Automation and Innovation: The Future of Treasury Careers with Jörg Pässler

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and treasury profession. Go to next. In this week's show, I'm joined by Joerg Pasler, the group treasurer at SAPI Limited, the world's largest manufacturer of graphic paper and dissolving wood pulp. As a diversified, innovative and trusted leader focused on sustainability processes and products, they're building a more circular economy by making what they should, not just what they can. So together with their partners, they work on building a thriving world by acting boldly support the planet people and prosper prosperity. But I'm going to get you to explain that a little bit more later on about the company as well. But now we're going to go back to the beginning of your career, how you started in finance, then treasury. And over to you, sir. I'll let you talk.

Hello, Mike. Yeah, thank you very much. So you want me to start right at the beginning of my career path? Yeah.

I know that when we spoke before, you talked about how you'd had an interesting schooling and it was a little bit of a. The straightforward journey that maybe somebody else have.

No, that's true. I grew up in Germany and father at the age of 36 decided that with his family of three children that Germany wasn't the right place for him. And we emigrated to South Africa. And so we spent two weeks on a boat and landed in Cape Town. Couldn't speak the language, my dad didn't have a job. And so there we were, a real immigrant family. And so I finished my schooling in South Africa, first learning Afrikaans because it was an Afrikaans high school. Then I learned English. And so, yeah, I finished schooling in South Africa and then, not really sure what to do, I rebelled a little bit because I was in Germany in the 70s. You could go to school with T shirts and long hair, and in South Africa it was a case of short back and size and uniforms. So you can imagine how teenagers might rebel against that sort of thing. And I did. So after school, I wasn't really sure what to do, but there was a certain banker at a local bank who took a shine to me and offered me a position at a bank. And I spent the next 17 years in banking, which I have to say is a wonderful background and was really the first step into my treasury career. But one of the big benefits was starting right at the bottom. I was stamping envelopes at the little Branch in Cape Town to send bank statements to the staff. So as you then progress through the bank and all these various positions, you really get to understand the mechanics of the branch. So then when you get into managerial level, you really know how the bank work, how the bank works. And other sort of managers came straight from university straight into managerial positions and didn't have that background. So I always thought that was a bit of an advantage to really know how the mechanics of the bank look. And in the 80s the whole sort of derivative scene really started kicking off. South Africa was probably a few years behind Europe, but I just took a shine to derivatives and we were the first bank to, to structure commercial paper with derivatives. And I became, I don't want to say expert, it's more an inverted commas, but a specialist using derivatives. And the bank actually sent me on an overseas tour of duty to Europe for four months with a mission to interview many banks and many corporate clients in the use of derivatives. And so then I came back and applied that knowledge in banking and I ended up doing a master's degree with using derivatives to hedge debt portfolios. So everything went towards that in the banking side. And then after 17 years of doing that in the corporate banking environment as well, one of my clients said to me, Joerg, stop telling us what to do, why don't you come and do it for us? And that was one of those moments where I thought, hey, that's actually not a bad idea. An advisory role is one thing, but being on the other side of the table and actually implementing this knowledge, these structures and showing a real benefit in the use of derivatives in debt portfolios for me was a logical step. And so I left banking, joined a South African property development and construction company, applied the knowledge for three years and then I was offered a position at SAPPI three years later. So I've been there ever since. And that was 25 years ago.

So as you said, you started in construction and then when you joined sapi, and that's obviously the main bulk of your treasury career, the way through corporate treasury, what was sappy at the time sort of thing or who are sappy for the listeners. I gave the the headline speech about what sappy are now. But what was it then?

SAPI is one of South Africa's most well known companies, right? And when I joined in 1999 it was just on the back of a huge internationalized drive. You might remember that the sanctions era in South Africa where many companies, because of sanctions, couldn't expand outside of South Africa. But the moment that was removed, SAPI was one of the companies that targeted very specific businesses overseas to expand. SAPI locally in South Africa was a forest products company. Lots of forests made every kind of packaging and paper requirement locally in South Africa, but internationally focused on what's called coated wood free paper. Really the high quality coated paper that's used in fashion magazines, in advertising, coffee table books. And so within the space of seven years, sapi, with key strategic investments all over Europe and in North America, became the global leader in coated wood free paper. And so it's still today the biggest producer in Europe and North America of coated wood free paper. Huge business in dissolving pulp, which is a wood pulp that is used in textiles. And very interestingly, over the last 10 years, growing a lot in what's called speciality paper. Now speciality paper is a growth business, unlike coated paper, you can imagine it's been instructional decline for quite a while. But speciality paper is the kind of paper that many of the conglomerates use to take out plastic packaging. So there's huge of course, incentives and objectives to take out plastic packaging. And so Snappy is really a business of dissolving pop coded paper and speciality paper.

And when you got there in terms of treasury, so you started with the group back in 2000, where you started in finance, but then you got your hands into Treasury. What was treasury like? Because I know that when you and I had our call before, we talked about how you were doing some of the processes that we call commonplace today, but you were doing them 20 years ago. We were really pushing them technology and everything else, because that's a big thing for yourself, centralizing cash management, doing all those things at time when those companies didn't do that. Can you give us a quick walkthrough of that?

Sure, I can. And so when I joined sepi, it was in Johannesburg. And as that was as local tax and treasury manager, my focus at that stage was really only on the South African business. Two years later, I moved to the group Treasury. We established our group treasury in Belgium because you can imagine with all those international expansions that we had, we were raising debt in the international bank and capital markets. And it was very difficult to run a Treasury out of Johannesburg. So we moved it to Belgium. And one of the first things I looked at was with all these acquisitions over the last 10 years, every country had its own local cash pool, local bank relationships. So I could see a huge amount of benefit in centralizing all that. So the first two or three years of my Move to group. Treasury was really around shutting down all the in country individual cash management structures and replacing with one single global structure. Now in prison, you say that sounds like a good idea, is a good idea. But in practice you have two challenges. One external because you now have to go to all these banks because every country was a different bank. And so these banks have had relationship with the companies that we acquired for decades. Now here comes new treasurer pass along and says, oh, we're closing all our accounts with you because we've got this great idea to centralize cash management. So you have to manage those banking relationships very carefully but internally also. And when I have to go to our local country and mill managers and I'm telling them we are now going to close these bank accounts and I, I heard things like the local bank manager, he always invites me to the annual golf day and I've got my personal accounts with that bank. So you've got all these internal issues that you need to overcome. Because I wasn't popular inside of Sappy and I wasn't popular outside of Sappy.

How did you sell it to them? Because they, I know I talk to some people about the journey of selling it to some of those guys and you're obviously selling the fact that they can't have that golf day anymore. But then you get to that eventually that tell sort of thing. Can you talk us through that?

I think the key message is to show the benefits, right? And I as an employee of Sappy Ltd. I have a group hat. I only wear a group hat. I don't wear the hat of the local mill managers in Germany or in Belgium or in Italy for example. So I have to basically demonstrate to them what why are we doing it and what a huge benefit is for the group. And they must please just look at it from a global perspective. And typically that works. These are people that will understand that. So I'm saying it a little bit tongue in cheek that about the golf days, very quickly people could see the benefit and also at the top level because our CEO at the time I had a meeting with him and with our CFO and I said listen, I've got this idea but I need 1.8 million euros of capex. Now capex is, is a rare commodity. Sapphire is a manufacturing concern. It' a cyclical business, it's got high gearing. So capex dollars are not easily allocated. So when a support function like treasury comes and says I want $1.8 million.

Get out the door.

But I said to the CEO, I said I promise you I will pay you back that money within two years. And I explained to him how that would work with in country cash pools. In those days this was pre SEO, right? Cross country transfers. If I wanted to get all the money into the center, I had to arrange daily bank transfers. If our operations needed funding, I had to arrange daily transfers. So all these value days were just lost value. And the good news was I could go back to our CEO after nine months and said I've earned back the 1.8 million. So thank you for the trust and the faith that you shown in your treasurer.

And how did you get it done in the nine months and age before now you've got a lot more automation and things like that. How did you get that? How did you achieve that?

It's purely centralization, Mike. Firstly, closing all those in country cash pools. There was a lot of inefficiencies in the way cash was managed and you now instantly had all the cash at a single bank, in a single bank account every single day. You could take investment decisions quickly, you could take funding decisions quickly. And the other thing is of course is when you go to the CEO or to the board, I've always preferred the approach of under promising and over delivering rather than the other way around. I wasn't going to say I'll pay you back in two years if there was any risk to that.

If you.

I personally looked at it and I felt that we could do it within a year. You don't want to promise a year and then it takes one and a half years? Yeah, I rather say two years and then deliver after a year. And then that's how it really worked out. But it's truly just about efficiencies in managing the cash, having the cash, access to the cash every single day at 8 o' clock in the morning rather than phoning around to every country trying to find out where, what cash you have in the group around the world.

And then I wanted to come on to the team building and leadership because you've got. Well at that time you were based in South Africa. Talk us through then the move or location wise and things like that, sort of. Because I know a lot of stuff in South Africa, but also you were actually based in Belgium and things like that or walk us through.

So the Belgian tragedy already existed before I got there. Yeah, but it didn't have all the right people when I come with my ideas at that stage. SAPI had never done a global revolving credit facility, had never done a public bond, it never had Centralized cash management. It had never done a lot of macro FX hedging, for example. So I brought all those ideas into the group treasury in 2000. Now you know what it's like when you come with these big ideas. And I'd only been with a company two years. You first have to build up trust. And we talk about advice to treasurers. One of the big things I always say is build your trust with your senior people in your company that you know what you are doing. Fortunately, some of the things are immediately in South Africa paid great dividends. So by the time I got to Group Treasury, I had a little bit of credibility. So to answer your question, the team that was there, some good people, but just not with the right experience. Specifically as we then branching out on global debt, global public bonds, bank syndications, establishing a global insurance captive, implementing hedging programs, centralizing cash management. So it took me about two or three years just to make sure we had all the right people. And then we did all of that very much in the first two to three years of me being there.

And so when did you actually make the move yourself? When did you move across?

2001. Yeah, I moved basically two years after I joined SEPI. I was in Belgium.

Yeah, you were straight across. And you've got these team of nine in Brussels, five in South Africa now. And talk us through your. I know this was something you and I had talked in our pre call about your ethos and the way that you manage team growth and things like that. Because I really like the, the fact when you and I talked about attitude and character over perfect cv resume looks amazing, great and everything. But then actually it's more about the people and that was a big thing for you. Can we again, we've got listeners here going, oh, okay. But I always look at the resume first and then everything else comes next. What about you?

Yeah, building the team. Remember in 2001 there were 17 people at Group Treasury. So when you say nine now we've gone from 17 to nine.

Yeah.

Which shows you how inefficient treasury was in those days and how all these efficiencies that we brought in has managed just to reduce headcount as well. So automation has played a key role in reducing headcount. But you're right, I think choosing the right people and maybe my experience as a banker helped a little bit because as a banker and the treasury team, I control the people who I employ right in the bank. I worked at certain divisions and I would be told by hr, we're sending this new person to you. Be careful, he's got a master's in this and he's got a this and that and good grief, they came and they were useless sometimes. So the fact that they were highly qualified academically didn't really mean that they were very good at a practical daily job. So I've always taken the CV with a little bit of pinch of salt. And growing up in South Africa, one of the big key moments in South Africa was when McDonald's came into the country after sanctions. And I remember McDonald's advertising for jobs now. They were establishing branches everywhere and they wanted people. And one of the key lines that caught my eye was we don't need you to have any experience, we'll train you the way we want to train you. And that stuck with me. And I've always in treasury it's the same. Even if somebody says, yeah, they've got this experience, that experience, I still have to train them to the specific way in which we do things, the systems that we've established, the way that our in house bank works, the way that our payment factory works, the way that our cash management works, the way that we raise debt, our securitization program. That's all very specific training. And honestly, I prefer to take people who have got the right attitude, the right character. I've employed people who, I was advised by hr, don't employ this person, look at their CV and I'm going, hey, listen, I can work with them. And they've turned out to be some of the best people in my team now with over 20 years service. It's a little bit of gut feel, I presume, but I like to look for the right attitude because I can work with people who've got the right attitude and a hard work ethic.

What is the right attitude?

Training work ethic.

I know I'm laboring the point and but I think it bears repeating because I think far too there's too much talk, particularly recently about people wanting data analytics in their things. They want some more technical skills, which is great. Yes. But I think it also can come at a cost of, you know, you might lose that nuance or an experienced treasure going, actually this person feels right whether they got the right CV or not. So how do you measure those? Because again you say, yeah, the right attitude. What is the right attitude to you?

Look, I've always preferred people who are very direct and who know what they think rather than people who I can't judge. I've got a few examples in my Career and I'm not going to mention names, but banking and where other departmental managers have said, oh, I just can't work with that person. And I would say, bring them to me, I'll take them over. And I can work with people who maybe who are quite direct and. But I like opinionated people because I can work with them. Because when you shape people like that, when you shape people who've got strong opinions and who are open and honest, you tend to build good relationships with other people. And that's what I do. I'm a big believer in relationships.

Yeah.

And that we can talk about bank relationships, we can talk about bond investors about. But also with your own stuff, you have to build strong relationship. The sort of work ethic is around. I'm a big believer in the treasury team and that's why I probably have a small team is broad experience. Mike, it's very important when somebody's been in a position for 20 years or in a team for 20 years, they all need different challenges. Right. And the thing about treasury is you've got a lot of disciplines. We've got debt, capital markets, we've got securitization, we've got cash management, we've got foreign exchange hedging, commodity hedging, interest hedging, cash management, we've got rating agencies, you've got revaluation models, you've got macro hedging, we've got credit rating, we've got insurance. So all of these disciplines within Treasury, I like to share across the team. So somebody who's been focused on one or two of these areas, I will say next year, I want you to start getting involved in this and then they start evolving for themselves that they get different experiences as we go. So growth potential sharing the experience is critical. It also keeps it fresh for everybody in. In a fairly small team. Right.

So we touched on that.

Sorry, I was going to finish. I don't mean this as a criticism, I really don't. But when we have bank meetings, you'll find that in banking, your experience is very much in silence. Right. You've got your debt capital markets team that will arrive, you've got your cash management team that will arrive. You've got your hedging folks, you have fx. When they come to sapi, they speak to me and some of my team. So we have to. We have the broad experience across everything. And I think that in itself as a Treasury career is quite exciting to have that broad experience.

And I think you. You touched on a point there which is very well Made that. And I get this a lot. I get. At the moment we're getting, it's the, we're recording this in the summer of 2024. I'm getting deluged with CVS from bankers. They're coming in saying I want to get into corporate treasury. Looks really interesting. I talk to corporate treasurers all day long. I went, brilliant. I said, but they might be in cash management and they've been very good. But as you say, they move so far up their silo that brilliant at cash management. But if I say, what about your foreign exchange? What about your systems? What about this? No, there's another team that does it. So it's not criticism of them. But I'm saying, look, you, in order to get back into corporate treasury, you need to come down and go across and take a pay cut. And they go, I don't want to take a pay cut. Hang on, you came to me. So it's sometimes that's a real, that's.

How the bank is built. It's in the, in these specific skill silos.

So we talked there and actually we're going to the skill side of things as well because we talked about more generalist people and things like that. I know that you love automation as much as the next person. You really do. You really, you've loved to automate it. You've integrated different modules, you've, you grip onto that as well and make them, you know, really squeeze that out. Can you talk us through that? Because I know that in my notes here we were talking about how you were doing this as part of your centralization 20 years ago when people weren't even, it wasn't even written about things. Can you just talk us through how you embrace that it's followed?

It was really as part of the same project. The project that we had was step number one, centralize your cash management, right? And then once you've got that in place, build an in house bank with it. Because when you centralize cash management, what does that mean? It means that every single bank account and we do a zero balancing, so every single bank account across the world, every single morning is zero. Nobody in the Sapie group anywhere has any money in their bank account. Why? Because if they're overdrawn, we fund it and if they've got surplus cash, we take it. So the moment you take cash from a local, you create the equal and opposite booking, of course, because they still have then a claim on group treasury for the money that we've taken from them and we have A claim on them for the money that we've given them. So this in house bank balance is automated. With every sweep we have an automated booking in the in house bank and of course also in terms of any other funding requirements that everything is done by the in house bank. So that's a huge sort of efficiency. Similarly with foreign exchange, we don't want our operations to worry about cash or foreign exchange. When any transaction that is taken up by a company in a currency other than their own functional currency, they immediately get cover from group Treasury. So boom, they get the COVID they book a straight. We have what we call a daily rate. Every evening at 9 o' clock we a set of rates into our system. And if a company in Hong Kong or in North America or in South America books a deal in a functional currency other than their own, they get the immediate conversion to the local rate at this daily sappy rate. Right now we at treasury are now on the other side of this. So we now are the recipient of all these hedge positions and we have the benefit of netting it and then hedging the balance again, very centralized, very automated, very quick. Every morning at 8 we know how much cash we've got and we know how much, how many forward positions we've booked across the world and then we can deal with it straight away in the morning. Same with payment factories, same with securitization. Our securitization program is completely automated. Now this, it's always nice to sit here and say it is automated, it is a process. And let me not underestimate, you need strong support from your IT folks because, and we've been fortunate, we've had one specific person who's been there as long as I have and he's walked with treasury and he likes Treasury. All of these IT requirements to automate you need a very strong support from the department. And honestly that's why we moved away from an external. Just to finish the thought, Mike, that's why we moved away from an external treasury system and moved to SAP, because until 2004 SAP didn't have a specific treasury module, but our company was already on SAP, so we were on a free standing separate treasury system. But the moment SAP launched their CFM model, we integrated that as well. So now it talks to our accounting system as well at the same time. So again another step towards automation.

And you and I, we'd had this great conversation before and then wanted to pick out springboard from there about you, the future of treasury, obviously technology you've embraced and you've done this all the way through. But how do you. And usually we. We're not quite there. We'll do the wrap up of the episode soon. But what are your predictions for treasury and how it evolves with technology and then how. If someone's a younger listener earlier in their treasury career, what's your advice for those guys? What are you thinking people need to be doing?

I think it's easier for me to answer the second part of that question in terms of advice, because prediction for the evolution. I must be honest, there's lots of rhetoric around where this might go, but as I look around, I think there's still so much that can be done that many companies aren't doing. And I keep being surprised when we as the SAPI treasury, we often get asked by other companies to tell them what we've done and then we think, oh, we did this so long ago, why aren't you doing this yet? And there are so many companies that haven't adopted a very centralized approach in order to improve automation, in order to improve the efficiency in the system. So I think there's still a lot to be done before you start thinking about mega steps forward. But the future of treasury in terms of young professionals, I think one of the most important things is just to be a critical thinker. You've got to think critically in business. And treasury is a multidisciplinary profession. You can't do treasury without knowing some tax, you can't do treasury without knowing accounting, you can't do treasury without knowing finance. So you have to go deep on your experience. It's very important if you're strong on finance but thin on accounting attacks, spend time on accounting attacks, do a tax diploma, speak to the tax partner at your auditing firm, go deep, invest time in your career by going deep in these various disciplines and very importantly, understand your company. One of the best advice I can give is the thing about treasury is you can almost live on an island because what do you do? You manage cash at the end of the day, right? And whether you work for Shell or Harley Davidson or Sappy or a pharmaceutical company, at the end of the day, however, the cash is generated. That's one thing. What we do with a Treasury, that's what we do. We manage that cash. However, the more you understand your business, the more you understand how it ticks on the operational side, the more I as a treasurer can influence myself in the company. And I would say any treasurer out there should really try and increase his or her profile in the company because the More you increase your profile, the more that you can understand the business and the more you can actually start adding value. In terms of all these different things, there are so many different areas and operations that you can influence that you can be a sort of an advisor or a consultant, an internal consultant around these efficiencies. So very important to, to understand your business very well. The other part of that is, is your banking relationships. Because the more I understand about Sappy, the more our banks also have confidence in the treasury team to, to deal in, in that relationship. Because I don't have to keep saying every five minutes, oh wait, let me find sense, I'll find out then, I know the business, I understand the business and I can talk to them about every part of the business.

You've given a lot of what normally we give the closing advice. If you like the takeaways for the audience, can you maybe you've given some there already. So getting to know your business and really getting to the bottom of it and everything else, we'll put your LinkedIn details and show notes. But as you go to conferences or as you go to these meetings and things and people say, what advice would you give me? Or what are the takeaways you're going to give for the audience that are listening today that They've got your AirPods on or they're watching this, what are the takeaways you'd give the people? Treasury professionals?

Obviously you're right, I think I might have already started on that. But the sort of, the point of increasing your profile in the company and the organization is one of the key ones because the more that you understand the business, the more you understand how you can assist the way that the business funds itself, for example, the way that working capital is managed, where are the pockets of foreign exchange and commodity risk and interest rate risk in the company? That doesn't come to you. You have to go out there and understand it. I spend a lot of time with bond investors, but before every time I go to a debt capital markets day, I speak to our regional team to find out what are the current market conditions like, tell me what's happening with paper prices, what's happening with power prices, what's happening with our business model. So the more that you, you delve into your own business, the more you will find the opportunities to be an effective treasurer. And I would say another point is just don't settle for second best. Aim for the best version of the treasury operation that you can possibly be aiming for. And I know that means pushing through internal obstacles, sometimes like Capex requirements, like internal resistance to change. Who's this guy from head office coming to speak to me now? So you've got these. But don't be put off by that. If you want to build the best possible treasury operations, you've got to go deep into the organization, overcome all these hurdles and then you'll build a really great treasury operation.

Love it. Great closing words there. And I think there's underestimated. I think it's got better in the past few years when I got in the Treasury, 20 plus years, treasury had become this ivory tower, this island. And as you saying, oh, look at us, we're special. But the further they did that, the more separated from the business and then everyone's fought their way back into the business. But again by keeping that focus as you have then. Yeah, brilliant.

So that's very true.

Any. Okay, any one closing phrase from you that we can put as the. The title. You got some great words.

We treasury is a live environment. We often have this discussion with our accountants because they deal with historical. They've got time to rethink things. They can assess it again. Treasury is live. Everything that I need to do today happens today. And I think that's the excitement of Treasury. No two days will ever be the same in your treasury career.

Boom. That's it. Underlined in bold. Lovely quote to go with the episode. You Lovely. Amazing to chat to you, sir. Thank you for your time today and look forward to catching up with you for a beer very soon. Sir.

Absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you very much.