Treasury Strategy & Transformation
Published  7 MIN READ

Houston, We Have a Solution: Cheniere Flips the Treasury Script

Over the last 18 months, Cheniere’s treasury landscape has changed beyond recognition. As Brook Ballard, Treasury Manager, Cheniere Energy, Inc., David Andrada, Global Sector Head and Steven Smith, Regional Sector Head for Natural Resources & Utilities (NRU), HSBC Global Liquidity and Cash Management, explain, from decentralised beginnings, Cheniere now runs centralised, global treasury operations from its headquarters in Houston. As well as providing greater cash visibility and control, this centralisation journey has delivered significant efficiency and sustainability benefits, turning Cheniere’s treasury into a value creator – and award-winner.

“How can we be better today than we were yesterday, in order to service the tomorrow?” This was the strategic question that kick-started Cheniere’s treasury centralisation project 18 months ago. At that point in time, the ‘today’ consisted of a disparate treasury landscape.

Ballard explains: “In addition to the treasury team in Houston, we had a centre in Singapore that undertook local treasury processes, and our office in London, UK, where our trading arm is based, also had a treasury performing operational activities. We therefore had cash management and banking set-ups in those locations, as well as in our Luxembourg and China sites.”

Without a common technology platform or banking partner to connect them, the local treasury teams were managing cash in-country using disparate treasury processes and procedures, “This highly manual, time-consuming process was hampering cash visibility and slowing down treasury’s responsiveness to liquidity and investment opportunities, both locally and globally,” Ballard notes.