Conor Maher's Journey from Banking Treasury to Corporate Treasury and Back Again

Foreign. So, welcome to another episode of the Treasury Career Corner. This week I'm delighted to be joined by a good friend of mine, Connor Ma, who, as well as being the head of cash and liquidity Product management for rbs, was one of the first treasury professionals I ever placed in my career at Hewlett Packard way back in the 90s. As always, I'll be talking to Connor about his career, where he is now and where he sees both himself and the treasury profession going in, going in the future. Connor started his career in Group treasury within banking, then he made the move to treasury with Hewlett Packard and then he moved back into banking once again. Number of years at hp, then joined rbs. Connor's obviously a very proud Irishman and fellow of the association of Corporate Treasurers. Connor, that's enough for me. Let's get over to you. You originally started you qualified in Dublin, then started your career way back when, originally with Barclays.

Yes, indeed. So, hello, everybody. So when I qualified from university, I think like a lot of graduates, I really didn't have a scooby about what I wanted to do. So I went down the route really of looking to get onto a graduate training program with a blue chip company. And that saw me joined the graduate training program at Barclays, which was a great induction into my career. Good structured training, had a variety of different roles to experience and I did that for a number of years. But one of the things that sort of followed through was sort of a niggling interest in Treasury. So I had to do my banking exams because that was sort of the expectation in those days when you're on a graduate training program. And when I finished my banking exam, I decided to keep going and decided to commence the course of study with the act. So I did the AMCT exams and decided to keep going and then I completed my mct. And at that point then I decided actually it was time for a change. I was sort of interested in thinking, right, I'd like to try and put some of that theory into practice in the Corporate treasury environment. And that was the point at which I then made the jump from Barclays into hp.

You were in banking, obviously. I remember talking to you at the time about you made a number of different moves internally within Group treasury at Barclays. And then you were saying, well, can I make the move to corporate Treasury? And it was great that we found the late Sarah Jones who was very willing to think around things. But why did Corporate treasury appeal to you at the time, would you say?

I suppose I Moved into treasury. There were a couple of things, I should probably add that my interest in doing the treasury exam arms was also fueled by an interest in sort of having a good, recognized and respected professional qualification behind me. And I suppose the move then into HP was really around actually. How do I get some exposure in a corporate treasury environment as opposed to a bank treasury environment? And again at the time it was a very big leap of faith. I remember former colleagues at Barclays being absolutely astounded that I would make the decision to actually voluntarily leave the bank and go join the wilderness of a US multinational. But at the time the dot com bubble was getting into full swing. So it was clearly a very dynamic industry to be moving into. And for a company like hp, with its heritage and global reach and brand, it was a very attractive employment opportunity for me to be able to go into a company of that size and complexity and to work in what was a very forward thinking treasury team.

And you joined in the role of treasury consultant before, which initially we've talked about before. You were sort of doing a spin off and things, but then your role evolved and changed. You were sort of head of Treasury Services, perhaps. Talk to the listeners just if you would, about how HP was set up in treasury terms because it's a global, massive global company, but based in sunny Bracknell with a lovely ski slope indeed.

The Silicon Valley of the. As I used to refer to it. Yeah. So HP had a global treasury operation, three centers, California, Palo Alto, California, Bracknell UK and Singapore, covering the respective time zones. The UK was really the main treasury center because from there we handled all treasury activity across Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. We took over the end of day positions from Asia Pacific. And the US was ring fenced for tax purposes like a lot of the US parent companies are. And the role I started in, I started as a Treasury consultant and actually was just the perfect role for a newbie like me to get stuck into. This role really involved me working with all of the operating and manufacturing entities across the region. And through that it gave me good appreciation of how the company operated, understanding their tax model, their sales model, having the opportunity to work with the executive committees in each of the countries as well as working with important functional stakeholders such as finance, tax, legal and so on. And I suppose the activity really involved getting to understand the business, what was happening more broadly and then making decisions on the back of that around things like revenue hedging, balance sheet hedging, understanding activities taking place that might impact interest rate exposure and so on and these are fairly critical activities for hp, which less so for inkjet printing, but when you look at sort of laptops and the like, the business is based on fairly fine margins. So actually getting the right hedging strategy in place was really important. So it was a great opportunity for me. And at the same time, concurrently I was asked to get involved in setting up the treasury infrastructure for Agilent Technologies. This was the demerger transaction you referenced. So again a very unique opportunity to get involved in the demerger and also the opportunity to set up from scratch a Treasury infrastructure. And there aren't many jobs where you can go looking for that sort of opportunity.

Yeah, straight from day one and things.

Yeah, yes, exactly. So it was a really great, really great first step into Treasury. So thanks for that, Mike. And then from there Sarah asked me, then after about 18 months or so, about 15 months, Sarah then asked me to take over the running of the shared, the treasury shared Services center. And again that was an opportunity that I grabbed. And again a very interesting time because HP had begun a program of treasury centralization, moving activity out of the countries into the Bracknell centrum. So we ended up progressing the centralization program itself, which in itself was a unique experience, but then undertaking the daily management of all the cash management and foreign exchange activities and funding for those OPER manufacturing special purpose entities. And so working on the centralization, standardization and then sort of kicking off a big transformation agenda. And really the ambition there was to get things like cash management onto pretty much an automated process and then managing it by exception so that I and the team could free ourselves up really to focus more on the value add activities. So for example, we managed a cash portfolio of about 14 billion. So clearly important to spend more time on that than dealing with account reconciliations. And that's really where sort of big technology investment really played a key role for us. And during that role, then of course came along the HP compact merger, which again, very, very unique experience. And if you went looking for that opportunity, you wouldn't find it so easily.

And then so you did that role for sort of in total with HP about seven years. You know, what then led to a move on or what were you thinking next?

Well, at that point then I started to think about sort of opportunities and again Sarah and I had the opportunity to join a startup called SCF Capital, which was looking at supply chain financing opportunities within the IT industry. So in other industries such as pharmaceutical at the time, you know, supply chain finance and reverse factoring in particular was actually Quite well established. But in the IT industry it was still in its infancy and big cash rich companies like HP often were focused on things like day sales outstanding and really in response to fairly traditional accounting metrics and measures that the analysts and investors would often challenge the company on. But the missed opportunity there is that when you sort of take a company like HP and you look up and down the supply chain that contract manufacturers, distributors, they have fairly weak balance sheets, they operate to very thin margins and they have a higher cost of capital for their own financing needs. So this was really around actually how could you create a supply chain program that played on the credit arbitrage opportunity between a large entity like HP and its relatively balance sheet weaker supply chain counterparties and create a financing program that basically allowed them to fund themselves more cheaply, separate business performance from credit risk.

But then didn't it tie them in. But also they sort of gave the umbrella of the risk being de risked. Because you're dealing with hp, is that right?

Yes, in effect. Because really what we were doing is we were separating the, the business performance from the credit risk. So we're committing to, basically we're asking companies like HP to commit to pay forward and then being able to go off and facilitate the supply chain financing which the supply chain partners need it. And really the upshot of that is you're sharing the cost of capital arbitrage between you, but more importantly increasing the velocity of trade, which is good for all parties.

Yeah. And then the move you'd done corporate, you did banking, Treasury, Corporate treasury and then this role with scf. And then you decided to make a move back to banking.

Yes, indeed. So then in 2008, so I went into SCF Capital, I sort of said I'd go in for a year or so because I just wanted to experience life in a startup environment very different to what I'd been used to before at HP and Barclays. So the opportunity to go in and experience a startup was good. And then in 2008 the sort of dark clouds of the financial crisis started to gather. Banks became a lot more interested in the liability side of their balance sheet and Barclays came looking for me. And I guess their interest in me was that one, I was a treasurer by profession and so understood funding and liquidity. Given my previous work with Barclays, I had some understanding of banking as well. And of course coming from a corporate treas environment meant that I also understood their customers. And kind of bringing the three together created a unique proposition opportunity for me. So the role I did With Barclays at that time was head of international liquidity. But in essence what I did was I focused on the non UK market. So my remit was really Western Europe, Sub Saharan Africa and Middle east. And my role there really was working with the treasurers in each of the countries and looking at the composition of the balance sheet funding in those jurisdictions.

So you were helping those treasurers but you'd already been on that side. Was it a difficult move to think you'd made move banking treasury and then this was a move back again. Do you have concerns about it coming back out of corporate or not thinking actually continue the corporate career?

No, I mean, I think having done the HP bit at the time, I thought actually HP was going to be a hard act to follow as a corporate. So where else would I find another corporate with a similar level of challenge and complexity and industry dynamics? And I thought actually going back into banking would be really interesting because again, it would give me a bird's eye view across different industries and an opportunity to work with a very diverse group of, of large corporates in particular. And actually when Barclay spoke to me about the role, the role that they had in mind was slightly different. But I said actually if we could tweak the role a little bit, I could be interested in it. And what we did was the first part of it really was working with the treasurers in each of the countries and understanding the composition of the liability side of the balance sheet, but then working with the cash and trade product leads in those countries and understanding the customer proposition for both domestic corporates and international corporates to see. Actually how could we build out? Using my corporate experience and my treasury experience, what are the things that the bank needs to do to build out its core cash management capabilities to be a credible banking player both for domestic corporates and also large multinational corporates. And really the idea was there was that if you build out your proposition and you can attract in corporate banking business, in essence what you're doing is you're bringing in very sticky transactional flows, you're bringing in current account balances, you're bringing in surplus liquidity, all of which was then designed to provide quality funding for the balance sheet. So it's really a good opportunity to bring sort of corporate treasury and banking together in a very meaningful way. And if you kind of think back to that time when credit conditions and the markets were tightening up, we often forget based in the UK and Western Europe more generally, it's actually quite easy to move currency across geographies. If you're a bit low in Euros in France, you can move euros from Spain, but if you're in Ghana and you run out of Ghanaian feeds as a bank, then you have to stop lending until either you gather in more deposits or you can run off some of your lending books. So that's really kind of how the role was so important to keeping the show on the road and using that expertise to build a very sustainable business from a customer cash management proposition as well as supporting the balance sheet and.

Then the move into the sort of the commercial bank. So you went from Barclays and then RBS came again or how did that happen?

Well, at the time when I was at Barclays doing what I just outlined, then I was approached by RBS and RBS had a very similar interest in me for the same reason that Barclays did. And an RBS came to me and says, well, actually we have an opportunity, this is what we need to do. So this was now sort of late summer 2009, by which time the bank had gone into financial rescue and RBS approached me and said, actually we have an opportunity for you. We'd really like you to come in and help build a deposit gathering capability for the commercial bank and help to build out our funding plan. I jumped at the opportunity really because I like fixing things. It was a very big opportunity and it was a great opportunity to come in to what has essentially been the largest corporate turnaround in history, I guess, and to be part of that. And in terms of things that I enjoy doing, it was quite nice to come in and be given a blank sheet of paper and some budget and say, right, you know, this is over to you now. Can you help us do this? So I had quite good free reign really to build the product management team that I did at the time and help support the fix agenda, which was really around funding the balance sheet from the corporate deposit side.

And what's the exposure like in terms of you're then speaking to again a lot of the corporate treasurers and lot of the larger corporate. And utilizing your past experience, would you say?

Yes. So as part of my role, I engage with corporates on a regular basis, as you'd expect and I think from, I suppose from coming in from the bank, it does provide quite a unique perspective when engaging with corporate customers because actually here's somebody who's coming in from the bank who has firsthand experience of treasury, not only from a sort of a technical understanding of treasury, but actually has done the job and understands that it's not just what's in front of you, but actually it's understanding the role of treasury in the wider firm and how many. Well, I would say how almost all of the business decisions impact treasury in one or more ways, whether that's funding or impacting foreign exchange exposures or whatever. So hopefully I'm able to bring a different dimension to the conversation based on that experience.

And we talked a lot recently that a lot of the guys are coming to you internally saying we've got customers who want virtual accounts or they want blockchain or they want this. And you and I had sort of had a bit of a jokey conversation. But you generally ask those guys the sort of why question or you couch it in different terms because you were saying that lots of corporates perhaps struggling with this onslaught of you must do straight through processing, you must do blockchain, you must do that. Can you just relate that to some of our listeners just a bit about the way that you try and help people?

Yeah. So if we take virtual accounts as an example, so it's hard not to pick up a Treasury publication these days and there's some article in there talking about virtual accounts and you almost read about it so often that you feel you need to have a virtual accounting solution, even if you don't know what it is or what you want to do with it. And I think that's, for me, that's kind of the crux of the challenge is that, yes, virtual accounts are gaining in popularity. There's a lot of development by banks in virtual account platform technology. But really the question you need to ask yourself is what is the problem statement that you are trying to solve? So virtual accounts. Virtual account management has a whole number of different application. So some companies might choose a virtual account platform because they want to operate an in house bank and don't have a platform on which they could operate it themselves. So using a bank's virtual accounting solution would effectively provide that capability. And for others it's a reconciliation issue. So they need some form of reconciliation too, that perhaps the functionality of a virtual accounting platform can provide. For others, it might be that they want to give their customers a very unique account number because they repeatedly refuse to provide references when they're paying their various invoices. And by using a unique account number identifier, it helps with that reconciliation process. And for others, again. And for others, again, it might be, actually, I've got, you know, I've got 500 bank accounts and I want to rationalize it down to just a couple of physical accounts. But how can I do that in a way that still allows me to segregate my flows and balances? And again, that's where the virtual account platform can play a role. So in short, as I was saying, you kind of need to be clear about what's the problem statement or the opportunity that you're trying to address.

Just going back, sorry, just to something you mentioned earlier. You talked about doing the treasury exams and how that actually helped you when you walked in the door at the bank. Not only your corporate treasury experience, but also having that sort of backing of those qualifications. Are you still relying on those, still drawing from those, would you say?

Yes. I mean, the treasury qualifications I did to the ACT have been sort of been the one constant I've had throughout my career. So as I've moved in between different roles, that technical expertise you get through the exams are forever invaluable. They give you very good, very good grounding first of all. But they also provide you, I guess with a framework that you can use to test out different decisions that you're making or ideas that you are thinking about. And in all the different roles that I've done, I've always been able to draw on my treasury background, but also the treasury qualification, you know, to help me with that. And it's, you know, I have to say it's probably one of the best, it sounds a bit corny on it, on a Treasury recruitment, but actually it actually one of the best decisions I made in my early career was to.

To you the qualifications sound like they're, you know, very important to you. How do you key would you say to brand new people thinking, oh, should I do ACT or should I follow that? What are your thoughts?

So ACT is a great qualification and I'd encourage anybody to do it because even if you decided not to stay in treasury, the technical knowledge and the learning experience that you get from treasury is readily transferable into many, many other disciplines. So it really is a fail safe qualification in my view and I think also it depends on your perspective. So for me, all those years ago, making the leap from Barclays into hp, the advantage I had in holding the MCT qualification actually was it gave potential recruiters like Sarah a good benchmark. Okay, so here's somebody who's coming in from banking, he's never worked for corporations and he hasn't worked in sort of a corporate treasury environment. Is he any good? Is he like it's of any interest? Well, I think if you've got a qualification like AMCT or mct It's a very good benchmark that people can use. But it's important that qualifications aren't used in isolation. I would certainly never exclude somebody because they didn't have the qualification and I wouldn't hire somebody just because they had the qualification. It sort of comes back to the individual, their own, their personality, their behaviors, their experiences and sort of those broader life skills I mentioned a moment ago. So I'm just as interested in understanding did they pass the common sense test, what are the interpersonal skills and what are the things they do outside of work? Because I think it's really important to understand the whole of the person. So what hobbies do they have? Have they sporting interests? You and I are big rugby fans. Obviously anybody who's a footballer would be immediately excluded.

It doesn't mean that as long as you know, as long as you.

But you know, for me it's important that you, that considerations that sort of the qualifications are considered. But really when you're looking at the whole of the individual in combination.

Okay, and you've done treasury for many years. Why would you say, you know, treasury is it for you? What is it? You get up in the morning, you, you know, you slept in on the train. Oh yeah, this is a good day doing Treasury. I'm really enjoying. What is it that's always sort of stood out for you?

So Treasury, I think first of all, I mean, it's a very well recognized and respected profession. I think as commented on, it has stood me well over my career. I think the other thing, the unique thing for me about treasury is it really puts you at the heart of the company. So you are very close to the strategy of the company. You get involved in strategic discussions, you get involved in implementing the strategy. But you're also then very close to the day to day operation of the firm. You see the company operating around you, whether that's a relatively small company or a larger multinational. It gives you very unique oversight but also proximity to the activity that's happening right across the company. And you can see the direct linkages around what's happening in the business and how that impacts, for example, the balance sheet or P and L or some of the risks that are being created or indeed being mitigated, hopefully by the work that you do as a treasurer. And it also exposes you to a really unique and interesting group of stakeholders as well. I think particularly when you get involved in some of the more strategic stuff, whether that's a merger or a demerger or whatever's going on, you do get to work with some really interesting people and they could be tax advisors, I'd be surprised to say tax advisor and interesting. But when I think of like I think of the HP Compact merger, I mean, it was just fiendishly interesting working with really bright, capable people across the globe. You know, with tax, with tax experts, with lawyers and, you know, technology experts and the like, you get to, you get some really interesting exposure with some very, very interesting people and consequently you learn and sorry, the other thing I was just going to say as well, particularly in a larger multinational company, it's also the environment again. When I think of my roles at HP and latterly at Barclays, which were international in nature, you just get to work with so many different cultures and you learn, you learn a lot about local jurisdictions and tax law and, and the like, but also the people that you have the opportunity of working with and you get to experience some really, really interesting cultures and you make great friends too. And you know, cultural diversity is really important and really, really valuable and it just creates, it just creates a really interesting environment to be part of. Quite often I go home at nighttime from hp, for example, and think about actually who did I talk to on the telephone today? And you can sort of rattle through, actually I've spoken to somebody in Brazil and Argentina and talking to the tax guy in Austria and the controller in Switzerland and sometimes you end up pinching yourself.

Yeah, it's totally external and international. Interesting, all rolled into one sort of thing. I often get emails from various guys within banking who say, I want to make a move into corporate treasury. And I often say, look, you're very specialist. Maybe if they're more senior, they moved a lot further up the silo sometimes and things like that. But what would you say? You've made the move banking corporate, back to banking. So firsthand you know about this. So what would you say banking candidates maybe need to think about if they are thinking about making a move into the corporate treasury arena or they're just toying with the idea. What are your, you know, you've been there, done it, you've got the T shirt, it's an Irish colored T shirt, but we'll move on past that. But you know, what would you say?

Well, I think first of all you kind of need to think of it in more generic terms with any career. So certainly when I've thought about career moves and opportunities, I sort of apply a couple of tests. One is, do I think I'll enjoy it? So you spend half your life at work, so you might as well enjoy it. So do you think that's the right move for you and do you think you. Are you clear what it is that you want to get out of that role and what in that role is going to make you happy? I think the second thing is for me is will you learn from that role? And I think that's really important in any role that you go into. You need to. You need to learn. Continuous learning. It's for life. Learning doesn't stop once you've got your exams and got the first couple of jobs under your belt. I think in any role, you need to have an opportunity for continuous learning. So that'll be the second test for me. And the third test is, to the extent that you know what you want to do beyond that, is the role going to be helpful? And, you know, even though I think of my. When I think of people I've hired in the past and when I've hired in graduates, it's just a matter of fact that in their early career, graduates can often have a very kind of complete change of heart around what they want to do. You know, I had somebody who came into a treasure role and decided, actually thought he might like to go into teaching.

Oh, wow.

And therefore, you know what? And so the conversation was, well, that's fine. So what are the things that we can help you with in this treasury role? What are the sort of the broader life skills we can help you develop that would be helpful for you then going in for a teaching role? And, you know, we talked about things around your presentation skills. For example, you know, these are generic life skills you can learn in a row. So there are three things, I think, to get back to more specifically to your question. Well, I, you know, I applied those three tests, but I think it's a bit of a leap. I think it's a leap of faith. First of all, it's quite a big step. I remember jumping from Barclays into hp. I mean, that was a huge career choice for me to make. I was quite unnerved at the time. But I think you just have to be brave. You need to take. Don't be afraid to take a chance. It's no harm having a, an idea of what Plan B might look like. So if you make the leap and you give it your best shot, and for whatever reason it doesn't work out, then what might Plan B look like? Do you step back into banking or do you do something else? I think that's a really key thing.

And as a senior treasury professional what does your plan B look like? Where do you maybe see the next developments coming from for you?

But I think also perhaps development opportunities can come from maybe sources that you wouldn't have thought of traditionally. And I was involved as a, or at least I attended an ACT event recently on non exec directorships which is quite interesting. Now Ned rows are often thought of something a bit of a sleepy role that you do after you retire and you rock up once in a while and choose some nice wines for lunch and read a board report as if you would.

As if you would.

Of course an ED role is nothing like that anyway. Even if something that you do in your retirement, you know, it's a very, very fulfilling and value add role. But also there are a lot of people in their working careers now who look to things like NED opportunities to support their continuous development. You're getting exposure to other industries, getting exposure, exposures to how other companies operate and getting exposure of operating at board level and whether that's executive board or being involved in things like risk committee or enumeration committee or audit committee. NED rules are very interesting ways of rounding out your ability and I think as we're very uniquely placed to play very meaningful roles as non exec directors. So a bit of a long answer, Mike. No, great. I think the point is there are lots of very interesting things that you can do to progress your career and it's not necessarily some of the traditional things of hopping from one company to the next. I think look around at what's happening in your industry. So in banking, absolutely, innovation is what's reshaping our industry and taking on the challenge of the fintech companies are trying to eat our lunch but also thinking about maybe some of the other non traditional areas like non exec directors as an example of things that you can do to further yourself.

Yeah. So to wrap up today, what have you got out of treasury that you would say, someone walks in the door now says right, what net? You know, why would I follow your career? What would you say?

But I think if I think of my own career and what I would say to people coming into a career in Treasury, I think the qualification is second to none. I think being at the center of the company, it's a very unique opportunity for you to learn and to get exposure to everything that's going on. But I think more generally I think I take the view when I sort of interview people for roles, I sort of take the view that any role that you go into can be as interesting or as boring as you want it to be. If you want it to be boring, don't bother applying. If you want it to be interesting and yourself motivated, you know, you've come to the right, you've come to the right place, you arrived at the right place, I think. But I'm not a great believer. I've never believed in having a five year plan. I've never had one and I don't believe in it because I just don't think the world works like that and I'm not sure it ever really did. Maybe old school banking, it probably did. So I think you just have to, I think you just have to seize opportunities that come up and sometimes you can create those opportunities. So when I think of different roles I've been in. So when I was in Barclays the first time around, did I ever think that within a couple of years I'd be running a $3 trillion treasury operation for one of the world's largest companies? Absolutely not. But I took a leap of faith and there was an opportunity there when I got to the other side and I grabbed it. And similarly, when I was, you know, I then made the leap into Barclays from there and did that international liquidity role. And again, you know, the role I did, there was one that I had a conversation about and says, well, the role, the role you've offered to me isn't quite what I want to do, but if you are willing to reshape the role, so it could look like this, this and this, then I would be really interested. I was able to create an opportunity from something and then likewise, you know, sitting in Barclays, you know, did I ever think that I'd have an opportunity to come work for RBS and be part of, as I said, this was essentially one of the largest corporate turnarounds in history. No, but again, the opportunity presented itself and I jumped at it. So in short, look for opportunities and grab them. Take a chance and believe in yourself. I think a lot of the time people dissuade themselves from pushing themselves or making a move because there are barriers in the way and those barriers are almost always self imposed barriers. So don't do it. Believe in yourself and take a chance.

I couldn't say it better. That was a fantastic wrap up to today's episode. What I was going to perhaps suggest is if people do want to connect with you, Kono is the best way via LinkedIn is going there and just reach out to you. Obviously, if they're in the treasury industry, you know, good way to sort of connect with you to talk to you about the future and things.

Yeah? Yes, indeed. Please do connect into me on LinkedIn. I've had my photograph update, David, so I'm looking fantastic on this.

Good work. That's great. Well, thank you very much for your time today and look forward to the future.

Yeah, thank you, Mike. Nice to catch up.

Thanks very much.