Yes big companies have big financial and treasury functions. Maybe that’s surprising to some folks, but not to anyone who’s actually worked in any kind of industry. Trying to fund your activities is one of the most important parts of any business and companies who get really good at that even sometimes find ingenious ways to make it generative of PNL in and of inself. That doesn’t make them banks or financial institutions.

My favourite example was one a friend told me that he had learned at business school doing an MBA. They did a study on Bailey’s Irish Cream (the liqueur). It came about apparently because there were big government subsidies to support dairy farmers and support Irish whiskey producers. So the farmers and distilleries where producing far more than they could sell in order to collect the subsidies. The genius inventor of Bailey’s came up with the business idea of getting the producers of cream and whiskey to pay him to take their excess inventory which he then turned into the liqueur which he sold for a profit. So he had a manufacturing business where he was getting paid by every part of his own supply chain.