Developing Regions in Treasury with Marc Verkuil

Foreign.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals.

About their treasury careers.

Each and every week I talk to them about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next, let's get on with the show.

This week's show I'm joined by Mark Vercule, the founder of his own recently established interim treasury management and consulting firm called Amstel Treasury Management. Mark established the firm with the aim of providing support, consulting and interim treasury management services to SMEs in the Netherlands and further afield, which we'll get onto a bit later in the show. Mark, you and I have known each other for many years, so this is an easy one in some ways. But if you would a early career path, maybe back to back to the dim distant past, how you first discovered finance, then Treasury. Over to you sir.

First of all, thanks for for having me on your podcast. Very much appreciate it. Going back to the start of my career, which is indeed a very dim past, it was in fact quite a coincidence after I got out of the army, we still had a draft army at the time in the Netherlands, and this was in the late 1980s. I had a few months to spare before the start of the new college year, so I went to look for temporary jobs and ended up working half days at the Dutch Central Bank. And my job with, I believe it was two or three others, was reading through all the most important international financial newspapers very early in the morning and literally using scissors and glue to put together a summary paper of all the major financial news stories for the executive committee members of the Central bank and then go up to the top floors and hand deliver companies copies of these many papers. So when my first employer was my first permanent employer was looking for someone who had in parenthesis, experience with the Dutch Central bank, which turned out to be completing certain required forms that were used for statistical purposes like trade balances and balance of payments and so forth, they found me working at the Central bank. And even though this was in a totally different capacity and I had worked there for less than a week at that time and had never heard of any of these forums, I still ended up being hired with this company. Later that year I decided to continue working in treasury and take up night courses in college. And from then on I continued working.

In treasury and with those that early stages. It's quite funny actually, you just mentioned about the copying, pasting and real copy and pasting. You know, sometimes I've talked I talked to a guest just last week and we were talking about telexes and people like what? And my youngest son, he sort of asked me one time, he said, dad was. When it said on the phone fax, I went, yeah, we used to take a piece of paper, shove into a machine, he came up with a piece of paper the other end, he went, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, it was, it was a while ago.

You know, we used like matrix printers. Right? You remember?

Exactly, yeah.

Confirmation had to be in fourfold and the, the yellow slip going into accounting, the white one, mail to the counterparty, the pink one for your own profiles, et cetera. Indeed. Telex. I started using telexes in the beginning as well. And big data in those days was everything exceeding 100 rows or something.

Yeah, well, the. Well, that actually brings us into what do you, would you say, how would you characterize treasury then? What was it like when you first got into the profession and how have you seen it grow from there? If you like to talk us through the companies you were with and the roles you did.

So I think the industry has developed significantly, obviously, but that's undoubtedly true for most areas of responsibility in a company and in industries in overall. I mean, the business environment has been changing and will clearly continue to change, impacting the treasury function as well. Of course, I'm not sure if it's true what a lot of people seem to think, which is that the world and business have become more volatile and more uncertain compared to 30 years ago or longer ago. I mean, 30 years ago we had more than 10 additional currencies to deal with in Europe, some of which could be quite volatile at times, including dozens more different interest rates. In, in Belgium alone, there were two currencies which we occasionally traded against each other, like back Beth trades and. And we had much less information and received most of this much slower and later than today, leading to less informed decision making. And for financial analysis, you had to resort to calculators like the, the. What is it, the Di30 something you remember. And a little later we used Lotus 1, 2, 3 as Excel wasn't around yet. Overall, I think of maybe four trends that have over the last 30 years or so shaped the business environment, impacted companies and how they do business, and will continue to do so going forward. I think first of all, what I'll call the transparency trends, and there's more and more transparency, more controls, more regulations, just reporting your balance sheet and P and L is no longer sufficient. Most listed companies need to report on all of their Risk factors and provide provide for quite an extensive management discussion and analysis section supporting their financials each quarter. Accounting rules are constantly being changed to provide for more transparency and just think of disclosing various of balance sheet funding programs nowadays. Also think of disclosing your company's corporate governance framework and how it complies with this through for instance the SABA and Sokoli act or other local or regional laws and regulations. Think of the need to publish social responsibility reports or disclosing the environmental efforts of the company or of the increased number of occupational health and safety regulations. Think of tax authorities increasingly requiring country by country reporting nowadays with the general public and the media looking for more visibility in how companies deal with the fair share principle. Yeah, I mean executive management responsibility is no longer limited to optimizing shareholders returns. Management has to consider pretty much every stakeholder in its decision nowadays, including its employees, the general public, NGOs, et cetera. Doing the right thing is becoming the new mantra which directly impacts treasury as well. This is the case for large corporates today already. I think it will likely be the case for smaller or mid sized ones going forward as well with yourself.

Just, just give us if you would a sort of bit of a, maybe a talk there about larger corporates because you've had experience all the way through from some smaller corporates at the beginning of your career with cash management there to then now. So could you just give us, you know, a bit of the chronology of your companies and the roles and how you went through those just briefly.

Yeah, very briefly. I mean I started out working for this first company I mentioned that was looking for someone with central bank experience. It was a privately owned company acting in different industries, business to business, global enterprise. Interestingly because it was a privately held company, family owned business, obviously decision making and also transparency was centralized in one person or a small group of family members which made it quite an interesting company to work for. The second company was a Dutch food company, sugar company actually, which is the only Dutch company I really worked for in my career because after that I only worked for US corporates in the biotech sector, in the medical instruments sector, in the also in the electronic instrumentation sector. Mostly US corporations. All of them listed companies after that first one with a lot of international presence. One of the, one of the last companies I worked for was a large armory commodity commodities firm, trading and processing firm, one of the AC ABCD companies. And that company was something completely different in terms of treasury management. That's a, A brief overview of what I've Done over the last, I guess 30 years or so.

Yeah, no, it's great. And, and with those last, you know, few roles, if you like, you know, bring us because you'd had, you moved around, moved around the world. That's one of the great things with treasury, it does an international career. Can you talk us through how you, you know, some of those moves location wise and what they taught you in treasury terms?

Definitely. I, I've worked in the, in different and lived in different parts of the world in the East, I did two tours in the US one tour in Dubai, lived in and worked in different European countries. Quite a bit of moving around with and mostly with and sometimes without the family. So it is quite an enriching experience, I must say, moving around and living in those different areas of the world. Obviously almost exclusively in developed areas the world. So that makes it a little bit comparable to where we are here in northwestern Europe. Definitely a very enriching experience for me and my family, both professionally and personally. So quite interesting to go through that. One of the items that I've seen developing over the years is that maybe a trend that I see developing as well, at least in certain industry sectors, is that treasury professionals may increasingly have to become more industry or industry specific specialists. And I've seen that and I experienced that myself in the different different sectors I work in, in the commodities sector specifically, which is so different in a lot of ways as most other companies and most other industries I've worked in like this fast moving consumer goods or the biotech and healthcare sectors that it took me at least a year to get a good understanding of how treasury management has to function optimally in such an industry. And even by then I still did not fully understand it all. And even though this may have been less apparent and less critical so far, it would not surprise me if companies in different sectors will increasingly look for mid to senior level treasury professionals with backgrounds with experience in those sectors as they cannot afford a steep or relatively long learning curve for this group of professionals any longer and require subject matter experts that can generate these competitive advantages for these specific industry sectors and companies to be able to hit the ground running and instantly add value to areas like currency risk management, creative risk management, knowing the best financial partners to work with in those sectors, et cetera. I think so far, and that's what I've seen developing indeed not just here in Europe, but globally as well, this treasury has been a fairly generic kind of a plug and play function whereby treasury professionals can move from one industry and company to Another almost seamlessly. I would not be surprised if that change is going forward, at least for certain sectors initially, if it hasn't happened already. I'm not just aware of it. And this has been very common in a lot of other functions for years or maybe even decades already, like commercial jobs, manufacturing jobs, executive positions and so on. So I think it would be logical to expect this becomes more common in the treasury area as well. Or do you see this differently, Mike?

No. Well, I was going to ask you said with FMCG and if you like, and how that was desirable, that's the right way to put it, that, you know, someone wants to, you know, have that over other areas and it took you that time to sort of really get to understand it. What, what was unique about that, if you know what was, what was different, you know, you'd work, you've worked in this variety of different things and obviously you've now got that in your back pocket. What did you, what did you discover?

A couple of things that have changed over the years and maybe it's more apparent or prevalent in one sector versus the other. But I think the two biggest developments in recent years for treasury management are automation, or rather digitization and speed of information, the amount of data we can use for reporting and analytical purposes, which will lead to quicker and more informed choices and decisions than before, at least in theory. And secondly, what I've seen developing is that there's more broader and deeper subject matter expertise all around in the treasury area, resulting in more involvement of treasury professionals and in more decision making processes in the company. Nevertheless, I believe there's still a lot to be gained in a significant number of companies globally in the area of treasury management. So more CFOs and boards still need to get a better understanding of the broader added value of the treasury function. And more treasury teams can link up and work more effectively together with other corporate functions like tax, legal, FP&A and so on. More operational, more strategic support can still be rendered by treasury professionals to the business areas and business managers of their companies. I mean, treasurers may be expected to look at issues, financial risks and opportunities, or for instance, a company's balance sheet or P and L differently and sometimes distinctively differently than most other finance professionals in the company do, which they should be doing and which companies should take advantage of. And I think that's something that has started to develop and will need to continue to develop from both sides, right, from a Treasury perspective as well as from a executive management perspective.

So. Well, can you maybe give us an actual example of what you're talking about there just about how treasury and finance, you know, the maybe the different way you view it or if that's the.

Right I thought of like take working capital as an example. I mean, an FBA manager or finance director may often look at working capital management differently than a Treasury professional. If working capital has reported at the end of a quarter, for instance, has increased compared to the last quarter or the same quarter in the prior year, with revenues in these periods coming in at the same levels, an FP and a manager finance director will likely look at the causes for this, right? So suppose this manager finds that the receivables balance has increased, asking himself or her or herself why this has happened. And so further analysis shows that are more overdue receivable balances. So the credit team is requested to start chasing customers more actively to pay these balances, which is a pretty straightforward sequence of events, right? So you may expect a Treasury professional to look at this somewhat differently. First, a Treasury professional may be analyzing the cost of the working capital increase and the increased dso in particular to the company, if only to show the finance team what their efforts will generate for the company in terms of reducing such dso. But also a Treasury professional will look at the impact of the working capital increase on the company's liquidity position and if any action may be required in that area. Moreover, a Treasury professional may look at the increased credit risk of lower outstanding receivable balances and the potential cost of this increased risk. But also from an opportunity point of view, a Treasury professional may look at the cost of the increased receivable balances versus any actions that may generate more benefits to the company, like reviewing the opportunity with the credit team to effectively charge through the cost of the delayed payments to customers at an interest rate that may be set, you know, higher, significantly higher than the cost of funding of the company, which would also cover this increased credit risk cost. Or a Treasury professional may look at opportunities in the other working capital items, such as negotiating extended payment terms to suppliers at more attractive rates. And obviously also looking for opportunities to find alternative funding options for various working capital items. So a different perspective altogether looking at cost at risk and opportunities rather than just reducing the working capital balance. I'm obviously simplifying this, but just trying to make the distinction in how treasury professional may look at risk and opportunities and issues differently from a finance professional in other areas.

You mentioned there. You've traveled the world with treasury and everything else. This links to some of the questions we were sort of going to dive into with yourself. You worked in New York, you've then worked across Europe and then more recently you've had experience working over in Dubai and over in the Middle east and things. How would you see, how are they different? You know, because I get lots of people saying to me, Mike, you know, I'd like to work in the Middle East. Or do you get roles out there? And we do on occasion we've recruited Sabik and some of our other clients out there. But how have you found it different out there? Is it sort of still growing and developing as a region or what it, what have you definitely found yourself?

Yes, Dubai is definitely developing and developing at a tremendous pace. It's now, I think it's the seventh largest financial center of the world and it's attacking Singapore in that sense, obviously the whole Middle East. Saudi Arabia is also knocking on doors to try to get into the global financial markets. But Dubai is definitely leading in that region. And from a geographical point of view, it's obviously a good location. Eastwards, south going into Africa and westwards going into Europe and North America, South America. And that's what they're trying to take advantage of, that location. And they're doing it in a very smart way, similar to how Singapore and the Singapore government have developed that country like decades ago already. And that's, that's something they're doing in Dubai in particular as well, or the Emirates as a whole. But definitely Dubai, it's a very, a bit similar to New York maybe a hundred years ago. It's, it's, it's a, you get an energy if you're there. It's, everything is, is moving. I mean there's, there's buildings being constructed everywhere every day, day and night. There's a certain vibe, obviously a huge expat community there working. It's all very, very well educated environment that is working to develop the country and develop the industry there. You have to, let's say, like to work in a fairly remote location and also from a cultural point of view in order to be successful there. But if you can do that, it's a very interesting and challenging environment to work in.

And you've touched on there about treasury functions, growing, developing, improving. Where do you think they need to improve more? Where can they better support an organization or company that in a way, where are they falling down, where should they strengthen up sort of thing.

What is still somewhat lacking, although I think it is starting to grow there as well, is the banking environment. Obviously there's a number of local and regional banks that are very active there. Some of the larger banks have presence there, certainly the likes of Citibank and hbc. Also on the private banking side, there's more and more banks that are going in there, but they still need to develop like a capital markets area, more supporting the local businesses there or the regional businesses there. So there's still a lot to be gained there. Consulting firms are slowly moving into that environment and starting to build their operations out of there. Some of the tradition management system providers are there already and building their presence. So I think it's still a matter of time before it is all fully up and running. But it's definitely for the next couple of years, years and decade it's going to be there.

And when you say it's, you know, developing and things like that, what, what is, is it the technology that's, you know, coming with it? Or again, you've made this move into interim management? Maybe we'll actually ask you that. That's a better question. Why have you made this move into interim and is this, you know, part of that where the treasury function, you wanted to support and improve it? Or what's the, what's the situation?

Before I go into that second question, Mike, if I may, I think it was in, at the end of 2021, if I remember correctly, I think it was something like the second week of December that the Dubai government suddenly announced that as of January 1st of the next year, so two, three weeks later, the working days in Dubai would change from a Sunday to Thursday pattern to a Monday to Friday pattern to obviously compete with the rest of the financial world and be open during the same hours and the same days, at least as the rest of the financial world globally. And they, they decided that there was no, like we have here in Europe, of course we have. There was no period of, of reconciliation or discussions about it from one day to the other. They announced it three weeks later. Everything in the country had to change, like schools, the prayer hours for, for the Friday prayer and so forth. Everything had to change and build around that decision within just two, three weeks. That's how fast things go in a country like Dubai. I mean, they want to be part of the global financial world and they take actions immediately and instantly to become part of that financial world. And that's an example of how fast things go there. In terms of that second question that you asked, Mike, the things that I'm looking forward in establishing, having established my own interim management business is that I did that for a couple of Reasons. First of all, whenever I worked with with mid sized companies which were usually business units or divisions of the larger corporations I worked for and each with with revenues ranging from a few hundred million up to let's say a billion dollars or some euros, it became clear to me that in a lot of these, maybe most of these companies, there was not a lot of in house treasury expertise. In some respects that is not too surprising. Without hiring a subject matter expert in this area you may expect to see this. But on the other hand I noticed that these companies often also are not fully aware or do not carefully review the opportunities or risks that they incur in areas that in those companies are managed by representatives from finance or tax or other areas opportunities for example in working capital management jointies in optimizing the capital structures of subsidiaries of these companies, opportunities to look for currency exposure management improvements like natural hedging or negotiating currency clauses in distributor agreements, or opportunities to improve payment processes, automation, security, etc. Not necessarily the complex high finance opportunities that these companies may associate treasury management with or that their banks may come up with, but very day to day challenges they are facing and can improve upon. I think and I hope with my experience and expertise in larger corporates that I can translate this into the value added services for such mid sized companies on a consulting or interim basis after which these companies can then hire permanent most likely much younger job holder who I could train or maybe support for a period of time as needed. Secondly, as a consultant or engine management I would expect and I hope to be able to stay away from what I'll call politics within most companies. I think I mean as a Treasury professional you need to have good political skills and that's important. But that does not mean I necessarily necessarily enjoy spending a lot of time using these skills. In some of the larger companies I worked for it often took a lot of time to get things done as executive management either did not fully understand or appreciate or was willing to accept flaws or the risk or the opportunities that were identified by me and my teams. And in these companies you may have to go through a few levels and roadblocks before you can start moving the needle. I'm not saying such companies may not have good reasons to stall decision making or go after other opportunities first, but at this stage of my career I prefer spending my time with companies that effectively want to and are able to move more quickly on the opportunities they have. And I'm hopeful that mid sized companies are more open to their flaws and their opportunities and just to move more Quickly in resolving these just jump in there.

Is that one of the reasons why you sort of, you chose to, you know, to establish your own consultancy or you know what Is that why?

Yeah, that may be a little bit of a, of a negative reason if you will, to stay away from politics, but definitely supporting mid sized companies that I haven't been able to work with yet, at least unless they were part of a larger corporation with all the rules and the conditions and the requirements of larger corporations. That is, that is definitely what attracts me at the more personal level. I'm also at a stage of my career where I like to have a better, let's say work family balance, not work life balance, but certainly work family balance. Because as you mentioned, Mike, I've worked and lived in New York, Dubai, various European countries and I've traveled quite a bit for my jobs without my family over the years. And I like to be a bit more flexible in my time spent working and on the location of where I work from. Having said this, as I just mentioned before the recording started, I'm about to accept an interim assignment that will take me back to Dubai on a part time basis again. So I guess that that objective of mine seemed to have thrown out of the window almost immediately, but at least this will be for a few months only.

So having that flexibility, you know, because you can choose, you know, by being in that, you know, it's not someone else. When you're in a full time permanent role in a way you're beholden a little bit or the, you know, if they're moving, you have to follow the operations. It's not like you can have that much whereas you're, you're in the position of power in this way.

So. Absolutely.

And as treasury then, you know, we're sort of not that far off. The end of the show got this depth of experience and everything else. Have you seen treasury, you know, developing? What's the future? Do you. Would you say we, you know, we do this each week we go through a bit about your career. Obviously a bit more free flowing this week. But where do you see treasury developing from here, would you say?

Since the days of COVID I've seen a lot of publications about the treasury function increasingly becoming more important and more integrated within companies like treasury has a seat at the watch table or treasury becoming more of a strategic advisor to the board is what I'm reading. But other than with the commodities firm I worked for, as I mentioned earlier, where treasury was truly at the center of or at least requested for Input and advice in practically all important strategic decisions. I haven't seen this myself too much to be honest. In most companies the treasury function still appears to be used primarily for its core functions, funding, cash management and several financial risk management and more operational responsibilities. I mean treasury is still a business partner and a support function. It is not deemed a business unit that can in and by itself make a huge strategic difference for a company. At least that is my perception. And maybe that's true to my professional shortfalls for CFOs not involved in me or the treasury teams I work in. Or maybe I only have a very narrow view of the treasury world and treasury teams are effectively already playing a much more pivotal role, but I don't know. But, but most, most of that still has to develop and I hope it will develop for treasury in the future. What I mentioned earlier is that treasury should really be and I think should needs to develop into a function that can create this competitive advantage for a company. For an industry sector it's still not, not not the case today. Just like legal and tax, the other say corporate support functions, treasury and treasury in particular will have to become increasingly important to generate a competitive advantage that that could make the difference between a successful and a highly successful business. And in that sense I think it implies that the treasury function will have to develop from just a value adding function to one that is truly looking to generate a competitive advantage. In this respect I mean what I found intriguing also having a bit more time over the last couple of months of course to to look into all kinds of publications is that if you look at various polls sent to treasury professionals globally, such as the one of the act, the UK Act a few months ago, you can see that treasury professionals appear to be focusing almost exclusively at internal or in house looking company specific issues. Again, not sure if this is an accurate perception or is this is just due to some guidance from the creators of the polls. But the top listed major challenges in this ACT survey for instance according to the treasury respondents are and I quote, first improving payment processes, then secondly protecting the organization through sound internal policies and procedures and thirdly reducing lowering costs internal to the department. In the section on treasury priorities, respondents answered as their number one priority, just like the last 30 plus years I believe, cash management and cash forecasting followed by payments, treasury and related technologies. But neither in the top 20 of major challenges nor in the top 10 of current treasury priorities is there any mention of the company's competitive position or its competitive proposition. From a Treasury point of view, the term financial Markets is hardly used and the term opportunities not at all. And it gives me the idea that not a lot of thought is apparently going into the treasury professional's mind thinking on how the treasury function can and maybe in the future will be expected or will need to create a competitive advantage for a company in the area of treasury management. And I find this somewhat surprising as I'm fairly sure executive management of most companies and the CEOs and CEOs et cetera, even the sales and marketing teams or the manufacturing logistics teams are frequently occupied with what their competitors are doing and not doing for a Treasury function. In a lot of companies it may become increasingly important to understand what the company's competition is doing in various areas of risk management. I mean do they hedge their currency exposures or interest rate risks and if so, how do they hedge it and how do they fund their balance sheet and how strong is their balance sheet? And all of which may be critical information in for instance, the preparation of competitive M and A deals or in funding or refinancing decisions we discussed. I worked almost exclusively for listed corporations in my career. So this kind of benchmarking and insights into the competition has been relatively easy together in view of all the quarterly reporting and the data that is available through the banks or credit rating agencies. But I believe a lot of information can be gathered for non listed and smaller companies as well. Maybe less frequently but still available. So I think in terms of what, what needs to happen, what I hope will happen is that a more outward looking treasury function with more benchmarking and reviewing of competitors data and actions may create competitive advantages that, that are not generated today or are not known today within most companies.

I think also there's something I wanted to contribute there as well, Mark that I think sometimes and not being hypercritical of the survey in and of itself, I sometimes think that they, they come with a certain light if you know, they, they're focusing a light as you say, they're about risk or this or this. You know, I did this and I've quoted a few times now. I went to spoke at one of the Economist conferences for Euro Finance and as I was looking around the room I said look you guys, you got table there about risk management, you got table there about treasury management systems, another one about technology and the what? Oh yeah, yeah, I said they have one over there about talent, about you guys in this room, about who switches on the, the computer, who runs them, who then does this, who then manages the team. About the people in this room, I think that would be far higher. I think that's as you know, without this, if we didn't go to work, there wouldn't be any treasury operator. You know, that's one of the key things and that's why we built people like yourself each month, which is amazing. Or each week, rather that actually when we get to talk about this, it's about the people, everything. So. Yeah, I know, I think that's fine.

Yeah. And again, it may not be a correct perception as it is. Indeed. I mean, these polls seem to be focused on certain things and not focused more so if the question is not asked, the answer is not given either. Also, when I talk to my colleagues in the past, I go to these conferences that you mentioned. Occasionally you see the same thing happening. I mean, the fact that cash management and cash forecasting is mentioned is clear. In every euro finance conference you go to, the large ones, the primary topic is still cash management like it was 30 years ago.

Yeah, I think you're right. There are going to be themes that keep on recurring, but I think it's about also recognizing the other areas that surround it, people. It's about all the other things coming into it to make this big whole something, as it were. We're gonna come to the end of the episode. What we do is we give some of the top takeaways. If you like, we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. So people are looking for people within interim management when you're back and stuff like that from your latest assignment and travels. So people can connect to you. But just looking, looking to the future. What, what's the sort of takeaways you can give to other people listening, maybe if they're earlier in their career or a bit further on in their career. What are the takeaways you give people?

A general word of advice, hard to give other than maybe. I mean, experiencing it yourself usually teaches you the most and sometimes the easy way, sometimes the hard way. I think three works, three things that have worked for me and have been and still are important to me both, both professionally and personally. So maybe not necessarily as an advice, but just do, do it what you want. The first thing is, I mean, as a Treasury professional, I think you should always be curious if you don't ask the question and search for the answers. If you, as a Treasury professional, don't look out for the risks and opportunities and how to manage these, it is very likely no one else will either. At least not until it's too late. So be curious. Secondly, but this is Likely true for most jobs, not just for those in treasury. And that is be open to change, be flexible, don't always automatically stick to what you know works, but try to see differently and from from multiple angles. As a Treasury professional, I think I mentioned that before, you, you're the one eyed in the land of the blind or at least of the the visually impaired. As a Treasury professional you can easily make the mistake thinking that you know best. So if you have learned to do something in a certain way, it's easy to think that that is the only and just the best way to do things. Though that senior kind of mentality. There's not a lot of correcting factors for most traffic professionals because they're the sole subject matter experts within a lot of companies. Certainly not a lot of forward looking factors. There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacks, as they say in the US knowing how things have played out or should have played out over the weekend. But there's not a lot of quarterbacks that can tell you the final score before the game already with full confidence. And so what I'm trying to say is that there are not a lot of colleagues or executives that may be asking you the right questions or fully understanding your answers for that matter. I mean experience matters and the experience you have gained during career is very important. But I believe it is how you apply your experience that could make the biggest difference to a company. Experience alone does not add a lot of value, at least not in my experience, but applying your experience effectively does. And lastly, this is what is important not just in business, but probably in life in general. And that is have confidence in yourself, in your abilities and in your doubts. I believe that one of the most important tasks as a parent, at least for me, is providing my children, our children, with a level of confidence. If you have learned to have the right level of confidence in yourself, things will often work out. Sooner or later you will be able to reflect, to come up with an answer or solution or workaround or something. Be it right or be it wrong doesn't matter because if you, if you have that confidence, you know you're going to make mistakes and you just deal with it. And that is important for this, this siloed treasury profession. And I've worked at LIFT with my family and school going kids in the US as I mentioned, and in Dubai. And definitely the first time we moved to the U.S. one of the most important drivers to accept that position was to show our children that life can be good and interesting there as well. I mean you can pretty easily find friendships and learn the language quickly. Certainly as a kid becoming part of that community and adapting to the society over there and as a result become comfortable and this more confident, you build confidence in yourself. And this may not be true for all parts of the world or for all children or professionals for that matter, but I'm under the impression that our children have grown, have confidently grown to be open to the world and be open to change and looking for their opportunities and so far being quite confident. Knock on Woods. Having the proper level of confidence also implies being critical on yourself and on your actions or lack of action sometimes if you, if you constantly doubt yourself, you may be less open to, to, to criticism from others and from yourself. Having doubts is essential to be successful for, for most of us and certainly for me. But doubting yourself is usually not so constructive. So as a standalone professional, again treasury professional, it is relatively easy to mistake confidence for arrogance and arrogance usually stands in the way of criticism. So be critical, be humble, but have confidence. As a Treasury professional, you are often in the best, but most of the times also in the only position to do so.

So be curious. Selective application of your expertise I think is a good way to maybe sort of summarize some of that. Be confident, you know, in your own ability and everything else I think, and.

Be open to change that.

So amazing. We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so people can connect with you. Another great episode. Really enjoy talking to you and look forward to seeing you at another another conference where hopefully we'll just talk cash management, talk other stuff. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take say 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.