No, I have never been a New Yorker, although Manhattan has always been

part of my world. I am a corporate treasurer. If you are too, probably you understand. Maybe you are also thinking about how your business life was

changed, in September, and over the last 10 years, and about what we have to look forward to. Maybe you are one of the people walking with me, in my

dream.

Was the time before September actually the illusion? Will our grandchildren

believe stories of a day when people took plane rides just to go to golf outings?

Two points on a graph don't tell us much. With a longer perspective, including

the last 10 years, I see trends that I'm sure will continue. Maybe it takes peace to find full expression, but I don't see treasurers going backwards

despite this blip in the path of progress.

This Isn't Mayberry

We don't work in Mayberry, with Floyd and Andy, and all of our daily contacts

just steps away. Today our banks, investment banks, rating agencies, suppliers, customers and investors are everywhere. Our networks of business contacts

have grown more complex and interwoven, and you might wonder whether the complexity and interdependence are dangers or strengths. It's a lot like the

Internet. Ten years ago that comparison would not have meant a lot. Today systems experts assure us that, while the Web structure may be complex, the

interconnections and the geographic dispersion make such a structure especially stable and safe. Lower Manhattan may have been an important

node, maybe too important. The implication of the disaster: We should extend the network, not draw back.

Corporate worlds no longer stop at the water's edge. Few of us would even

think of having a bank credit group of any size without both European and Asian banks represented. Ten years ago the need for such diversity was just

starting to be recognized. Ten years from now the average bank credit facility will probably be multi-currency as well. Companies of all sizes raise funds all

over the world. With development of the euro and European credit markets, more and more non-European firms will be tapping the other side of the

Atlantic in the '00s than ever before.

Our responsibilities have expanded with our geographic reach. In 1991 they

questioned whether asset securitization ought to be handled by the treasurer or by the asset originators. Think of what securitization involves today: capital

markets, bank credit facilities, interest rate hedging, rating agency communications, maybe credit derivatives and Monte Carlo analysis. Could

you imagine this not being a treasury responsibility? Now the statistical and other techniques used to manage interest rate risk and securitization portfolio

risk are recognized as being applicable to the firm's entire portfolio of assets

and business risks, and the treasurer is the obvious person to bring it all together.

Our view of the market and of economics sets us apart. Not too long ago

treasurers argued with credit people, to no avail, that the risk of a transaction

or a contract could be much different than its book value, and that to make

good business decisions one had to look at market values. For many in credit, that is still an idea that does not compute. Instead, it was the accountants who

caught on to the power (and danger) of the treasury department's new derivative instruments, prompting traditional cost-basis accounting to be

rethought in the FAS 133 standard. Can full-blown market value accounting be far off?

Perhaps, the next 10 years are easier to foresee than the next ten days. It is a

trying time to be a treasurer, but then it usually has been, especially in October.

It is an exciting time that we look forward to.