Takeaways: Treasury360 - May 22, 2025
- Alexander Ilkun, CGMA
- May 29
- 2 min read
What a great trip it was last week to participate in Treasury360 for the first time, both as a Treasury professional and as a representative of Baltrea.
Treasury360 in Stockholm brought together just under 900 delegates from across the Nordics as well as from the Baltic states. We had several members of the Baltrea Advisory Group present, including myself, Evaldas, Freek, and Edgaras. We also managed to gather some of the Association’s members for the first collective photo. We hope it will be the first of many as the Baltic Treasury community continues to grow.
The conference was full of insights, but here are just a few highlights.
We heard from Cecilia Malmström, who served as the European Commissioner for Trade during Trump’s first term. She shared what it was like to negotiate trade deals with the US administration. While the US has traditionally advocated for rule-based, transparency-driven trade, it is now withdrawing from international organizations it helped establish, cutting foreign aid, and implementing tariffs, all while framing these moves as breaking free from exploitation. Yesterday, US court blocked many of these tariffs, though the administration has quickly appealed those rulings.
Europe has a few options in response to the tariffs:
Accept them
Reciprocate
Broaden its trading partnerships
We hope the EU will use today’s turbulence as an opportunity to grow stronger, both as a unified bloc and as an independent global player, while expanding partnerships with other like-minded regions.
A fireside chat with Susanne Stenborg was another highlight. Susanne joined Polestar, an automotive manufacturer, to establish its Treasury function before the company even launched operations. This was a forward-thinking move to build a scalable Treasury infrastructure from day one, with a focus on lean and highly automated processes.
Setting up a function from scratch came with challenges, especially the lack of data, from bank account reconciliations to cash flow forecasting. Susanne took an agile approach, experimenting with smaller solutions, scaling what worked and quickly abandoning what didn’t.
She also advocated for developing in-house Treasury expertise for process improvement, visualization, and automation, rather than relying solely on IT. This resonates with my own experience. In many, if not all, companies, IT departments are stretched thin, with every team competing for attention and space in the technology pipeline. As a result, only large projects tend to move forward, while specialized Treasury needs often don’t receive the focus they require to drive real business value.
With in-house knowledge, Treasury teams can implement many solutions themselves while still partnering with IT on broader initiatives like data strategy. This not only lightens the load on IT but also ensures Treasury can pursue the opportunities that matter most to its success.
The next Treasury360 conference is already scheduled for April 23, 2026, in Gothenburg. You can use this link to sign up.
As for Baltrea, we are excited to host our very first Baltic Treasury Conference in Vilnius on September 12. We're currently working on the agenda, which will be published on our website in due course. Our aim is to take the next step in building the Baltic Treasury community, fostering collaboration with colleagues across Europe, sharing knowledge and experience, and raising the profile of the profession in our region.