This is a Fairfield County – AFP (CT) event. The FCAFP invites New England AFP members to attend at no charge. RSVP is required to fcafp@yahoo.com. Please include your name, e-mail address, telephone/cell number and state whether you are a New England AFP member.

ECONOMIC OVERVIEW/CURRENT STATE OF MARKET

Overview on current market environment. The Fed Reserve also has an announcement on 9/21 so that will be a major topic of interest.

Speaker: Richard Yamarone

BEST PRACTICES IN CASH FORECASTING & CASH MANAGEMENT

Every treasury department faces the same question: “How do I minimize risk and maximize liquidity within my organization?” Treasurers work with organizational silos, remote subsidiaries, unfriendly ERP systems, multiple bank portals and Excel spreadsheets. All of this can lead to common errors, long work days and a constant disconnect between funding, investment, and risk management decisions. There are ways though, to streamline your treasury processes and improve operational effectiveness.

In this session we will discuss:

• Challenges of integrating cash and risk management
• Types of cash management solutions available today

Speaker: Tuomas Parikka (Corporate Treasury Specialist, Bloomberg L.P.)

OPTIMIZING YOUR APPROACH TO HEDGING & RISK MANAGEMENT

With the increase in currency and commodity volatility and a diverging global interest rate environment, it becomes necessary to re-examine the effectiveness of your current hedging policy and look at strategies to optimize your hedges. Additionally, increased regulation has seen an appetite for treasury departments to bring many post-trade functions such as mark-to-market and valuation in house as well as the adoption of counterparty valuation to assess risk.

In this session we will discuss:

• Comparing financial market forecasts with the strategists
• Putting on the optimal hedge including critically assessing the use of vanilla options versus other FX option/swaption structures and considerations for emerging market currencies
• Valuation, mark-to-market and stress testing your portfolio
• Counterparty risk
• Capital raising

Speaker: Alison Fletcher (FX and Economics Market Specialist, Bloomberg L.P.)

THE BASICS OF HEDGE ACCOUNTING

Financial statement volatility is never a good thing especially for public companies that report earnings on a quarterly basis. While financial risk from changes in foreign currency rates, interest rates or commodity prices can create current or future earnings volatility, a properly designed hedging strategy should smooth out these variations. Since most financial hedges are measured at fair value, not applying hedge accounting can increase, rather than reduce, quarterly earnings volatility, defeating the initial objective. Hedge accounting aligns the financial reporting results of the hedge with the underlying exposures in the same accounting period.

In this session we will discuss:

• The evolution of hedge accounting and the measurement and reporting of derivative instruments
• The types of companies that are the primary users of hedge accounting
• The key principals of the hedge accounting model including making a proper election at inception and proper application of hedge accounting over the term of the hedging relationship
• Assessing hedge effectiveness
• Examples of common FX and interest rate cash flow, fair value and net investment hedge relationships and applications

Speaker: Robert Baer (Derivatives and Hedge Accounting Specialist, Bloomberg L.P.)

Lunch and take home gift to be provided.

Credits: 4.8