Treasury and Working Capital Risk Management in Debt-Financed Saudi Enterprises
Abstract
Saudi enterprises with significant debt obligations encounter a complex treasury challenge: liquidity must sustain daily operations while guaranteeing debt-service capacity amid oscillating interest rates, payment delays, supply disruptions, and evolving refinancing conditions. This integrative review explores the combined governance of treasury and working capital risk management in debt-financed Saudi enterprises, moving beyond the traditional separation of these finance functions. Recent research on working capital, corporate liquidity, debt maturity, hedging, supply-chain finance, and Saudi corporate finance is synthesized using a risk-transmission framework. The findings indicate that cash conversion policy is most effective when managed as a resilience portfolio rather than through simple cycle minimization. Inventory buffers, receivable terms, supplier payments, committed liquidity, debt tenor, interest-rate exposure, covenant headroom, and cash reserves interact in nonlinear ways; enhancing one metric may undermine another if treasury decisions are made in isolation from operations. Saudi-specific evidence further demonstrates that financing constraints and macro-financial conditions influence the reliance on internal cash for investment. Additionally, recent studies highlight the significance of debt maturity, Sharia-compliant capital structures, and precautionary cash holdings. This paper develops an integrated treasury-working-capital risk architecture for Saudi firms, identifies control indicators for boards and treasury committees, and outlines research priorities related to covenant risk, cash-flow-at-risk, supply-chain finance, sukuk-linked liquidity, and sector heterogeneity. The central conclusion is that debt-financed enterprises should prioritize liquidity reliability, rather than solely accounting liquidity, by aligning operating-cycle cash, committed funding, and debt-service obligations within a unified, stress-tested governance framework.