Etihad on track to break even this year

Etihad Airways, the national carrier of the UAE, is on track to break even this year, the airline's chief financial officer James Rigney said yesterday. Speaking at the conference of the Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) in Dubai, Rigney said the airline expects revenues of $3.9 billion (Dh14.3 billion) this year. He said the relatively young airline had achieved significant progress in treasury management ever since a full-fledged treasury was set up. "We saved around $300 million in costs through fuel hedging this year. For the year, nearly 80 per cent of our fuel requirement is hedged," said Rigney. Etihad group treasury is currently undertaking risk management function along with other initiatives such as fundraising, diversification of maturities and multi-currency funding, forex risk management, liquidity buffers, fixed-to-floating interest rate mixes and the matching of assets and liabilities. Addressing a group of corporate treasurers and chief financial officers, Rigney said the role of corporate treasuries has become far more important in the context of current market challenges. "It is the job of the treasury to keep their companies liquid and actively manage the potential risks in a market that is very uncertain," he said. Keynote speakers at the conference included Shaikha Lubna Al Qasimi, Minister of Foreign Trade; Dr Nasser Al Saidi, Chief Economist of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC); Matthew Hurn, executive director of Group Treasury at the Mubadala Development Company; and Sherie Morais, head of Global Transaction Services (Middle East) at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Financial strategy "Treasury in a company is vital in determining a firm's financial strategy and financial policy — advising on what businesses to invest in, organising the appropriate funding for this, and controlling the risk in the organisation," Hurn, who is also chairman of the ACT Middle East Committee, said. "These are all critical issues for UAE companies, particularly in the sort of financial and trading environment we are all having to deal with at the moment," he added. Being a trade corridor between Asia, Africa and the West, the Middle East has huge potential for trade growth, Morais said. "The regional firms have tremendous potential to leverage the growth opportunities in trade through innovative supply chain-based treasury management," she said. Dr Saidi said the current financial environment is extremely challenging for corporate treasurers. The ACT event yesterday honoured MB Petroleum Services for the Best Bond Deal of the Year. Octal Petrochemicals was recognised for securing the Loan of the Year while Nawras won the Corporate Finance Deal of the Year award for its initial public offering (IPO). Best Treasury Team award for small and medium enterprises was awarded to Al Fashim for implementing an online payments system.