Curiosity and Agility: Keys to Success in Treasury Careers with Bruno Lawaree

Foreign to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. And a special thanks to flywire, our fantastic sponsors. If you've ever wondered whether there was a way to ease your international transaction hassles, they're the guys to talk to. If you follow the link in our show notes, you can see me talking to my mate Greg Levin, their Senior VP of Sales. I get to ask Greg about who are Flywire and how they can help you and your treasury team with your cross border payment headaches. Just follow the link to the interview in today's show notes. And now let's get on with the show. In this week's show, delighted to be joined by Bruno Laurie, the group treasurer at Ferrero International. Now we've been meaning to this for many weeks but Bruno's been very busy obviously as the treasurer for an amazing company. Founded in 1946 by Pietro and Giovanni Ferrero. The Ferrero Group is a family owned business in its third generation and as I said to Bruno earlier, very popular with my son and my kids as well. They have amazing products including Nutella, Tic Tacs, Ferrero Rocher, Kinder Surprise, sold everywhere in more than 170 countries, loved by generations around the world. 2015 you entered a new era of acquisitions again buying lots of different businesses. 2021 actually the group was the confectionary company with the best reputation in the world according to reptrack. So amazing company. But what I want to do is dive into Bruno's career. He and I have known each other well for many years. Bruno, would you take us back to the beginning how you first discovered made finance treasury up to now. Over to you sir.

Thank you. Thank you, Mike. And indeed it's a delight to be on the podcast. Yeah, so I actually started my career at Swift, which was a kind of a very interesting starting point to be in the finance of Swift and of the Interbank Network. So I, I was working for a couple of years as in financial control, so much more in general finance, controlling different categories of P and L. And I think that's how I got the first time, let's say in the treasury, let's say more indirectly through P and L control, through some of the projects. And that's also I started to meet people that were actually more specialized in treasury as well. So that was a very good first step. Introduction step for me in finance and that got me interested to move into the world of the treasury. At the time PwC was starting to develop their consulting treasury arms. So they were actually relatively small treasury consulting teams and they were really trying to expand the European let's say center of expertise was in Brussels.

Yeah.

So that's pretty much how I met Sebastian Di Paola and the PwC treasury team. And that's pretty much how I got into the Treasury. From the consulting side I always say it's unbelievable because it coming from the consulting I was able to see in kind of three years time so many different environments. It was like going back to school. I think we always discuss about the fact that there are not so many treasury specific trainings or certifications. So they are certifications but more at university like a student type training in Treasury. But I must say from my side this was really getting back into a Treasury university type of applicants a three.

Year apprenticeship because you're getting to see the bad. Yeah. And exactly learning from them.

Plus I got really an international experience from the start. I think funnily given the fact that now I'm based in Luxembourg. My one of my first clients was based in Luxembourg and I spent three months there and I started to do more the business process side of system implementation. So that was really interesting. Then I moved to to a bank where we were looking at every everything that was linked to risk management, the ALM and the way that derivatives were value valued or the valuation of derivatives and their accounting. And then after that I moved to the Nordics where we did the energy companies. We had some other, let's say assignments in sports companies, paper compa. It was really going pretty much all the industries and looking at the really different aspects of the treasury could be organization, sometimes it was the capital market, risk management. In a lot of times everything that was really trendy. Let's say at that time which was edge accounting. So at the time it was really the full rollout of edge accounting. So I think it's. I typically see in consulting there are two areas that are probably the entry point to the discussion with corporates it's often compliance edge accounting or you can say EMEA now or maybe some of the other regulations that that come into force. If there's a payment directive for example. Or the other side is technology. Because typically technology you get a new package or you want to install a Treasury system. Typically it's an extra effort that requires to get in touch one way or another with a consulting company. So I did this three years. But from a personal standpoint, I was traveling like 80% of the time. So this was getting a little bit of crossroad of choosing what path. Yes. What to do next. And I think that before I just.

Want to reflect a little bit on your PwC time because the good thing is you haven't named any clients in there if you like. So you got to see the good, the bad and maybe the ugly and things of that. Doing that in a nice way or maybe not so much. When you saw that without any naming names, what were the good bits of a Treasury and when you see the dysfunctional treasury, what did that give you? Because it's a great foundation for yourself.

So I think I had to see really very strong organization structures. So I think some of the treasuries out there are still from today's standard amazingly well organized. Should be in bank relationship, should be in the approach to the system, should be in the approach to the risk management. So you could really see later, at a later stage in my career when I went back into treasury consulting with Accenture, one of the things that we were trying to build is what does good look like. You could have a slide that was saying okay, in that field, what is the minimum you need to reach or what is a good average practice and what is the best practice? I would say from an organization structure I saw really organization structure that my view still today I can really think are best practice. Yeah, I saw the treasury strategy, treasury system strategies that were really in my view best practice at the time and also risk management as well. So that was very interesting. On the side of the. What is less, let's say less good or a bit more challenging. I would say typically, I always thought were not very agile. They were not extremely fast at evolving. I think typically the structure themselves it seems like when you were getting a treasurer, you were getting him until retirement basically. So there was not a lot of cross fertilization or between finance and Treasury. So that means that these organization they seemed in a way often a bit old fashioned because they were not evolving much. I would come back 10 years later and probably it would be the same.

You pick up your report from 10 years ago. Oh, brush off the dust. It's the same thing.

Exactly. And it's a Treasury problem typically that I think there are not so many positions, there are not so many. There are some levels of development opportunities within the treasury. But if your company itself is not evolving very fast like being. Because it's acquisitive or, or because it's growing from being small to huge like some of the biotech and all that, then typically you don't find a lot of opportunities for your team to really evolve. So unless you get some of these, it's the pyramid. It's a bit like in consulting in a way. But in consulting there's much more churn because it's not only the people that are junior who lives, but also probably the middle management or the directors within consulting. They leave to go into corporate or they go to go and open the practice in another before I think in corporates in finance it's a little bit easier because there are more areas in Treasuries because it's specialized. I think this aspect often needs to be built. I saw very few Treasuries that had very good rotations between finance and Treasuries and that were taking the risks to bring people from finance to treasury or the risk to move people from treasury to finance. And that I think is a miss off or if I can call that our industry. It's in my view one of the biggest problems.

Of course I want to come back to that as well because so talk about the next moves and things and we will pick up on that subject. So I love it.

Yes. So I went back into corporate world because I think I always am a little bit from my point of view in between the corporates and the consulting. So that's why for me, finding corporates that have a lot of projects or growing a lot are typically my sweet spot. Because when I was in consulting I was missing quite a bit to see the end of my projects or they were running because that typically to a point where you have your deliverables but then you don't see the running product or if you see it very shortly. So going back into a corporate was always great because you would see the process running, you would learn from that. There are a lot of things that you can't catch from the consulting side still from a granularity point of view. But then when you are in a corporate, you have to find a way to deal with the speed and also the at the end of the day, the IDs transforming into projects, transforming into implementation and being successful, it can take a pretty long time and you can maybe have rates of projects that are pretty low versus the ideas you have, for example. So that brings you back to at least in consulting that doesn't happen because you get there at a stage where the projects approve. It will start. I'm not saying it will be always successful. But you don't have all these ideas that you need to stop or delay or negotiate for. So going back into corporate was for me also very interesting because at Levi's I could see really all the different sides of treasury function at the time were like the emea, apac, Treasury. So it was also a pretty international Treasury. A very, very strong team. A lot of. Yeah, a lot of skills and a lot of activity, very dynamic, very agile. So I managed the, the back office there first, then I managed the back and the middle office and then at the end I managed more the operations like trading side from it. It was a bit of a dream scenario to be able to see back, middle front in an environment that was pretty active covering a lot of countries, covering cash, covering risk management. I think it's. I think from my point of view it was really a great development to see that from the corporate side.

And then you moved through, you made a move, talk us through the next couple of moves because you were consulting.

In the Eaton and I think in the next move. The funny thing is that I got these offer to try to rebuild a Treasury consulting, let's say ARM for Accenture and I was pretty interested by it because I think it was one of my Ex colleague at PwC was also leading that stream and some other finance streams and it was like getting back into the PwC mode but having to build it. So it was a very exciting idea even though I knew the shortfall sometimes of consulting but I was very interested to build it. The challenge of that was not so much, let's say the project by itself, it was more the timing. So I pretty much changed just before Fortis and other banks went bankrupt, just before the crisis there. So pretty much I joined and three weeks later, three or four weeks later, for example there was Euro Finance I think at that time and the Whole40 stand was booth was empty. I don't know if you remember that one, but there was nobody. The booth was there because of course they had been going bankrupt or restructuring probably a couple of weeks before so they could not cancel the booth but there was nobody. And it was the same for every everything that was into consulting, IT consulting and all. I think it was a big shock. So at the end of the day I did very interesting project. I think I did a couple of system implementation in France where I was supporting the business process part. I even did a cost management project for a US company where I was really impressed by the competencies of Accenture in that field that I didn't even know Transforming P and L into cost categories, benchmarking them and all. It's a stream that I had never seen before. But the reality is that, of course, it was a shock for the industry. They were in restructuring mode after two or two months. So there was absolutely no way that they were going to build a team at that time. So after. Yeah, let's go ahead.

I was going to say, I know it firsthand. And you mentioned about Fortis and things like that. And some of our listeners won't even know what that is. They won't know. You know, it was 20 years ago, but we were just. When people say, when I recruit in the us, how long have you been here? So I've actually been recruiting in the US for like 15 years. And. Oh, really? I said, yeah, we first tried to come into the market in 2008. 09. And they're like, oh, what was that? I said it was empty. I said, it was at the stand. It was the subprime crisis. Everyone was like, we got to one of the conferences in Miami and there was an empty room. And I was just like, where is everyone? They said, yeah, everyone's not coming. I'm just like. It was like tumbleweed going down the room and I'm there with the team going, we might as well go home. It was just, yeah, terrible.

This where now we can look backward and say, okay, we were there at that time and it was.

We survived.

But yes, at the time, it was a very strange time. So knowing that there was absolutely no way that this would get built in the next probably couple of years. And by the way, that team actually moved back to a big four as well. So there was more than that. After that old idea of having financial consulting within more of an IT bpo, consultants never really continue or stop to be built and pretty much disappear from the scope even of their activities. So I was. So I had been doing jobs, even though I was traveling at PwC, a lot of the jobs were based in Brussels at that time. So I spent pretty much the first 10 years of my career in being based in Brussels. And I got this in the middle of this whole, let's say, acting experience. Let's say I got some calls to start to go to work for Italy, in Switzerland. So at that time, it actually felt like it was the right move. Of course, it was a bit strange to go try to go and do that consulting development or business development and then move back to corporate. But the reality is that we knew, I knew at least that the consulting development would Never happen over next five years. And having an international experience in a setup that was very much in development as well. Eaton was extremely acquisitive for his time.

Explain who Eaton are for a game. Global, multinational, U.S. who are they? What do they do?

So Eaton is a. Is a global industrial company originally from the US and originally working more in vehicle group manufacturing parts like valves or fueling systems. And in the beginning of the 2000s they decide to reorient it there or pretty much change slightly to become more diversified. So they decide to be much more electrical, which for the moment turns out to be a very good decision and much more aerospace. So aerospace and electrical were pretty much the two areas where they invested a lot. So over the course of 20 years they probably made around 60 acquisitions. So extremely acquisitive, really totally switching their sectors around 20 billion, around 100,000 people globally present. So what they were really building was at the time they were really building the European side from the electrical sector point of view. So they had started to build a treasury in Switzerland to cover EMEA and they were actually building the team or the function from scratch there. So from scratch they had started moving some people over and building that, but they were trying to expand it basically.

Yeah. And grow it. And you were there for 10 years growing it. You started off in Switzerland but then you took over responsibility for North America and actually went there as well, didn't you? So talk us through that.

Yes, yes. So it was for me the Levi's experience was good from a diversification or from a position point of view. I saw different sub functions of Treasury. The Eton was extremely interesting in terms of growing responsibilities, growing scope of should be geographically or should it be from a team's point of view? Growing the responsibilities and pretty much growing my experience as more of a kind of manager and then leader in Treasury. So I started managing the operations in Europe and then I became the Director of the European Treasury Center. And then when the director of the U.S. treasury Operations moved, I actually got appointed there with the goal to become the Assistant Treasurer for Treasury operations globally. So at the time I moved function for the US I knew already that the goal was to pretty much build the succession plan to manage the operations globally. So that was of course an extremely interesting development and I think we, we did a lot of exciting things in the, in all the fields in cash. We were starting to build pan European banking relationships and then we started to have more elaborated pooling structures like multi entity, multi currency pools. Then we started to re implement our treasury systems. It was very dynamic, it was very interesting. We had a lot of projects. The team was growing as well, growing responsibilities. We built a shared service center in India that was part of Eton shared service center. We started to have a Treasury shared service center as well. Then we built a compliance team that was like more of a near shared service center in Budapest as well. And then in the middle of all this, Eaton acquired a company called Cooper, then inverted in Dublin. And then we had to build, let's say headquarter treasury in Dublin as well. So it was very interesting pretty much to build three different locations from scratch. And then after that I moved to the US to manage the US treasury operations, which is very different as well from Europe or even very different from that.

Great. So tell us how different it is or in Europe you've done it firsthand. I talk, I've seen it firsthand, but you've lived and breathed it. What was that like? And because we have a huge US audience and they often ask me how is it different in Europe, how is it different in Switzerland, how is it? So how would you contrast the two?

So I think in Europe and probably even more in emerging markets in Asia, we spend a lot of time trying to navigate through the different, different rules, different regulations. Then when we try to look at banking, we try often to look at cross border banking and feels about functionality to operate in different countries. You will try to build a regional or a sub regional banking partner. Then it becomes a lot also about the say pan European reporting these things like Emir and all that. And so you deal a lot with the fact that you are in a single area but with multiple countries. And if you achieve to make all that work, that is already an achievement to operate in 10, 15, 20 countries Environment and try to let's say improve some of these dynamics between the countries. I think in the US on one side you have a very big advantage. One currency, one one market, let's say one one clearing system and all that. But then you have a lot of other dynamics that come into the picture. You have the use of the checks, for example, you have the use of lockboxes. You still have to look at, you look more at debit blocks, you look at your providers. Of course they are typically the domestic banking partners, but the specs or the requirements you have for them would be very different. Of course some of them are similar cash, maybe a little bit sometimes virtual accounts nowadays and all. But what you consider a success is very different from European ones where if you manage to get this cross country, one region Working when in the US it's more oh, try to look at the payroll, try to maybe migrate some of the checks that are still being requested to cards or one use cards. You see these kind of things or the lockbox working or the debit blocks. These things in my view are very different approaches. You have the advantage of one currency, one country, but you have things that are still, let's say, a little bit more specific to the country that you would not see so much anymore in Europe.

And one of the other things that I've had as feedback from some of our US guests and a couple of weeks ago and I was in New York and we're talking about that is that and this was again a European guy who'd head to the US and we were talking about the fact that he was talking to the different parts of the business but sometimes it was different subsidiary businesses or different parts of the business and getting those guys talking to each other was his role as a treasurer, which he hadn't perhaps been. He'd been more treasury focused when he was in Europe, whereas when he got to America he was more business focused with treasury as like sideline but is in his backup that he had the treasury. But it was like doing that. Did he find that as well or.

I did not find that difference on our side. But for me, what was very different is the fact that I was moving from a European headquarter into more of a pretty much the biggest office within the group. Of course with the inversion, it was not the world headquartered, but you had a lot of the central functions for the US for example, operating there. So I think the office was like 2,000 plus people. And I must say that it was very different to be in a regional headquarter and to be in the group headquarter. In the group headquarter you could feel much more the pressure of having your management much closer in terms of decision about structures or about things to do and even things like operating budgets of departments and all were a little bit, I would say very different from being a bit in remote where I have the feeling that you were not so exposed to the, that it was like the close to the sun exposure. And so I, I felt it was very different from that standpoint at least with a US corporate. So that was yeah, that, that was the biggest change for from my standpoint at that time because it's the first time that I was in the biggest decision center of a pretty huge group because it's a $20 billion company revenue company.

And then you Came to some back to sunny London. And that's when I started to try and I was twisting Bruno's arm a few years ago to be on the podcast and you came across and you joined Natura. Can you maybe talk us through that move and how that happened?

Yeah, so we were happy to have, let's say, a us experience from a family point of view, but the reality is that especially based. Being based in Cleveland, it felt very far from our families, very far from everything. And I must say, yeah, we were still far from trying to probably think about getting a little bit closer to our families and coming back in Europe. And so Natura came with this very interesting, let's say, job proposal, because Natura is a Brazilian cosmetics group, originally in the direct sales. So they were a bit like Tupperware or Avon direct sales concept in Brazil and then in five other countries in Latam. So that was the origin of the group Natura. And then around 2012, I think they started to think about growing internationally. And first they bought a small cosmetics company in Australia called Aesop and developed it from there. And now Aesop is part of l' Oreal now, but has been growing a lot. It's a very premium brand as well. So it was a fantastic success for Aesop, but for Natura as well. And now l' Oreal bought it from. And then they continue to expand. I think in 2016, 2017, they bought the Body Shop. And the Body Shop is unfortunately in the news for other reasons. But they bought it from l' Oreal and it was also like Aesop, more retail. So it was a direct sales company buying retail businesses. And that's how they grew at the time. They were still more managing this, more as holding. So they had no need to really go in the functional side of the things. But they were actually, when they actually pitched me for that job, they were in the process of buying Avon. And Avon was a much bigger group because they were pretty much the size of Natura. So it was pretty much two groups of 3, 4 billion of revenues that were pretty much. Avon would get acquired by Natura and get a percentage of the shares. And so because of that, they were becoming much more international. But also they needed to build some of the functions. And one of them was Treasury. And so the function, the position did not exist. The goal was that finance would be more based in London, even though there would be two big poles, two big centers of finance, London and Sao Paulo. But most of the finance management of the group would be based in London. And we Would pretty much the functional side of things. The Treasury Departments, how do we actually get them together? System harmonization, banking structure, risk management, everything that was related to debt capital markets as well. Because, of course, we needed to operate as a group. And so for me, it was extremely interesting because first, I had never been in a setup like that, but also my entire career I focused at, let's say, 80, 90% on treasury operations. For me, getting into debt capital markets was actually. It's what you expect from a group treasurer to have both sides. But often you see a lot of people that develop one or the other side. And it's not very difficult to get a group treasurer role with small exposure on one side or the other. And I think it was on their side for me. I took the risk, let's say, of that new entity and all that on their side. They definitely took the risk of my lack of debt capital markets knowledge. So we both trusted each other and we started working together pretty much at the end of 2019.

You did that for three years before joining Ferrero. What was that like?

It was great. It was like being in a bit of a startup mode. Of course, the challenge was that we got Covid pretty much first. We got the acquisitions in January 2020. So a bit before what we had anticipated, like in March, and then almost immediately after we got Covid, and then everything became different. I think all of a sudden we were discussing, of course, liquidity. Nobody knew at the time of COVID what would be their liquidity position, what would be the market, do they have enough online presence, do they sell enough through E commerce? And it became very much in, let's say, a dynamic mode without having built really the structure at first and trying to build the structure in parallel. So, yeah, so it was a very interesting experience, but it was also very challenging to build that and to start that with a new company that you just acquired in the middle of COVID So I think we managed to really build a lot of the structures and we started to bring a lot of, let's say, concepts and projects that we wanted to bring to the table. For example, early 21, we did the first sustainability link bond for Natura, and it was, I think, at the time, the biggest in size for a Brazilian corporate. And that was also very interesting. Bring the ESG side, you see the old KPIs and try to organize the roadshow virtually, of course, and try to pitch to new investors, the ones that are a bit more ESG oriented as well, was extremely interesting. But we did a lot of refinancing. We probably did 2, 3 refinancing, refinanced the bonds. We had to negotiate with some of the minority holders of bonds. We had to do sustainability linked bond some financings in Brazil. For me I really spent my time between the structure and that capital markets. So it was a total change of job in a way. I had spent let's say 80% on operations and 20 more on the other topics. And all of a sudden it was the total opposite. So it was also a great learning from that standpoint because we refinance and reissued probably around 5 billion of bonds and financings within two and a half years times. That was very exciting days, let's say.

What then led to Ferrero? How did it happen?

It was interesting because I think originally I would have thought that also in these projects you want to spend enough time, especially if you discount the COVID years to do more of this job and try to complete more of these projects. But pretty much the turn of circumstance events changed that because Natura at some point in 2022, around mid 22 decided pretty much to exit international markets. So that's what they have done the year after. So they pretty much sold the body shop sold Azop and pretty much and. And. And try to make that work more in direct sales model. So they unwant the. The kind of omnichannel global model. And so when they told me that their. Their goal at the time they had not been implementing all that, but that of course our projects became frozen because there was no. As soon as they probably rebuild that strategy and validated it they communicated that from their point of view that was not the new strategy in a way. So I think it was difficult to see how this matches with what I was doing. I was doing the. I was trying to build the structure and all of a sudden it would become back a lottam direct sales company. So coincidentally Tadi at the time Ferreiro came to me and wanted to discuss about the group treasurer position to succeed. The previous group treasurer was going retiring. So I think it was just an interesting. An interesting timing and of course I was. For me it was very interesting to go back into a private company as well because Levi's was also private but with a very different scale and a very different. A much bigger scale and also a very different pattern. Much more acquisitive and also more. Also expanding globally. So it was. Yes, it was actually a very interesting shift from one to the next both in group treasures position and then.

And tell us about the Structure there again, we know it's a private group, so I don't want to delve too much, but it's more. How's treasury structured and how do you see the world sort of thing of treasury at the moment?

Yeah. So I think we have a pretty centralized treasury function. So with some regional hubs, we've done some treasury, let's say expertise in country that is more focused on cash and data. So it's a very interesting and impressive structure that was built the past 10, 15 years because of course the group continued to evolve between the regions used to be very European, now it's very global. The US became very big also with the acquisitions. So having to develop all this, created this structure with regional hubs and we have a pretty sizable team in Luxembourg also managing the group liquidity. The group risks the debt, capital markets. So I think it's. For me, I've been at Eton and at Natuura, I've been in environments where we had a lot of teams across the world that were often doing quite a lot of things. Some bits and pieces of risk, some trade and cash pooling and all here. I must say the strength is really that centralization. Having one team in Luxembourg that is dealing with most of it, that is sizable in the same office for me, I still see, I understand now we have also work from home and all that and that these aspects are present. They were not there probably 10 years ago, but still having everybody in the same office, still a very big plus from at least from a treasurer point of view and from the project and all that. We managed to brainstorm a lot of things to try to implement and follow up. A lot of things should be risk strategies and all that. It's much easier than when you were in calls with five different locations and everybody was in a different space here. Having the ability to go and talk to the traders and then after that to go and talk DCM strategy. All this the same day in a meeting room and try to get things out during the same week. I still think I would not be able to do that virtually so easily.

And you talked there and we touched on it two or three times that you're obviously a confectionery group, you're talking to the traders. The risks are very commodity based a lot of the time, very naturally with a company like yours. And what's that like for you? Because obviously that's something that you perhaps haven't had quite so much as a treasurer and now you're front and center with it. What's that like for you?

Correct. So I think and that's why I say that's the beauty of treasury, it's a constant learning thing. So yes indeed. I think there are sides where of course the acquisition brought into the picture but the sub function was less developed because of the transactions meaning DCM got bigger because of the new acquisitions and all. And that's a side where because of Natura I could bring some immediate, let's say immediate expertise, which was good. And at the same time I had to learn much more on the commodity side, the AG and some of the specificities of confectionery, which was never the case before for us because I think from Natura's point of view you had a couple of commodities but this was often more dealt with in the procurement cycle through long term fixed price contract or in packaging. You could maybe buy a bit of cardboard, paper and maybe a bit of energy, but there's nothing the size of course a big group global and also in the confectionery manufacturing process. So for me that's the big learning piece in this environment. Yes.

Again, before the show we talked about other challenges that you as a treasurer face and what's top of mind. We touched a bit on systems and technology and we would. I'd said about a podcast I did recently with someone and talk about yeah, everyone's talking about AI, machine learning, but one of the other things from this is fraud, cyber, all the other things that you're having to deal with that seems to be a little bit more top of my view. Would that be right?

Yes, I think there's really a big focus on cybersecurity and fraud these days. So I think every corporate is trying to figure out what is the right path and I think I'm sure you will also interview or discuss sometimes with there are some fintechs out there that are doing this. Some of the system providers try to integrate them in their connectivity packages and then you have the banks are trying as well to try to either they do that for regulatory reasons, the payee identification in Europe, but also I think some of the banks are trying to go further than that in trying to also gather some of these databases globally or at least as far as they can reach out. So I think for us in that field also it was relatively new because it's pretty new field. It was interesting to try to see how do you try to build a strategy around that because there are different stages of checks and of risks that are identified through the cycle. Should be the onboarding, should it be at the time of the payment, maybe in the reviews time. So you have to try to figure out what is the best fit. I think we, we try to build more of a strategy and a step by step approach this that goes from going from more the onboarding time to more the periodic one and try to see what is the right path for us to do this continuous check. You see. Yeah, the ones that some of the companies I was seeing, I think Siemens was showing a case about that where they had built an engine also to look at pretty much the odd transactions. They were actually having an engine that was doing that at the time of the payment. And I think it's definitely an area where I see most corporates would have to take a position about what they do when and for us because we are associated to banks and associated to payments. There's no way that as a treasurer you have to integrate that in your strategy one way or another.

Yeah, you have to do it. And you and I were catching up in a couple of weeks time at Euro Finance at the conference. There are a variety of other sessions there and lots of different things. Anything else before we wrap up today that you think other treasurers. You've listened to the podcast a few times. What are the other areas you think other treasurers need to be thinking about?

Yeah, no, it's a bit linked. I think we had that discussion a little bit at the beginning. For me I'm always very interested to interact to discuss with the treasury environment or the treasury networks in there because there are so many different approaches and I think most of them are a combination. But often you see a lot of bit the cutting edge approach, the best system, maybe the best fintech, the best satellite system, the best bank or I still think out there we need to combine that with a bit what we were discussing before, which is the master the basics part of it. In my view, I think you have to do your best and it's an imperfect situation. It will always be in balance. We just need to try to catch up and try to do your best on that. On the process side, on the basics should be bank accounts. Indeed this payment process, signers, the way that you get the exposures, the way that you build the risk strategies, the procedures and all in most of the environment that I've seen from the consulting, but also within the ones I worked with, it's something that is in my view a little bit overlooked is the mapping of your process car. Is your bam current? What is the periodic review? In a way it's the kind of approach of the fraud. But you have to apply it across the board. You have to look at onboarding periodic and how do you treat the ongoing.

And then re review and everything. Keep that process going round and round.

Yes. And I think for me it's a key thing that there are more tools, more Ben, more networking that can really help to try to figure out a little bit this discussion about the chart of Accenture. What is the minimum that you expect from an international treasury? What is at least the average practice that you see across there and what is the best practice and what is your path and what are the milestones to get closer to best practice? I think if you manage to do that, you are getting a step closer to being an excellent group treasurer.

Yeah, a perfect treasure, which you've seen. That's a good thing. You've got all that to bring it all together and everything else.

Yeah, I've seen it. But the thing is that like I said, it's always in balance. You see it in some areas and then you identify other areas where you think, whoa, this treasurer was very focused on dcm. So the DCM was unbelievable. Wallet sizing the bank relationship, very well organized reviews. But at the same time he didn't care so much about the operations. So the operations were a little bit more area of improvement and then some other guy could be huge at operations, was following on everything there. But he could probably make millions in the bank relationship management. So it's always in balance in my view.

As you say. When I go to the conferences, people ask me, they say, how come we've done 330 plus, 340 plus? I said, look, I've got 10 treasurers within arm's length of here. All of them do the same job, right? They've got the same job titles. No, they don't. I said, exactly. I said they're debt laid and they're cash rich. They're centralized, they're decentralized. They do. And that's the variety of treasury that I think we get each and every week. And I know I got that from a couple of listeners recently when I saw them in the US and they were like, yeah, that's what we get from the show. For anyone listening today, we'll put in your LinkedIn details in the show notes as we always do. But what are the takeaways you're going to give to the audience? Maybe it's you 20 years ago or 10 years ago or now. What are you going to give to some of those treasury folks out there? That you think they should be doing to enhance their treasury careers, as it were.

Yeah, I think from my point of view as a kind of treasurer in development, let's say you have always to be curious. I think there's nothing that is going to replace to be curious and to try to be agile with the things that you're facing. Another funny one, probably the last one that, that I heard, I don't remember if I heard that From Jimmy Dixon, JP Morgan or the CEO of McDonald's I think is and I think it should not be taken strictly but he said the key to develop is to never say no. And I think in a way they say that's why we should not apply it strictly because you will be exposed to a lot of things where you will be asked, okay, do you want to go to this country to open a new office or do you want to take over the DCM pieces or do you want to take over the front office when you come from the back office? And at that time of course you are going to question yourself. You're going to question is it the right move, is it the right move to go back in consulting if you have much more experience there. But at the end of the day, if you start from the idea that you should not say no from the start, you should more try to think more about it. Try not to say could I make it work? And so it's more about take things in an open way and try to build it in much more details. Try to see if you could you make it work. Would it be profitable or good for you to do that? Would it bring you also fun at work and other things and if you have that mindset, I think it's much easier to approach anything.

I'm going to finish on those words. Bruno. Looking forward to sharing a couple of beers with you in a couple of weeks time. Thank you sir. It's been amazing to chat to you, you.

Me too Mike. Thanks a lot.

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