After an intense three days in Copenhagen, the weekend offered an opportunity for reflection on the vast range of opinions and informed insights from our expert speakers and panellists.

And I have a strong sense of optimism - which after the analysis during the Day 3 debate may be unexpected.
So why the optimistic mood? In my opening remarks on Day 1, I introduced the 90:10 principle - we have no control over 10% of our environment but it is our response to the 90% that we can influence that dictates our effectiveness. The message from Day 3 was pretty clear - the 10% is going to be tough with the global economy continuing to come under severe pressure and structural issues such as government debt and trade imbalances remain unresolved.

The 90% relies more than ever on effective relationships between corporate treasurers and their financial service providers. Over the first two days, we debated issues of substance and the corporate treasurers left the banks in no doubt of their reaction to issues such as widening spreads. I sensed the banks were surprised at the strength of feeling, but bringing these issues into open debate allowed us to understand that the era of no risk premium benefited no one in the long-term, and sensible risk pricing will be a lasting feature of the market.

The banks were also challenged to understand the business of their customers, to clearly articulate the bank strategy and to avoid 'pushing product'. The response from the banks was unequivocal - we want to, and expect to, approach our client base with this level of dialogue so please help us work with you effectively.

High performance teams evolve through the stage of form, norm, storm, perform. Copenhagen 2009 has built the foundations of high performance relationships between banks and treasurers. An area of general agreement was that the future has fewer structural unknowns for the banking community. In Geneva 2010 I expect to hear many stories of treasury successes in the 90% that is under our control despite a market where the 10% represents one of the toughest business environments for many years. Strong, but cautious optimism!

Peter Green is a Senior EuroFinance Tutor; and Director, transactionbanking.com, UK