[Gaffer]

The most important job of a CFO is to withhold payments to subs for the maximum time possible...preferably for at least a couple of bank cycles. I’ve worked for a couple of companies that did this on a regular basis.

[T-Bird45]

A couple of bank cycles is de rigueur in my observation and experience. Also, don't kid yourself, the subs are pricing this into their quotes.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The Canuks should be glad Wal Mart isn't building the new WTC.
They routinely take 180 days to pay vendors.

[dglang]

When I worked for international harvester (IH) during the major union strike time which destroyed the company I was put in charge of implementing a new cash distribution system (CDS) which was designed to manage IH’s payments to it's suppliers.

Part of the CDS system was to determine whether to accept the suppliers discount in return for prompt payment based on the cost of borrowing money. Another part of the system overnighted the payment checks to a location with the post office with the longest mailing time before the supplier would receive them. The individual checks were drawn against the banks which had the longest clearing time. This was done to receive the longest ‘float’ on the money deposited in the banks.

The system relied upon a system by Phoenix-Hecht (PH)which studied both mailing time and clearing time for banks and post offices. By mailing out the checks on the date due, IH could legally claim that they were in full legal compliance with their contracts even though it may take a week or more for the supplier to actually receive the cash.

The PH system was intended to identify the post offices with the quickest mailing times and the banks with the quickest clearing times but IH used the system for the extreme opposite reasons.