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Meet our Experts – Interview Wim Kok
02-06-2020 | Wim Kok | treasuryXL
This week you will meet Wim Kok, a Trade Finance Specialist with decades of experience.
Wim started his financial advisory company recently after a long career in the banking industry (> 40 years). During his banking career his interest and focus was always connected to the commodity & trade finance industry both in sales and product innovation. Activities in various senior roles, including relationship management, head of department, change management and start up business (internationally).
Nowadays Wim is involved as independent advisory in supply chain management and digitalisation of the logistic industry. Building bridges, simplifying (trade) finance and logistics. Closing the gap between procurement and finance (treasury).
We asked him 11 questions, let’s go!
1. How did your treasury journey start?
I started working in Treasury (assistant treasurer) during the late 70 ties i.e. my 1st job was with Continental Grain a New York based grain trading company with a strong foothold in Europe.
The Rotterdam Harbour, at that time, was the physical entry point for US grain coming to Europe.
I worked with 3 merchant banks (Slavenburg, Bank Mees & Hope & Albert de Bary) pooling and netting bank accounts (manually) to optimise currency and debit/credit interest positions for the Rotterdam company.
2. What do you like about working in Treasury?
I see the treasury operations as a pivotal function within an organisation meaning that you have to know the cash generating mechanics of the company inside out. Seamless use and coordination of cash contributes to a seamless treasury function and an added value for the company.
3, What is your Treasury Expertise?
I started my career in the late 70ties as assistant treasurer with an American global grain trading company in the Netherlands – My main task was to streamline and optimise the money flows in 8 different main currencies between 3 banks. This was the early start of the cash management development. Later on I moved into the trade and commodity structured finance direction.
4. Do you have examples of risk mitigation, creation of opportunities and/or cost savings?
Very simple netting and pooling arrangements (interest risks). Discounting receivables, Bills of Exchange, Documentary L/C’s or insurance arrangements, making use of swaps and FX derivatives (currency risks) etc. on the payable side – supplier finance structures making use of the rating of the corporates.
5. What has been your best experience in your treasury career until today?
That’s difficult to mention as my treasurer career was rather short, but I have seen the position and function grow over the years bridging the silo’s within a company (especially within the bigger corporates).
6. What has been your biggest challenge in treasury?
At my time with Continental Grain is was the perception of the people. Hugh silo’s between booking /audit and sales / marketing we started to change the perception and managed to bridge the different worlds of finance and commerce by showing that a good treasury function earned additional income.
7. What’s the most important lesson that you’ve learned as a treasurer?
My most important lesson learnt (and that seems a bit odd having worked within banks for almost 40 years) is: as a larger corporate always make sure you keep your independence in other words select more providers to support you.
8. How have you seen the role of Corporate Treasury evolve over the years?
Very much in such way that in the bigger Corporates you see nowadays a lot of inhouse banks and for mid & large corporates a treasury function is more or less the standard.
9. The coronavirus is undoubtedly an unprecedented crisis. In general, can you elaborate on the impact this virus has on treasury from your perspective?
In this respect I would like to refer to the article I recently wrote for TreasuryXL: ”How to simplify procurement and finance in the supply chain” – I think a lot of companies will have to reconsider their current (disrupted) supply chains and financial systems. Companies going into 2021 will have to adopt to the fast changing pace in any discipline or a combination be it digitalisation, IoT, Blockchain, AI, robotics or the Cloud
10. What developments do you expect in corporate treasury in the near and further future?
Definitely transparency, efficiency and speed will improve dramatically due to interconnectivity of systems and transactions, data protection (and use) and cybersecurity will become a more important factor.
11. What is your best advice for businesses without a Treasurer?
Try one because a good treasurer will always earn (at least) himself back for the company.
International Business Consultant
Trade Finance Specialist
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Live Demo: Ready for fraud prevention? – TIS shows you how!
| 29-05-2020 | TIS |
“Due to unforeseen circumstances this live demo session had to be cancelled. We will inform you once registration for the next session is open”.
Live Demo: Ready for fraud prevention? – TIS shows you how!
Friday June 5, 2020 from 2.00 pm to 2.30 pm CEST | 30-minute demo |
See different fraud scenarios in the TIS fraud case study and learn how TIS can help you preventing such cases. They will present different TIS functionalities and will take your high level questions at the end of the session.
Date, time and registration
Date: 5 June, 2020
Start: 2:00-2:30 PM CEST
The Impact of COVID19 on the Dutch economy
| 29-05-2020 | Vincenzo Masile | treasuryXL |
Recently, it was determined that the Dutch GDP fell by -1.7% in the first quarter of 2020, suggesting that the economic impact of the corona-virus was mild, at least in international comparison. Although the second quarter is likely to be much worse, the ‘intelligent lock-down’ as dubbed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, has economically paid off so far.
Given the Dutch economy’s high degree of openness and the fact that Dutch expenditure data for January and February was disappointing, the small GDP decline might be a bit surprising. What stands out as more important, however, is the relative mildness of the Dutch lock-down compared to many Europe. That said, the Dutch government has decided to extend economic support measures by three months until September. The emergency package 2.0 means 13 billion euros of additional fiscal support.
Economic and Financial support
The existing support measures were about to expire by June 1, 2020, but have now been extended until September 1, 2020. Some conditions for public support have been made stricter. For example, firms using the wage subsidy – the main instruments of the support package, will be temporarily (in 2020) forbidden to pay out any dividends or executive bonuses or execute share buy-backs.
The firm will also be obliged to encourage employees to train or retrain and prepare the workforce for future proof jobs. Income support for self-employed people will start to be conditional on the financial position of the partner. Some major restriction to the wage subsidy scheme will be lifted and conditions of the “emergency packages 2.0” are more tailor-made for specific industries. Firms will no longer have to pay a fine for firing workers due to economic reasons, although they will still have to pay back the subsidy. Furthermore, season-sensitive industries will be able to benefit from tweaks to the reference period of their wage bill. The scheme has also been made more generous with respect to the size of the subsidy – 140% of wages instead of 130% (of which they get 90% proportional to turnover losses), in light of the fact that some firms not only have social security to pay on top of wages but also have high non-wage fixed cost.
Apart from the effect of a falling tax base (i.e. automatic stabilization), the direct costs of the extension of the emergency packages have been estimated by the government at 13 billion euro (1.6% of GDP in 2019) for 2020, excluding support for air carrier Air-France – KLM. This comes on top of an existing package of about 14% of GDP (estimates based on government figures), of which 2.2% GDP involved direct net additional expenditures such as gifts, 4.2% GDP in loans and tax deferrals, 1.8% GDP in guarantee and insurance budgets and 5.6% GDP in automatic stabilization for 2020. The bulk of the cost of the extension comes from the direct cost of the wage subsidy scheme and benefits assistance scheme for the self-employed, which mostly qualify as gifts, bringing the total direct net additional expenditures for 2020 to 3.9% of 2019 GDP.
Forward
In line with the earlier announcement, the lock-down will be lifted gradually, allowing for the start of partial economic recovery from the low production levels of April and May. Bars, restaurants, cinemas and theaters will be allowed to reopen on 1 June, generally starting with a maximum of 30 guests at 1.5 meters distance. In the first week of June, all schools including secondary and tertiary will reopen too.
The Dutch government is following other European governments in choosing a path of gradual resumption of economic activity combined with continued economic support. This should mitigate the economic consequences of the corona-virus at least to some extent. However, this won’t prevent the large decline in GDP in the second quarter, after the relatively “mild” decline in the first quarter. It is important to outline the on- going negotiations between EU countries regarding the so-called recovery fund (estimated amount Euro 500 bn.) and the impact on the EU economies.
If a reasonable compromise is reached this can boost the Q3 and Q4 outlook across all EU and the impact on the Dutch economy will be beneficial too.
Vincenzo Masile
Treasury Expert/Credit Risk Manager