Comprehensive, coherent strategies to optimise global cash and liquidity management are relatively easy to develop, the difficult part is the implementation and ensuring that they are cost-effective. It takes many years and relentless focus to achieve cost-effective global solutions. Only the largest multinational corporations with harmonised ERP systems and IT infrastructures, and strong parent and subsidiary relationships will be able to achieve real global cash management solutions.

There is an inherent conflict in global cash and liquidity management, the drive towards centralisation and economies of scale conflicts with the benefits of integrating finance and treasury personnel into core business areas in order to fully understand and solve local working capital issues and support subsidiaries. Global cash and liquidity management will always be a compromise.

Main Features
The main features of global cash and liquidity management solutions are:

• global cash flow forecasting
• regional and then global cash concentration using:
  • multi-currency notional pools - regional and/or global
  • global cross-currency notional pooling - funds in different jurisdictions and different currencies area are aggregated notionally and preferential interest rates are applied (where permitted) at a global level
• some global revolving of operating cash - cash is moved between different regions during daylight in the region, optimising the availability of working capital world-wide
• concentrate all spare cash
• global investment programmes.

Recent Developments
Recent developments in global cash and liquidity management solutions have included:

• the financial crisis and concerns about bank counter-party risk has slowed and mostly stopped the use of just one bank for global cash and liquidity management solutions
• there is much more focus is on sweeping cash and funds back to the Asia-Pacific region, sometimes using against the sun sweeping
• in this age of low interest rates there is less sweeping funds to a single location.
• there is increased focus on hedging and managing foreign exchange risk, due to volatility across emerging markets as well as the eurozone, the US and China.
• online security and cyber crime are increasingly becoming priorities for corporate treasurers as more financial processes are becoming automated and managed online.
• initiatives such as the OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project is putting the focus on fair corporate taxation and corporate treasurers face the task of ensuring their corporate tax structures are transparent.

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