Christian Zeidler talks about building a treasury career in Asia, managing operations through the pandemic, and how COVID-19 changed finance work and infrastructure. He covers team growth and the practical shifts that reshaped how treasury functions operate in the region.
Foreign and pursue a Treasury career. When I started, and even in those days, in the early 2000s, I never had in mind that I would be end up being in Treasury. I wanted to apply my skills in finance. Finance is exciting. After working in strategy and mergers and acquisition, I had the feeling it would make sense to join an operative business unit. As a commercial guy. The pace of development is something completely different in Asia Compared to other regions of the world, especially Europe. Shanghai was bustling in terms of growth. We set up a lot of legal entities, they needed financing, they needed cash management systems, et cetera. So I grew the team. Initially we were 2, in the end we were like 10 plus. We had in the end of the day like 150 subsidiaries in the region. Roughly 20, 25 billion sales revenue. I mean that all needs to be supportive. Yeah. And finance is a clear support role and treasury is a support role. So you need to make sure that you spur the growth. It make growth as easy as possible with less risk, with concepts, methodologies in terms of currency management, payment execution make it easier. Pre Covid, everyone was used to come to the office at 8 o' clock, 8:30 people were there and until evening. And nobody questioned that status quo. Yeah. And then all of a sudden we were asked to stay at home and take our equipment home. I mean, nobody dared to take equipment from our campus. Yeah, we need to think about, you know, how to approve this. The facility guys were like checking each and every monitor and laptop that was taken off campus and so on. And then we were also from a legal perspect, forced to stay at home and to go into short term working arrangements. And we need to think about who can work at home, who has the facilities, how does it work, is the communication system stable, how do you work with signature processes, et cetera. Yeah. And there was a period of great uncertainty and it was like discovering a new world in terms of the working environment. And especially when you work on in vital functions such as payment and fx, et cetera. Yeah. You tend to be reliant on your, on your desk infrastructure and that the desk infrastructure had to be booked. And nowadays nobody questions this anymore. I mean there are potentially some people, they would say, why do I need to go to the office at all?
