A finance leader shares how they moved from treasury into the CFO role, what skills transferred over, and what blindsided them along the way. The talk covers the gaps between managing cash and managing a whole company.
Foreign.
What I would say from my transition from treasury to CFO is be prepared to, if you do that step, you're going to have to be involved in many, many things which aren't really directly in your job description. It's a general management director role that involves a lot of things that just happen to come along and you are pulled into many things. So. So keep an open mind, be very flexible. Well, let's start with the strong points, the ones, the certain applicable skills and mindsets that are very good that you can carry over from Treasury. I think one is of course funding and risk management. You still need it as a cfo. Ultimately, even though you might not be directly operating those things yourself, you're still at least morally responsible for your team too, to carry those tasks properly. What's been very good is that because I dealt with funding and risk management and now the whole funding scene changed from basically borrowing money based on cash flows and no collateral. Now as an investment company changes completely different. It is now based on collaterals. There is no stable cash flow EBITDA anymore, as you would have as an, in an industrial company. That's good. You understand currencies, you understand interest rates, you understand economics, at least on, on moderate level, if you're not an economist. But all those things become important in my role. So those are the things which I have been able to apply directly. What I had not done in the treasury role is overall external reporting. That was a learning curve. Of course, your group consolidated financials, the whole audit process. Of course in treasury you were part of the audit process and part of the financials, but it wasn't the whole set all the way from the beginning to the end.
Right.
So that's one thing where it would have been great to have more exposure to those things. But sometimes in treasury that's impossible. It depends on the company. The other one is taxation. Taxation is something you understand in treasury in relation to treasury instruments and how realized and unrealized things come through in your P and L and what you need to do with them. But when you are a cfo, you have to take responsibility for all of the taxation. That's the income taxation, capital gains losses, value added tax, VATs and interest deductions, all sorts of other things and the whole of the transfer pricing, which you still need in many, at least in a group where you've got many subsidiaries. So that was the thing where I probably lacked most knowledge.
Sometimes be a bit adventurous. Somebody offers you things, maybe you have to relocate. That's not, I mean it's always a bit of a hassle, but it tends to be easier when you're young. And so you should try and do that, you know, before the whole family thing dips into the picture. And another thing is, if you are moving jobs, then the next one should be something which is new. Don't both move from one job to another where, you know, you do the same thing. Always try and find another focus and build around it experience in treasury, because then if you're able to work in all of those different areas of treasury, then that after a while gives you a much more rounded experience which you can apply. Instead of becoming a deep specialist in some area, you're able to approach things in a more holistic way. Yeah, and I suppose that's what I tried consciously doing because it went pretty well. But I did enjoy the ride around the world and I would thoroughly recommend it to anybody. If there is a chance, then take up those various opportunities, even though it might look a bit scary or it might not be the thing that you're. You've done before, but then the whole point is to learn new things. And yeah, it's hard work, but, you know, it's very satisfying when you then get the opportunity to do something you haven't done before.
