The two departments, Equity & Debt and Risk Management, from German association of Corporate Treasurer held a joint symposium on 30 November 2023 on the topic of “R4 – Treasury caught between predators, regulation, the rainforest and robots” ...was held. An exciting programme focusing on strategic business management awaited the participants.

To begin with, [name] spoke Dr Vera Demary (Head of the Digitalisation and Climate Change Cluster, Cologne Institute for Economic Research) on the challenges facing businesses as a result of advancing digitalisation and climate change. This was followed by a short keynote presentation by Thomas Schnarr (Partner, Financial Services, Head of Corporate Risk & Resilience, Oliver Wyman GmbH), who examined the challenges from the perspective of corporate clients. Thomas Schnarr then discussed the issue together with Eddy Henning (Head of Wholesale Banking, Member of the Executive Board, ING Germany), Dr Michael Schleef (CEO of HSBC Germany, HSBC) and Ingrid Spletter-Weiß (Head of Corporate Clients, Treasury and Markets, NORD/LB) on the impact they expect this to have on corporate clients.

After a lunch and networking break, we began with a short talk by Dr Pascal Vogt (Partner & Director, Global Leader for Treasury & Balance Sheet Management, Boston Consulting Group) in the afternoon. In the second round of discussions that followed, in which Pascal Vogt also took part, the speakers discussed Dr Mani Herold (CFO, Rodenstock GmbH), Dr Markus E. Fischer (CFO and member of the Executive Board, CargoBeamer AG) and Peter Radtke (Head of Corporate Finance & Treasury, KUKA AG) discusses the upcoming issues from a CFO and treasury perspective.

Finally, he reported that Jean Dohrmann (Head of Treasury, Software AG) spoke about her experiences during a cyberattack following a short coffee break. This report was supplemented by Marko Hamel (CISA, CRISC, compliance, security and risk expert, SAP SE) and Marcel Armon (Chief Specialty Officer (DACH), CEO of Aon Austria, Aon) shared her experiences before Dirk Gödde (Vice President, Corporate Finance Group EMEA, Moody’s Deutschland GmbH) provided an insight into the impact of cyber risk on credit ratings.

Bastian Frien (FINANCE Think Tank) acted as moderator throughout the day.

We would like to thank everyone involved for helping to make the event a success, and the participants for their very positive feedback.