbi clearing center
in Frankfurt. More than ten
German banks including
Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DZ Bank and Helaba
have opened accounts at
Bank of China in Frankfurt in
order to offer their customers
same-day renminbi transfers
to mainland China.
Treasurers Reluctant to Adapt the Renminbi
Results of the thirteenth Treasurer Panel
T
he internationalisation of the renminbi is speeding up, but German
firms are still reluctant to adapt the
Chinese currency. This is one key result of the thirteenth Treasurer Panel
of our German sister publication DerTreasurer. 31% of the survey respondents reported that their company paid
suppliers using the Chinese currency
and accepted renminbi payments from
customers.
Yet, the results of the Panel also
show that more than half of respondents are not using the renminbi. While
17% said they want to accept the
currency in the future, more than onethird of respondents will not do so in
the near future. This is probably due to
the fact that China is not an important
market for all German corporates, but
this only partially explains the reserve.
More than half of the survey participants who did not want to implement
the renminbi said that their Chinese
business partners prefer normal market transactions in euros or US dollars.
What role does the renminbi play as your company’s trading currency?
(Figures in percent, multiple responses allowed)
We accept renminbi payments from our clients
31
We use the renminbi for internal affairs
20
We do not use the renminbi at the moment,
but we plan to do so in the near future
17
We do not use the renminbi and do not plan to do so
N=59
Lothar Meenen, Head of Cash Management and Trade Finance Germany
at Deutsche Bank, mainly attributes
this to the exchange rate risk for Chinese corporates: “If they buy primary
products in euros or US dollars, then
they want to sell their products in euros or US dollars as well. Therefore, the
currency risk is eliminated.”
The Chinese firms’ preference
for the euro and the US dollar could
be eliminated if China liberalises its
financial markets further – particularly in regards to interest rates and
exchange rates – and if the renminbi
China Extends Shanghai FTZ
Cross-border RMB cash pooling now possible nationwide
C
31
We pay suppliers in renminbi
orporate treasurers, whose com- China has to exceed RMB 5 billion
panies are doing business in (€650 million) while the income of
China, have a reason to be pleased: all offshore entities participating in
Intragroup cross-border renminbi the cash pool should be no less than
cash concentration is now possible in RMB 1 billion. The second requirement will hardly
all of China, the
be a problem for
People’s
Bank
most companies,
of China (PBoC)
but the first one
has announced
will most likely
in a circular. Until
keep mid-market
now, only firms
corporates from
with a subsidiary
benefitting from
in the Shanghai
the liberalisation.
Free-Trade Zone
The
threshold
(FTZ) were able The Shanghai FTZ is getting competition.
could be lowered
to make use of
or even abolished once the pilot prothe cash management pilot projects.
Companies are now allowed to ject is successful classified, says Gaimplement payment on behalf and re- briele Schnell of HSBC Germany. Furceivables on behalf structures as well thermore, both onshore and offshore
as intracompany netting for their Chi- participating entities must have been
nese operations. Even more important in operation for at least three years.
The new rules published by the
for corporate treasurers: Cross-border
renminbi cash pooling is now possible PBoC follow its announcement in June
nationwide. There are some important to expand the scope of renminbi crossrestrictions however: A company’s ag- border settlements. Until now, implegregated annual operating income in mentation details were missing.deb
36
Source: Treasurer-Panel
assumed a more significant role in the
world market.
Another result of the panel is that
German firms hardly want to use Chinese liberalisation projects at the moment. Cross-border cash pooling and
netting of receivables and liabilities in
China are “important” or “very important” for 53% and 48% of respondents, respectively. Nevertheless, just
5% so far have utilised the facilitations in the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone.
This could now change as the Chinese
central bank has expanded the facilitations nationwide (see below).deb
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