Treasurers Conference.

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Keynote speaker Geoff Merszei, treasurer of Dow Chemical Co., noted the enormous changes that treasury has undergone since he started more than 20 years ago. He ticked off a list of areas where he thinks treasury can now add value -- areas like M&A, venture capital and risk management. In addition, "the Internet is a great enabler, allowing us to do more with less."

Risk management is a key function, Merszei said, focusing on the need for treasury to identify, measure and manage risk. Hedging is an important tool here, he said, arguing that failure to hedge is in itself a position. He related Dow's experience with combining the efforts of its Hydrocarbon & Energy business with treasury; the subsequent hedging strategies have paid big dividends.

The Dow treasurer recapped the company's widely publicized auction of corporate bonds on the Internet, a process he says was bad-mouthed by investment bankers leery of losing "exorbitant" fees. The Dutch auction, done last August, created very different pricing and allocation from a traditional bond offering, but Merszei was "thrilled" with the results.

In another presentation, Jeffrey Wallace, managing partner at Greenwich Treasury Advisors, touted the value of the Internet, both in the form of company intranets and the external links to the outside world. He urged treasurers to think of intranets as a marketing vehicle to give them more visibility within their companies, as well as to act as central repositories of information and document libraries. Wallace and session moderator Susan Stalnecker, vice president and treasurer of Du Pont, walked the audience through a series of internal Web pages developed by Du Pont's treasury function and a similar effort at EDS. The pages were filled with links to company information and policies. Wallace maintained that treasury should be accountable to others in the rest of the company for specific goals and service quality metrics, and to make those apparent by putting them on the Web.

In a timely session, Robert Krause, vice president and treasurer of American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, outlined the SEC's new Regulation on Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) and some of the elements of investor information...

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