Is teasury department good for CFA exam?

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alikimi4

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I am a fresh graduate of industrial engineering in Turkey. I took many courses related to financial engineering. I have a job offer from treasury department of a leading brokerage house in Turkey. I intend to take level 1 CFA exam in next December 2008. Furthermore, I plan to have a MS in Finance in one of the leading university in UK, such as University of Warwick. Therefore, my first aim is to get experienced as much as possible.

Do you think whether starting a career in treasury department is a good choice? Will it help me in lvl 1 CFA exam? Will it help me find a good MS in Finance in UK?

I need an urgent help.

Thanks.
 
Sounds like a fine place to start to me. Treasury is like IT - no fanfare but really important to running a finance business. Good Treasury guys are heroes in my book.
 
I've run accross a few Treasury guys with the CFA charter.
 
I've been in treasury for a few years and to me it's the most palatable of any position within corporate finance. The day-to-day operations require general finance knowledge and there is plenty of interaction with your bankers� trading desks an/or loan syndication teams depending on your company�s investment policy and capital structure.

Since you are looking at December '08 timeline, I'd get the CTP sometime this winter or next spring. That will provide a nice foundation for your CFA work (primarily FSA, TVM, and general derivatives) and compliment your role in treasury to a much better degree than just the CFA alone. FYI, the CTP exam requires less than half the preparation one CFA exam will.

The short answer is, yes, a fine place to start and exciting enough where you won�t be talking to a head hunter 3 weeks into the job.
 
Short answer:
Ensuring adequate liquidity for short and long-term obligations of a corporation.

Longer answer:
In general, besides posting on AF, day-to-day responsibilities include deciding what to do with excess cash (invest in money market instruments or pay down existing debt) or how to fund cash shortfalls. Financing inventory, if the underlying business requires it, may also be under treasury�s umbrella.

Longer-term, treasury is the primary department involved in capital structure type activity like bank debt/credit facility refinancing, share repurchase, senior note issuances, etc. Treasury is also the department that manages lender and rating agency relationships by keeping them abreast of the financial health of the company (liquidity to cover interest or maturing debt obligations) and any future initiatives that may add more risk the existing bondholders. There is also a risk management component that generally involves hedges on interest rate risk.
 
>>There is also a risk management component that generally involves hedges on interest rate risk.

Hedging the current portfolio is important for banks holding large portfolios of term deposits, loans, mortgages which are hedged using swaps, swaptions, IR options. Treasury can be a cool place and the egos are not as big as the ones on the trading floor.
 
treasury department of any non financial firm even?.what would be the essential differences between the treasury dept of say microsoft versus BoA?
 
Thats a great question. I am wondering about that myself. Also, the CPA or CA seems to be a requirement for a Treasury job too, Am I correct?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Wednesday, July 11, 2007 at 02:20AM by UAECFA.
 
I have the CTP, and its been rather difficult even getting an interview - but a former classmate works at microsoft in cash management. I'm not certain but I would say that there are no fundamental differences between the treasury department of microsoft and that of BofA. Other than the obvious - for example, there's no inventory management at BofA, so there's no accts rec or accts pay - but there is still credit risk. Also a big part, at least of the CTP, was bank relationship management - obviously this would be different for BofA than for microsoft.
 
The main difference to banks and non-financial companies in my experience is that banks are way more sophisticated. It is part of the banks business to take over risks such as interest rate risk. Of course, this is also due to the regulatory environment for banks.

The treasury dept. of many non-financial companies is not that big. Sometimes there are only a few people around, and a lot is done on Excel.

The reason that it is probably best to have a CPA is that most treasury dept. are part of the finance dept. (meaning it is run by accountants). Due to the size of treasury dept. in non-financial companies, it is hard to move up. If you want to move up, you may have to take another position in the finance dept. (which requires a CPA).
 
And to the initial question, I second the other opinions. Treasury is interesting and a good place to start.
 
There are actually 2 treasury positions open right now in my department (corp. finance) it is essentially what dea_cfa described and it is not run by accountants and we do not require any accounting designation. We are having a real hard time finding anyone to fill these positions. If anyone is open to work in Montreal give me a heads up.
 
Thanks for your opinions.
I am new in this forum and see that you are very helpful.
Greetings from Turkey.
 
I work Treasury in one of the larger Credit Unions in Canada. On/off book asset size @ $4 billion, so not quite on the same playing field as the big banks.
I love it. Liquidity management is a large part of my job which includes MBS sales, short and long term borrowing and managing a portfolio of liquid securities to meet statutory requirements. Pay is not too bad, and my work life balance is very good.
I'm waiting on CFAI for membership approval. I'm told by others in similar positions to mine that I won't have a problem at all with the work experience requirements.
 
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