Advisory - Overview - Ernst & Young - United States

Rapidly shifting exchange rates, uncertainty over interest rates and rising commodity prices are affecting the way treasury managers perceive risk. Given the recent market turmoil (pdf, 2mb), cash management and bank relationships are key to securing a company’s financing. Learn what treasury managers from 55 companies across Europe think about the challenges their departments are facing.

What challenges are likely to affect your company in 2009 and beyond? The credit crunch aftershocks and the deepening global recession rank as the most important business risks for 2009, displacing regulation and compliance — last year’s top risks. Green initiatives, competition from new entrants, human capital issues, and reputational risk all rose in "The 2009 Ernst & Young business risk report — the top 10 risks for global business".

Sector top 10 business risk reports also available:

• Asset Management (pdf, 4.1mb)
• Media & entertainment (pdf, 6mb)
• Real Estate (pdf, 6.6mb)
• Telecommunications (pdf, 3.7mb)

Corporate growth has been severely hit and access to capital has become tight. Despite changes in the economy, and the uncertainties that persist, the markets still expect businesses to perform. To guide your company, (pdf, 581kb) it is important to understand how leading companies have behaved during previous downturns and to know what actions to take.

Risk management is intrinsically linked to performance management. Approaching them as separate management systems significantly reduces the effectiveness of risk management – often with dire consequences. “A new balanced scorecard” (pdf, 269kb) explains how a risk-enhanced or re-balanced score card incorporates both key performance indicators and key risk indicators to link performance and risk management and develop a single language and risk culture throughout your organization.

IT is being called on to do more than “keep the lights on.” Stakeholders expect IT to create value, rationalize costs and more effectively manage risks across the organization, while dealing with the day-to-day challenges of managing the IT function. Many business and IT leaders are struggling to balance this vision, (pdf, 364kb) which is not an IT issue – but a broader business topic that needs to be addressed across the organization.

Many organizations are looking to the supply chain organization (pdf, 880kb) to increase efficiencies during the current downturn. Find out where these efficiencies may be found and how leading companies approach their global supply chains.

We sponsor two important reference tools from Transparency International that can help you understand the risk of bribery and corruption in international markets—an essential aspect of risk mitigation.
The Corruption Perception Index (pdf, 383kb) ranks countries by the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians.
The Bribe Payers Index (pdf, 536kb) ranks the world’s leading exporting countries according to the propensity of firms with headquarters within their borders to bribe when operating abroad.

In today’s turbulent environment, many organizations are looking for ways to drive costs out of the IT function, but others are looking for ways that technology can help rationalize costs across the enterprise. Virtualization and cloud computing (pdf, 443 kb) are two important IT cost-reduction opportunities that organizations should consider.