AmCham Financial Forum: Bitcoin for Business and the CFO’s Role in Resilience

Presenters

Leaders from AIG, American Express, Amgen, Badenoch + Clark, BI Norwegian Business School, Citi, Gard, Helly Hansen, Interimleder, KPMG, Kvamme Associates, Sparebank1, Raise Gruppen (IC Scandinavia), and Rud Pedersen gathered in person and virtually at AmCham Norway’s downtown offices for our quarterly Financial Forum.

Magnus Jones, Nordic Blockchain & Innovation Lead at EY Tax & Law, led with “money equals trust, and without trust there is no value.” The same holds true for cryptocurrency, as Jones illustrated with Dogecoin – both before and after Elon Musk tweeted about it. However, money also equals politics and there has been an intense push for sound regulatory frameworks to be set.

After providing a high-level overview of bitcoin and cryptocurrency and what needs to be understood as it relates to businesses, Jones urged financial leaders not to rush, but to prepare for where their organizations will inevitably be heading. “All companies will touch bitcoin going forward. All major central banks are evaluating crypto.”

Jones also shared expert insights on the demographics of bitcoin users, the convenience of use, traceability, criminal activity, energy use and how companies can best prepare themselves (including within the Metaverse). Jones illustrated examples of how EY has assisted several transatlantic companies within the crypto industry. 

Magnus Jones – Nordic Blockchain & Innovation Lead

Dennis Larsen – Managing Partner

Sustainability as a Business Model

Reputation Inc Managing Partner Dennis Larsen spoke on the CFO’s role within sustainability, from reporting to financial resilience. He clearly explained how the CFO should be firmly involved in the purpose of the organization, protecting brand value and reputation as a company’s most valuable business assets. “The one that holds the purse strings is the one who influences the priority.”

Reputation Inc assists organizations in successfully navigating reputational opportunities and challenges, while leveraging purposeful actions that make a material difference, winning trust, respect, and admiration from stakeholders. Although reputation dynamics are unique to each organization, two key drivers are sustainability and culture, according to Larsen.

In many cases, sustainability leads report to corporate communications departments, when they should be directly linked to CFO’s. For their part, “CFO’s should act as sustainability strategists, accelerators, stewards and analysts.”

Larsen shared multiple transformational examples, including from Unilever, Heineken, BlackRock and Novartis, with the latter embedding trust into their KPI’s to become the most trusted pharma company. As Larsen put it, “it is not a sustainability model, it is a business model.”

About the AmCham Financial Forum

The AmCham Financial Forum is a platform that gives financial leaders from AmCham’s member companies the opportunity to interact, share best practices, and learn from each other – building a better understanding of what it takes to run a successful international finance department in Norway. For interest in participating, please contact Madeleine.Brekke@amcham.no. 

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