The 13th Annual Alexander Hamilton Best Practices Summit
and Awards Program
October 27-28, 2008 in N.Y.C

For the past 12 years, Treasury & Risk has been honoring excellence in treasury management and finance at the largest U.S. companies with its prestigious Alexander Hamilton Awards. This Summit promotes recognition of treasury's contribution to enhancing shareholder value.

Since their inception, the awards have attracted hundreds of submissions from some of the most creative and innovative finance organizations. Over the last 12 years, our winning entries have come from such prestigious companies as Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, General Electric and Hewlett-Packard.

Overall Excellence: Chosen among the winners of the other Alexander Hamilton Awards, based on projects that cumulatively show a standard of best practices throughout a company’s treasury or finance department or based on the unique, innovative nature of a particular project.

Middle Market Treasury of the Year: Companies are encour¬aged to submit evidence of the innovative use of resources, technol¬ogy and outside expertise to achieve best-practice results. Companies that apply in other categories can use their project/s as evidence of  their treasury’s management. To be eligible a company must have revenues above $50 million and
below $2 billion.

Cash Management: This category includes information reporting and activity relating to the collection of incoming payments (lockbox, A/R outsourcing) and the disbursement of outgoing payments (wires, ACH, all check services, AP outsourcing, etc.), as well as all security arrangements around payments.

Corporate Finance: This category would include solutions to problems involving the right side of the balance sheet, such as financ¬ings or mergers and acquisitions, which lower after-tax cost of capital
or provide stability to the company.

Corporate Governance: In the past, companies did not submit applications in this area. This year, however, we are encouraging companies to submit an 800-word summary of why the company should be considered. The editors who serve as judges in this category alone will still do independent research. However, by allowing submissions, we are attempting to open up the category to midsize companies or companies less closely scrutinized by the institutional investor community.

Credit Risk Management: This category includes new approaches to assessing risk when extending credit to customers and financial counterparties, and to reducing a company’s bad debt.
Enterprise Risk Management: This category encompasses innovative solutions and larger programs involving risk assessment,  identification, mitigation and/or transfer when protecting a company’s
property, personnel, data or reputation.

Financial Risk Management: This category includes innovative solutions for risk management involving domestic or international interest rates, foreign exchange, commodity price or country risk; the
use of derivatives; or the use of capital markets to hedge a company’s financial risk exposure.

Liquidity Management: This would be aimed at portfolio management, short-term investing and contingency planning for cash availability as well as crisis management that ensured liquidity.

Retirement and Benefits: This category will include improvements to defined benefit or defined contribution plans, including changes to administrative structure, investment management structure, asset allocation, employee investment options or communications programs. In addition, the category has been expanded to include innovative solutions to some of the most costly items for companies, such as healthcare, retiree healthcare and management of workers compensation programs.

Technology: This category includes the innovative use of technology to resolve a financial problems, conduct electronic commerce, or significantly improve the communications or analysis of financial data and information.  The judging will focus on the functionality and implementation of the solution and stress the innovative nature of the system itself. 

Working Capital Management: This includes cash flow forecast¬ing and centralization efforts as well as any effort that was specifically implemented and which resulted in significant working capital manage¬ment efficiencies. Entries in this category can be submitted in a second narrower category, such as cash management or liquidity management