DENVER, Aug. 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Covidien, Dow
Corning, and Hilton Worldwide are finalists for the Association for
Financial Professionals (AFP) 2015 Pinnacle Award. Sponsored by
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC), the Pinnacle Award,
established in 1997, recognizes excellence in treasury and
finance.
Finalists were selected based on their innovative solutions that
helped their treasury and finance operations run more efficiently
and effectively. The AFP Pinnacle grand prize winner will be
announced October 18 at the AFP
annual conference in Denver.
The 2015 AFP Annual Conference is October
18-21, the largest event for corporate treasury and finance.
Register by Friday, September 18,
2015 to save $200 at
www.AFPConference.org/Register. For any press related
questions please contact Melissa
Rawak at mrawak@afponline.org.
Wells Fargo will make a
$10,000 donation to a charity of the
winner's choice. Danny Peltz, executive vice president and head of
Treasury Management at Wells Fargo, and Jim
Kaitz, AFP president & CEO, will host the award
ceremony.
"AFP is pleased to honor the 2015 Pinnacle Award winners," Kaitz
said. "The treasury and finance groups at Covidien, Dow Corning,
and Hilton Worldwide truly set the global standard for their peers
and their profession."
Conducted amid a corporate merger, Covidien (now part of
Medtronic) put together a cross-functional, global team to
consolidate foreign exchange exposures, centralize trade management
and create an in-house bank to provide intercompany currency
hedging services to 30 entities worldwide. The effort saved the
company $1 million annually, reduced
administrative time and labor, and eased regulatory compliance. The
in house bank will remain in place post-merger as a testament to
its success
Utilizing Lean Six Sigma techniques, value-stream mapping and a
return on human assets focus, Dow Corning overhauled its manual,
process-heavy currency trading program, worth roughly $15 billion in notional value and representing
2,000 trades per year. As a result, Dow Corning cut nearly
$5 million a year in costs and was
able to re-allocate nearly 600 hours of labor to value-added
advanced analytics, thought leadership, and strategic business
consulting.
In anticipation of its $13 billion
debt refinancing and $2.3 billion
IPO, the largest ever in the hospitality industry, Hilton Worldwide
needed to improve its liquidity forecasting capabilities. It
succeeded by transforming a static view of multiple business units
and regional forecasts into an agile, simplified liquidity
forecast. This helped the company achieve investment grade status
by using nearly all its free cash flow to repay $1.5 billion in post-IPO debt. As a result, its
credit ratings improved and led to an $8.8
billion increase (45 percent) in its market
capitalization.
ABOUT AFP®
Headquartered outside Washington,
D.C., the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is
the professional society that represents finance executives
globally. AFP established and administers the Certified Treasury
Professional and Certified Corporate FP&A Professional
credentials, which set standards of excellence in finance. The
quarterly AFP Corporate Cash Indicators serve as a bellwether of
economic growth. The AFP Annual Conference is the largest
networking event for corporate finance professionals in the
world.
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/covidien-dow-corning-and-hilton-worldwide-are-2015-afp-pinnacle-award-finalists-300132728.html
SOURCE Association for Financial Professionals