Gentlemen, you have recently undertaken work to further integrate and automate your treasury operations with a view to providing improved STP for your group treasury business. What factors played a role in that decision?

B.H.: At Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG we are working on a continuous streamlining of treasury process integration and automation. Our aim is to run a lean operation with high levels of efficiency and low risk. Having achieved this to a great extent by fine tuning our SAP Treasury Management System, we were then looking to leverage STP by executing and capturing most of our daily flow business in electronic format. Since Q4 2004, we have been trading electronically via 360Ts Multibank Portal TEX. Executed trades on 360T are seamlessly processed into SAP in real-time since early 2005.

Does Centralisation play a role in your treasury organisation and, if so, how can this be reflected by your e-strategy?

B.H.: We have started centralising our treasury operations in 1998. The benefits from it are clear cut, ranging from scale and netting effects in our groups interaction with relationship banks, to a real-time consolidated cash position and quality assurance via centralised service and advisory function, to name only a few. With it comes the role of the group treasury as an in-house bank for hedge and funding requests from our global subsidiaries.

We are currently rolling out 360Ts intra-group trading platform I-TEX to our frequently trading subsidiaries and provide to them a professional 24h FX and MM trading service under HEIDELBERG name and logo. Resulting internal electronic tickets are automatically updated in SAP via the same interface as our external trades.