European corporates have continued to reduce the number of banks they deal with in the past two years according to a seminal paper at the conference by the Bank Relationship Consultancy.
Speaking at the ‘9th Annual Conference on International Cash and Treasury Management’, David Middleton, research director of the company, presented the results of the Europe-wide corporate survey.
The survey of 8000 European corporates found that in the last 2 years the average number of banks that a company deals with has fallen from 5.6 in 1998 to just 4.5 in the year 2000. A total of 18 per cent of respondents said that they dealt only with one bank, but the majority of 61 per cent said they dealt with between 2 and 5 banks.
Some 48 per cent of respondees either plan to or have already pooled the company’s euro bank accounts cross border, while 46 per cent said they did not plan to pool them. Again 47 per cent said they planned to create a European treasury centre if they had not already done so.
The event was the largest international treasury conference held in Dublin since 1987 when the ACI (Association Cambiste) foreign exchange congress was held in the capital. Over 1,000 national and international delegates attended the 2000 event. The conference exhibition had presences from a number of Irish and international companies including AIB, Anglo Irish, Bank of Ireland, Bank of America, Chase,Citibank, ABN AMRO, Salmon Software and FTI, Finance and Treasury International, who recently announced a new strategic alliance with a US based loookalike partner Chicago-based Treasury Strategies Inc. The conference was organised by Eurofinance, a London based conference company established in 1996 in an offshoot from Euromoney publications.
The proliferation of internet-based foreign exchange trading was also at the top of many delegates’ minds. Bank of Ireland Treasury & International was one of fifty international banks brought together to create an on-line FX marketplace called Atriax. The co-operative FX exchange is an automated portal for on-line FX dealing for corporates, institutional and banking FX professional, and the 50 members claim they make up 50 per cent of global foreign exchange dealing. The other members of the marketplace include Reuters, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank and Deutsche Bank.
Deutsche Bank launched its business to business online trading facility ‘db-eEscrow’ at the conference. |
