“At the end of 2001, I had a phone call from the group treasurer of France Telecom,” Basmadjian recalls. “He said that since I was one of the people who helped build the company's treasury, and since I was also very well acquainted with treasury management in the other roles I'd held, he wanted me to build a state-of-the-art treasury combining everything I had learned from my previous roles.”

Basmadjian took this objective to heart and since then has focused on transforming the company's cash management and treasury structure. His vision at the outset was to create a treasury management structure centered around three processes: cash pooling, netting and a payments factory.

“As of today, I've got 77 subsidiaries in my treasury center and 35 subsidiaries using my system, which makes 112 subsidiaries that are on our treasury management application. I have 197 entities on the netting system and 210 entities in the cash pool,” he explains. “The only thing I haven't implemented yet is the payment factory.”

Basmadjian says that the economic turbulence of recent years has only given more credibility to the project. “It was a pragmatic, step-by-step approach and we're in control of everything we have done so far,” he says. “The way in which things have been implemented has evolved slightly over the years. For example, I adapted my design to fit the initiatives developed by SWIFT. But the goals have remained consistent throughout. I'm about 30 subsidiaries away from having everything in my treasury management structure—and completing the target design that I drew up 10 years ago.”