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Antony Michels

Senior ExecutiveTreasury Management
March 10, 2020

Org Charts and Beyond: How Leaders Help Prepare Teams for Change

Many treasurers want to give team members the skills to move to other areas or companies. NeuGroup members at a recent Treasurers’ Group of Thirty meeting delved into the nuances of treasury department organizational structures and how they meet specific company needs. Participants enjoyed seeing on a screen exactly how other treasury teams have been put together and why. And they had a laugh when one person didn’t recognize his own org chart. But many members clearly feel the weight…
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Risk Management
March 6, 2020

Internal Auditors Snapping into Action to Help Companies Cope with Coronavirus Crisis

The outbreak points up the need to create or improve pandemic policies and formalize rules. The coronavirus outbreak is revealing how prepared multinational corporations are for threats posed by crises that can affect almost every area of a business. And that’s made the virus a top concern and focus of many members of NeuGroup’s Internal Auditors’ Peer Group (IAPG) who are playing a key role in the response. Proactive approach. “I am now devoting more than 50% of my time…
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NeuGroup News
March 4, 2020

NeuGroup’s Response to the Coronavirus

Connecting with peers now is critical and may require options like video conferencing when in-person meetings aren't possible. Here is an announcement NeuGroup founder and CEO Joseph Neu sent to members this week outlining how the company is preparing to respond to the coronavirus: Dear Members, Like all of you, NeuGroup is closely following developments with the coronavirus outbreak. First and foremost, we hope that those who have contracted the virus return to good health and that all efforts to…
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Capital MarketsLibor SOFR
March 3, 2020

Fed Official to NeuGroup Members: The Time to Start Paying Attention to Libor’s End Is Now

ARRC liaison David Bowman explains the implications of SOFR and what corporates need to do now.Corporate treasury teams that have paid little or no attention to the planned transition from Libor to SOFR, take note: That stance makes much less sense today than last year and “won’t make any sense” by the end of this year, in the view of David Bowman, the senior staff liaison from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC).…
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Capital MarketsPension and BenefitsRisk Management
February 25, 2020

No Slam Dunk for Pension Fund Managers: Selling Leverage-Averse Boards on Overlays

The popularity of overlays is increasing in the US despite concerns of executive committees. Leverage is something of a dirty word in the world of pension funds and that, perhaps, presents the biggest challenge that pension fund managers face when seeking to persuade their companies’ executive committees to use overlays that use derivatives as a fund-management tool.At a roundtable of pension fund managers arranged by the NeuGroup, one participant said his team had begun to explore how to “de-risk” the…
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NeuGroup News
February 25, 2020

NeuGroup for Pension and Benefits Launches in May

Following our successful roundtable last fall, we are moving ahead with a new peer group. The NeuGroup for Pension and Benefits is for corporate finance professionals who are willing to share and learn with others who think creatively and test some out-of-the-box ideas about managing assets to offset pension and other defined benefit liabilities. Trying times. With interest rates at historic low levels and concerns about them going lower and possibly even into negative territory, the risk management of defined…
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Capital MarketsESGUncategorized
February 25, 2020

Treasury Teams Taking to Heart the Force of the ESG Wave Barreling Across Atlantic

Discussing insurance, investing and BlackRock’s Larry Fink, NeuGroup members weigh in on ESG. The potentially dramatic and varied impact on multinationals from the environmental, social and governance (ESG) wave barreling across the Atlantic from Europe is hitting home for a growing number of US finance teams. That was among the key takeaways from comments by treasurers gathered in Dallas for NeuGroup’s first meeting of 2020. Thanks for the warning. One the most interesting revelations involved the effect of ESG on insurance. One…
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Senior ExecutiveTreasury Management
February 20, 2020

Mike Likes It, but Would Your Team Vote for an Open-Office Plan?

Open-office plans like the one Mike Bloomberg adopted at City Hall have fans and skeptics. Where do you stand (sit)? Presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg in December tweeted the picture above of the “bullpen” office he had as New York City mayor and wrote, “I’ll turn the East Room into an open-office plan, where I’ll sit with our team.” No one can say if that will ever happen, of course. But the subject of open-office plans definitely sparked interest at a…
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Capital MarketsCompliance
February 20, 2020

Margin Bells Will Soon Toll for More Pension Funds

Pension funds need to prepare for margin rules covering the OTC derivatives they use. Corporate pension fund managers may soon have initial-margin responsibilities for the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives they use to manage those funds, even if their parent companies are exempt. Background. Following the financial crisis, global regulators established variation and initial margin rules for OTC derivatives to provide greater transparency into counterparty risk. Those requirements first became effective in 2016 for financial firms with more than $3 trillion in…
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Cash & Working CapitalTechnology
February 20, 2020

Mining Merchant Services for Today’s Gold: Data

Founder’s Edition by Joseph Neu The drive to access and leverage data from credit card and other transactions is transforming merchant services. Merchant services are fast becoming a key value driver for transaction banks, fintechs and other financial services institutions. The key reason is the importance of capturing data at the point of sale, along with facilitating frictionless transactions. What takes place under the heading of merchant services is worth your attention because: It’s the beginning of the data-rich order-to-cash…
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