2010 Financial Strategies Seminar

September 9, 2010 - Renaissance Chicago O’Hare Suites Hotel

Event Schedule

We all want to grow our companies.  However, pursuing growth without proper planning could damage your business.  Both organic growth and growth through acquisitions require a company to evaluate a number of financial, operational, and market variables that could determine the effectiveness of the overall plan.  This presentation will focus on the key elements of planning and forecasting, particularly for evaluating organic growth strategies and analyzing acquisitions.  Potential pitfalls and situations to avoid in the planning process will be discussed and attendees will learn how different growth-related scenarios can impact the value of a business.

Companies selling overseas need to remain mindful of their counterparty risk.  Each new sales opportunity comes with a wide range of complications such as assessing foreign buyers’ credit profile, currency fluctuations that affect a transaction's profit, country and credit risk on financing of foreign obligations and customer requests that an exporter self-finance these obligations.  This can be particularly challenging for exporters who may have an extended construction period or a requirement to secure a down payment with a Standby Letter of Credit. This session will examine the costs and benefits associated with open account, collections and letters of credit (imports and exports) and provide guidance on how and when it may be appropriate to use these payment options.  Also included are hedging tools and strategies to mitigate risk, discounting of accounts receivables, and financing options under government sponsored programs.

It’s no secret that in a tight economy, closing a sale becomes much more of a challenge. Whether you like it or not, a prospect’s tight budget or problems that their bank is having can affect you and kill a deal.  In this session, Bob Seeds will discuss a wide range of tools that should be considered to address these issues and bring buyer and seller together.  These include operating leases and third party financing to secure capital, the latest tax incentives and the option of refinancing prospects’ existing equipment loans in order to free up cash flow for a new acquisition.  With a loaded financial toolbox, attendees will be in a much better position to take advantage of a challenging economy and help their customers make the purchase.

Companies often face risks from both internal and external sources.  These risks range from delivering a subpar product resulting in the loss of a customer to a competitor developing new technology that makes your business obsolete.  The goal of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is to identify as many of these risks as possible before they occur and develop a plan to address and if necessary mitigate them.  This presentation will focus on how companies can get started with an ERM program, what key personnel are needed for this undertaking and why some risks are acceptable to ignore all together.  We will also discuss the major ERM areas impacting the food equipment manufacturing industry.

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