With $1.7 trillion tied up in inefficient supply chains, CFOs are making liquidity a core strategy.
Trillions of dollars remain tied up in corporate balance sheets—trapped not in failed ventures, but in slow receivables and rigid payment schedules. With higher borrowing costs and persistent market uncertainty, leaving liquidity on the sidelines is no longer an option.
Gustavo Muller, CEO and co-founder of Monkey, explores how enterprises can free up trapped capital. He brings more than 20 years of executive financial experience, having held senior roles at Citibank, XP Investimentos, and Fisher Venture Builder.
Muller addressed the internal silos holding companies back and the importance of digital connectivity in supply chain finance in an exclusive interview with Global Finance.
Global Finance: You’ve said there’s trillions of dollars sitting idle inside America’s largest companies. Where exactly is that money, and why hasn’t it been put to work?
Gustavo Muller: There’s roughly $1.7 trillion sitting inside the balance sheets of America’s largest companies right now. It’s not locked up in failed investments or delayed acquisitions — that would almost be a simpler problem to solve. It’s trapped in slow receivables, excess inventory, and payment structures that were designed for a very different economic environment.
That money hasn’t disappeared. It’s tied up in processes that no longer reflect how companies actually manage risk, liquidity, or supply chains today. J.P. Morgan estimates hundreds of billions of dollars remain trapped in working capital across large corporations, and The Hackett Group places the full opportunity at approximately $1.7 trillion. Either way you cut it, this is capital sitting in receivables that take too long to convert into cash, inventory accumulated as a hedge against uncertainty, supplier payment structures that don’t balance liquidity across the value chain, and cash reserves that go underutilized simply because companies lack the visibility to deploy them effectively.
GF: If this capital has always been there, why is it becoming such an urgent issue now?
Muller: For years, these inefficiencies were manageable. Low interest rates, predictable supply chains, and abundant liquidity reduced the pressure to rethink working capital. Treasury managed liquidity, procurement negotiated payment terms, sales focused on collections, and financial institutions financed everything within established relationships. Nobody had much incentive to change a system that was working well enough.
That environment doesn’t exist anymore. Higher interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty, tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and persistent margin pressure have elevated working capital from a finance function to a genuine strategic priority. The problem is that many organizations are still managing liquidity with operating models built for that earlier, easier era.
GF: So is this really a financing problem, or something else?
Muller: It’s broader than financing. It’s a coordination problem. For many CFOs, the largest untapped source of liquidity isn’t another credit facility or a more favorable rate environment — it’s the cash already embedded in their own operations. The reason companies struggle to unlock it is that treasury, procurement, operations, and suppliers are all working toward different objectives, using disconnected systems and metrics.
Deloitte’s Q1 2026 CFO Signals survey found that siloed organizations and outdated technology remain among the largest internal barriers to cost management. And Boston Consulting Group has pointed out something important: simply extending payment terms often just shifts financing costs across the supply chain rather than actually improving overall efficiency. That’s the trap a lot of companies fall into — they treat working capital as a lever one function can pull in isolation, when really it requires treasury, procurement, operations, finance, and suppliers all operating from the same information and aligned around shared objectives. Without that alignment, you end up optimizing one function while quietly reducing efficiency everywhere else.
GF: Are investors and boards paying attention to this shift?
Muller: Very much so. After several years of tighter capital markets, boards are placing much more emphasis on cash-flow resilience, capital discipline, and operational efficiency alongside growth. Liquidity isn’t just a financial metric anymore — it’s become a competitive advantage. Companies that can move cash efficiently through their operations have real strategic flexibility that their peers don’t.
GF: How are companies actually responding to this? Is there a standard playbook?
Muller: Not a single one, and I don’t think there should be. Across the market, companies are responding in different ways. Many are investing in better forecasting and real-time cash visibility. Others are modernizing treasury infrastructure, digitizing receivables and payables, expanding supply chain finance programs, or adopting data-driven tools that improve coordination across functions. Financial institutions are evolving too, through broader funding networks, automation, and digital onboarding.
No single approach solves this for every organization — the right mix depends on a company’s structure, its supply chain complexity, and where its specific inefficiencies live. What is increasingly clear, though, is that fragmented processes and limited transparency are becoming more expensive to maintain. As supply chains grow more complex and financing conditions stay uncertain, organizations need real visibility into where their liquidity actually sits, how quickly it can move, and how their financing decisions ripple out to every participant across the value chain.
CEO of Monkey
GF: You mention digital infrastructure a lot. Is technology the real answer here?
Muller: Technology is an enabler, not the answer in itself. The International Finance Corporation and the World Bank have both consistently pointed to digital infrastructure as key to expanding access to supply chain finance — particularly for smaller suppliers who have historically been left outside traditional financing programs. But the objective was never technology for its own sake. It’s about building more efficient, scalable financial ecosystems where capital can actually reach the participants who need it.
The U.S. has one of the deepest capital markets in the world, yet many companies still face unnecessary constraints in moving liquidity through their own supply chains. That tells you the constraint isn’t access to capital — it’s connectivity.
GF: What does the next phase of working capital management look like?
Muller: I think the next phase depends less on access to capital, which remains abundant, despite the higher cost of funding and a more selective credit environment, and more on the ability to connect information, participants, and decision-making across increasingly complex commercial networks.
That’s really the core of it. Especially in the complex world we are living in, which demands greater flexibility in managing cash and the ability to make rapid decisions.
The organizations that succeed will be the ones that stop treating working capital as a quarterly reporting metric and start treating it as an enterprise-wide capability — one that strengthens resilience, improves capital allocation, and creates flexibility precisely when uncertainty is highest. That shift in mindset, more than any single tool or program, is what will separate the companies that thrive in this environment from the ones still managing liquidity the old way.
