Digitalization & AI: Transforming Treasury in the Luxury Industry with LVMH's Burak Yildirim

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, 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. This week's show delighted to be joined by Orack Yildirim, the Vice President and Treasurer at LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Created in 1987, the LVMH Group today comprises of more than 75 exceptional maisons, each of which creates high quality products. Is the only group present in all five major sectors of the luxury market. Wines and spirits, fashion of leather goods, perfumes and cosmetics, watches and jewelry and selective retailing. The company's diverse portfolio of brands includes household names which we all know such as Boeing, Chandon, Tennessee. Some of my favorite products, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Bendy, Givenchy, Dom Perignon, TAG Heuer. LVMH currently employs over 196,000 people across the world and reported sales of 79.2 billion euros in 2022. Amazing. I'm going to talk to Burak. He is very kindly going to be one of my guests on stage in a couple of months time in New York. So this is our dress rehearsal if you like for our live version of this. But I want to go back to your beginning. We had a great conversation before. Can you if you like take us back to the beginning, the origin story of your career, how you first finance treasury and all the way up to now. So over to you Mike.

Thank you for having me. Great pleasure to be here. Kind of start off I I accidentally stumbled upon finance and Treasury. I was a poli sci major, international relations. Wanted to follow in the footsteps of my father. Joined the foreign service but straight out of college, straight out of university, I had an opportunity to work for a company called Tiger Financial Group, Boutique investment firm in the commodities. I was a broker. You're young, it's the marketplace, it gets you excited. And I was there for about a little over a year and I got full exposure into the markets, into the commodity markets. And this was during the time when gold was trading at $400, when oil was shooting up to $140. So it was a very interesting time and a very volatile and very exciting time for a young college grad. I was there for a little over a year and it gave me great exposure into the markets. It gave me great exposure into the different financial products that are part of the markets. And to this day, these are the products that treasurers all around the world use to be able to manage risk, mitigate risk, et cetera. Realizing that I was a poli sci major and realizing that I wanted to follow, you know, a business career, a career in business, I decided to get my MBA again in California. This was during the financial crisis 2008. 2010 was a dead year for a lot of people in the economy. It was a tough time for Everybody. And in 2010, when I graduated, I'm originally Turkish. I decided to take a step out of the States and pursue a career with an American education and American accent in Turkey. An American, an emerging country. Yeah, it's an emerging country, emerging economy, a lot of great opportunities. It was during a very great time, I joined a company called Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines at the time, and I think it still is, by the way, that the airline that flew to the most countries in the world, and it was during a very rapid expansion of the organization, I started off kind of the evolution of the career also. I started off within an operational treasury role. I was a specialist doing the typical cash management, cash forecasting responsibilities. Within a couple, I believe within a couple of months time, I was, I had the opportunity to lead the team that was actually responsible for the cash management side.

But just the time, I'm going to jump in there because I want to ask if you got this role in treasury, but you hadn't had any treasury experience before you had finance. And they said, I'm into Treasury. How did they sell treasury to you at the time?

So interestingly enough, that's, that's a, that's a great question. My senior vice president at the time, who was interviewing me, he told me, he's like, you don't have treasury experience. I'm like, I know, fully agree. I mean, I have finance experience. And I kind of walked out of that interview a little baffled too. I'm like, the guy's right. What am I thinking, right? This is ridiculous.

I'm mad. What have I done.

It's like, this is not right. But they gave me a shot. I believed in myself. I've took that opportunity. Kind of naturally fits. I think that's a good way of kind of summarizing where I wanted to go and how the role kind of fit into that kind of pathway and naturally fit and it worked out and it definitely didn't work out.

But what's a natural fit for treasury then in your mind, looking back at yourself then what is a natural fit? You know, someone listening today, maybe, maybe early stages of their career and they're like, is treasury for me, is it not? What is treasury about from that stage, personality wise, would you say?

That's a good question, Mike. I think, I think it's a, it's a, it's a fewfold things. One, it's being outward, right? Because as treasury professionals we have multiple stakeholders that range from depending on the scope of responsibility to insurance providers that range from obviously banking partners, a range from, you know, investment advisors. So it's, it's very outward looking. In parallel to that, it's also inward looking. It's being able to have an understanding of the multiple business units and the risks associated with those and see how they fit within the value chain of the organization. It's about understanding where you are today and trying to mitigate the risks of where you're going to be going tomorrow. It was a combination of a lot of things, right? So it wasn't sitting down on crunching numbers, it was sitting down crunching numbers, understanding them and placing them in a strategy that made sense for the organization and taking it from there. So that's why it was kind of a natural fit. Character wise, I'm pretty outgoing character wise, I like to explain myself character wise, I like to understand what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong and if I'm doing it wrong, to be able to learn from it. And I think all the functions fit within that. But I think the treasury particularly resonated with me in that regard and it kind of worked out and talk us through.

So you were there for four years, you'd got in fresh to treasury and then quite rapidly you were leading a 10 strong team and things took us through the development of that role.

Sure. No, absolutely. So I joined very operational Treasury. It was, was a team of roughly about 10 to 12 colleagues, if I'm not mistaken. I'm very focused on cash management and it was a, it was a Treasury that was developing during my time there. We also had to go through an SAP implementation project was probably one of the hardest projects that any treasury team can, or any team does when you actually have an overall change in your ERP systems. So I think that was the changing point or the milestone within the organization and especially within the treasury to move away from an operational standpoint to a more advisory standpoint where, a strategic advisory standpoint where beyond the fact that we were now doing cash positioning and you know, small amounts of hedging, small amounts of, you know, spot FX trading to a more strategic role where we're saying, listen, your cash flow in the next week is going to be X amounts. We should, you know, find solution for that. We're going to be negative, we're going to be positive. So kind of evolved into that. And I saw that at Turkish Airlines where moving from an operational treasury to a more strategically guided treasury was an evolution, was a change of pace. I mean we went from zero Bloomberg terminals to three Bloomberg terminals, right? To be able to kind of manage the marketplace and see what's going on, we realized that, you know, cash was needed down the line and we did a double etc bond issuance. First time in the region, for example, worked very closely with credit agencies to get more exposure, you know, to, to investors out there so they can have interest in our bonds etc. So I saw that shift and during that shift I tried to play a role where I took a little bit of a risk to be able to kind of put myself in the line and also find ways of learning and improving and understanding where the treasury is going to go.

And so you did that role. What came next?

What came next? I crossed paths with Henkel in 2015. It was a great opportunity. Now Turkish Airlines, Turkish based headquartered business, publicly traded in the Turkish Stock Exchange. Priorities very different. And coal. I took the role of head of treasury for the Turkish business. Enkel is a German company based out of Dusseldorf. At the time there were three business units that were actively, they were active in the markets and leaders in certain parts to adhesive technologies, home care and beauty and cosmetics. And the Turkish business was fortunate enough to have all three of them. So three different, very different business units that are very different priorities, that have different risk management strategies, etc. So it was, it was a good opportunity to expose myself the three different kind of businesses that were very different from each other to a point. The Turkish business was the largest in the region. India, Middle east and Africa. And that shift from Turkish Airlines to Henkel brought even more of a strategic perspective. So now we are in a very Big moving machine. You're actually a part of that, one of the parts of the machine. And you have production facilities in Turkey, you have manufacturing facilities in Turkey, you have headquarters in Turkey, but you're still part of this big machine that's based out of Dusseldorf in Germany. There at the beginning it was again very operational, eventually moving to a more strategic role by integrating more future looking and risk mitigating strategies. I think the real shift happened when I became the regional treasurer in 2017 of India, Middle east and Africa. That was a challenge in all sincerity. I mean, the region is a tough region, there's no doubt about that. I think the VUCA principles apply very closely to that region and things do change quite rapidly.

Can you explain those principles again? Maybe the. Listen, I'd better for coming from you.

Yeah, no, no, of course, of course. So the volatile, the VUKA is an acronym volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. So a lot of these things, for a lot of these priorities, every function tries to manage them within their scope. Treasury tries to manage them within their scope also. And I think one thing about that region is that you had to be very agile, forward thinking and you had to be able to express what needed to be done in a very quick and decision direct made way. So taking the role upon, you know, the regional treasurer for India, Middle east and Africa really shifted my position and my perspective on treasury because now I was a consultant, now I was providing strategic advice, working with our global counterparts to be able to support the different challenges that each country faced. And again, roughly about 16 different countries, close to maybe a little bit more than 20 different entities working in the three different business units that are out there. And it was a great opportunity. A lot of the kind of the volatile challenges that treasurers tried to prepare for, I kind of lived through them. Mike. So talk about a hard currency crisis in Egypt. You know, we're working with our counterparts to be able to find a solution to that problem. And these were, you know, they're very real economic problems that were happening in the region. Lebanese pounds, devaluation. What do we do? How do we manage it? Extreme volatilities in Turkey. And I was based in Istanbul during that time, traveling to Dubai back and forth. So it was a lot of these things that you hear about, you try to prepare for, you were living. It doesn't happen. When it does, you got to be ready for it. So it was, it was, it was a great learning experience.

And just before we move on from that, the way I was characterizing it that you, you mentioned that got the regional overlay, if you like, of all these different countries, but at the heart of things, you still got Treasury. And if you think of a three circled Venn diagram, if you like, and you're sitting at the crossover, the complements of the three of those would tell us about how each of the different three businesses, what demands on treasury there were. Again, this is for you, do it as an educational piece. This is why you do the podcast. And you'll have other treasurers going crumbs. That sounds like. But I've only got two of these circles to deal with. I deal with. You have three of them. What were the different drivers and how did you manage those?

So I think one big driver was risk management and I think that's at the core. Any treasurer out there, any treasury professional out there, it's to be able to manage the risk, whether it's the commodity risk, whether it's the interest rate risk, whether it's the FX risk. And I think within that kind of bend diagram, as you mentioned, risk management kind of sat in the very middle of that in an, in a region like, I mean, it was an extreme importance because volatility was very real in that region and it was during a time where volatility was a big part of the marketplace and to be able to manage that volatility correctly definitely made you stand apart. I think that was, that was, that was one big part. Two is value added improvements. Right. So within that Venn diagram, what can you do to be able to support the business as a strategic partner, as a strategic advisor? Few things that come to mind is working capital management. Right. So what do you do? How do you manage that, how do you take that forward? But you sit down with your counterparts and the different stakeholders. When I was mentioning earlier in the podcast about, you know, what kind of resonated and what kind of fit naturally with me talking with those external stakeholders, talking with the internal stakeholders, finding that close medium and then saying, hey, supply chain finance, let's improve our working capital. So I think it was a combination of a lot of things, but these are the ones that kind of stood out.

Was it different for each of those? Supply chain finance, again, if you've got three quite disparate business, they've got the crossover, they're also quite disparate and separate. Did they have different challenges in that sense? One was, yeah, we've got short term, one, we got medium, one, we got long. Or what was the situation?

Of course, I mean, one side of the, one side of the spectrum you had a business unit that was producing in, was buying raw materials purely in foreign currency. So that supply chain dynamics and the risk associated, that is massively different. On the other side, you had a business unit that was producing, say 50% foreign raw materials, FX raw materials, 50% local. But of that 50%, 25 had indirect exposure to foreign currency. That process is very different too. On the other side, you had local production facilities that were using local materials, but that were some way somehow exposed to foreign currency, to commodity prices. That was a different process. So it was a very complex machine. And within that complexity, you try to simplify it, you try to market it and then eventually execute it, or only to see a year later that it actually worked. So it was a lot of internal kind of advisory guidance and education for the different counterparts that we had.

For you, as a Treasury professional, just the way you've described it, I heard that a few times with some treasurers have had this diverse portfolio that feels like that Harry Potter, you know, pulling out different things that, you know, you've got all these different things all pulling a light where they're pulling out of your head and all these thoughts. How did you, what was your coping strategy? Was it just right, focus on the cash, this, keep going like this, or what were the ways that you did it?

It's, it's a few ways, Mike. Right. One is, as treasury professionals, at least within my perspective, we have to be supporting the business. We have to be supporting the business priorities. And as treasury professionals, I think we need to be agile enough that while we are focusing on cash, we have the necessary infrastructure, that the cash can be managed by itself, whether it's with your team members, whether it's through automation, whatever it may be. While you take your perspective and focus on what the business is prioritizing. And I think wearing those multiple hats, those drive you crazy sometimes, but I think having that support from the stakeholders that are outside, working very closely with your banking partners to see what the best practices out there are, to be able to work with your internal stakeholders, to understand what their priorities are, to be able to mix and match them, and that's where the true value is, is created. And I think there are a ton of opportunities like that. Sometimes we're a little too afraid to execute some, which is perfectly fine, but sometimes we're quick enough to be able to execute them that you're able to see the, you know, the fruits of your labor quite quickly.

And so you, at this stage, you've been with the group for years in Turkey, couple of Turkish moves and Turkey there. And then what happened next?

Next move to the US So took the American education, the American accent from Turkey and then brought it back home. Right. So moved to the US I had an opportunity to serve as the regional treasurer at Henkel for North American entity including the US and Canada. It was a change of pace, it was a change of shift and it was very different because moving from an emerging market to a developed market and the responsibilities as a treasurer within that scope, it's not that it's a, it's a drastic change, but it's change large enough that you kind of recourse yourself, you kind of reprioritize yourself. Does that all mean? Right. So it means in an emerging market, you think on your feet, you act very agile and you try to execute before you kind of expect what's going to happen and usually does happen or you execute while the risk is happening. So the hit isn't as bad in a developed market, the priorities a little bit different. Right. So you don't have that much volatility, it's a little bit more calm. So what you are able to do is you're able to focus on digitalization, you're able to focus on the RPAs, we're able to focus on the working capitals in a different perspective, we're able to focus on different value added priorities that are more valid for the region, BS value added benefits that are more valid for an emerging market type of a region. So it was a great opportunity, it was a great experience. I moved here in 2019, six months later Covid broke out. So talk about volatility in a developed market. Right. So it was a different world.

Going to come back to Covid in a minute because I do want to dive into that, but I just wanted to ask it. Sometimes I talk to treasurers, similar treasurers to yourself. They've gone from, but they've gone from the headquarters and they say you need to go out and work in the business, spend a couple of years as a regional treasurer, get to know the business at the coal face and get to know the guys and then come back and it elevates their careers. You know, I've heard a number of guys in automotive and things, they've traveled the world and we've had other guests on the show that have done that. You did the other way around, giving you a different kind of perspective on it. What was that? How did that. If you compare yourself to some of your other colleagues at the time, not a negative thing, but how did that give you a different view, would you say?

My previous leaders always said the exact same thing, Mike, in the sense that, you know, we have. I have to get a little bit more exposure to. To the different functions, to the different businesses. But I think I was fortunate enough in all my career paths and, yeah, so where that exposure was, to a point, not that it was enough, but it brought enough of a viewpoint, a vantage point where I understood it on how I can perform as a Treasury professional better. I think all the previous companies that I worked for, the treasury teams, had so much exposure to the business from making decisions on the networks, from making decisions on the type of aircraft to buy, from making decisions on the working capital needs, from the effort and the risk and the production risks associated with that. We were so hand in hand. And I think that's the. That's the kind of the rule of the game nowadays, also, that the functions are not silos anymore. They're more flattened out where a Treasury individual or an accounting individual or an FPN individual can have a say, a business decision. I think it worked out for me, like the treasury as a role. I like the treasury as a profession. And I think to be able to have that exposure to the business side while still having the viewpoint of a Treasury team or a treasurer, I think brings a different perspective and a perspective that added value to my career.

And you, you brought up first. And some of the shows, I've sort of skipped past Covid because we started actually the Treasure career corner pre Covid, accidentally. And then people saying, oh, this thing, it's coming up, coming over the hill. Whoa. And then little did we know. Actually, that was a good thing for the podcast because we were able to talk to treasurers, support them. It was a nice thing to be able to do, to give back to community and everything else. You yourself, you'd made the move to the US And Covid came along. What was that like for you in treasury terms and personal terms and everything else? Talk me through.

So I'm going to give you a little backstory. Before I moved to the us, my global treasurer at the time, who's now retired, he actually told me, listen, Barack, you're moving from Istanbul to Rocky Hill, Connecticut. 15 million to maybe a couple of hundred thousand. Are you sure? I said I'm fine, I'm sure. So I got a place in downtown Hartford during that time. Downtown, you assume it's lively. Not as lively as you think. When Covid hit, it was a ghost town. It's a very different perspective. I think that was the case even for the biggest metropole.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It was the U.S. right. So it was, it was the case. So the fact that I was in downtown Hartford didn't really make much of a difference. The experience was, I mean, definitely one to share with the grandkids. Right. Way down the line it was different in multiple folds.

Right.

One, it was different professionally because you had to adapt yourself to a very new style of working. You had to move away from the physical kind of barriers or the physical kind of presence that you set for yourself where decisions are made not only just by speaking, but also by aura, by hand gestures, by, you know, human contact to a more virtual environment. So that was one part. It was also a challenge personally. It was a challenge personally because you had limited interactions outside of work. Work was a very full time part of your life because you couldn't communicate with anybody other than the people that you were living with. It was a challenge to be able to create that personal development also. But I look at Covid in a way a blessing in disguise to, to a point, also created disruptions, Mike, in the industry. I think these disruptions came a lot faster than they would have if we were not faced with a challenge like Covid. Right. My simple as digital signatures to as complex as signing multimillion deals over. Over virtual meetings. Right. So it was, it was, it was definitely a different world. And I think we've adapted now. We've created this hybrid environment where it's a little bit of both and I think, and I think it's working out great.

And I want to talk about that a bit later on in the show and after we sort of bring us up today because I think that's a. Yeah, I'm going to bring. I'll come back to that and I'm not going to get off the track because I'm loving this. So you were there. Walk us through the next couple of moves of what happened there.

2019. I'm there. I left Henkel in 2022. September of 2022 was a great seven and a little more seven plus years at Henkel. Great experiences, great leadership and I think I really developed myself through a regional perspective, supporting a global strategy and executing regional strategies. So I had an opportunity to join Campbell Soup Company in September of 2022 as Treasury Director. Campbell was a very different corporate culture, publicly traded company, priorities were different. And within those priorities I took the responsibility of supporting the debt capital markets. I took the responsibility of supporting treasury digitalization. A tenure at Campbell's was a little short because I came across LVMH and my past crossed with LVMH and it was what an opportunity take on. I joined LVMH in May of 2023. I've been with the company for now was that seven months now? Six seven months. So it's a short tenure so far but it's been a whirlwind of great positive experiences. I'm responsible for the region again in at LVMH for North America Net US and also Canada again we're across the six different business sectors and I think similar to my experiences Henkel business units or the Maisons as we like to refer to them have different priorities also. So it's a much very different world Luxury industry.

What's it like working for luxury brands and everything else from a Treasury perspective what an experience.

I think, I think my past experiences my kind of prepared me for this role right so was in an environment that had to be very agile, very forward thinking, centralized treasury with an operational impact moving to a strategic advisor the more of a regional impact then eventually moving to a strategic treasury North America with Hanko. Well with the regional impact with global support. I think all of those combined pretty much summarize the treasury here at LVMH it is a regional role. We get immense support from our global counterparts. We do have a global guidance, global strategy, global execution. There's no doubt that we do have room to play where regional priorities can be executed locally. And I think it's a hybrid setup which is you know, I know we're going to talk about later on the show. I think the hybrid setup of what happened post Covid is a reflection directly of what's happening within the new treasury setups in corporations that's very evident where it's centralized but not so much. It's decentralized but not so much. It's. It's operations not so much it's also strategy. So it's a combination of all those things where before could pinpoint it's an operational treasury that's decentralized Today I think that pinpointing would be impossible because it's a combination of all of them.

So touched on there hybrid practical example. So I'm recruiting tamed on to recruit role in Chicago. It's two days a week in the office because they need the senior treasury manager to coach the member of staff. Now I'm not doing this as a sales pitch. I'm doing it as a an example because we launched a campaign I then started and I've been receiving further analysts who are interested in the role. It's great, but lots of treasury guys have no more junior treasury folks have been coming to me saying, okay, I love the look of the role, but I want it to be 100 remote. Let's not. It's two days a week in the office because who are working with the colleagues and collaborating treasury, by its very nature. And there was. I had to go back to a lady just in the past couple of days and say, I don't think remote will survive in Treasury. I'm not sure I want it to. And that's my personal opinion because said here, you know, I think over time remote will disappear in treasury terms. But I don't think anyone needs to be back in the office five days a week, you know, because there is, you know, you need to work with your colleagues, but in it, you don't have to see them every day, but you work collaboratively. And I think that's with Treasury. What's it like for you guys? I've gone there on a little bit of a journey, but for you, what's the ethos there?

I think it's a balance, Mike. Right. So it's a balance in the sense that we have to strive to create high quality working environments. There's no doubt about that. We also have to keep our colleagues and our employees engaged, of course. And how do we do that? It's a challenge that we do that. And I think the way that we do it, it's a little bit more. It's a little workplace flexibility, it's a little bit more tailored solutions on what makes sense, both for the department, both for the individual, both for the organization. And it's also the support that you have along the way. Oh, the ethos over here, it's a combination of all of these kind of combined. So it's very tailored, very flexible, and it's very supportive along the way. It's not a. Not a clear cut answer on exactly what we do. I think it summarizes what we're trying to achieve during this.

You know, I think that's as much as you can, I think was talking to someone the other day and they said, oh, yeah, the, the directive is we'd like everyone back in the office four days a week. I said, are you in? He said, no. I was like, oh, okay. He said, I don't need to be. You know that there's some people that like to go in the office four days a week. And he said, we're fine with that he said actually team ethos within treasury is we think two days a week. And I had Steve Rosenthal was on stage with Self at you know, T Money last year, New York Cash Exchange and he talked about intentionality going into the office. If you're going schlepping all the way into the office and doing this, you've got to have meetings. Don't just sit in your cubicle and do this or sit in your own office. Be there for a reason, make use of it. He said, what's the point otherwise? So I think it's about intentionality and as you say, it's not hard and fast rules. So I understand that as well. No, with yourself again, I'm going to be looking forward to talking to you about this in a couple of months time. But what are the things that you're talking to other treasurers about what you see, you're networking with them. What do you, what's keep not keeping you? Are you looking over your shoulder?

So I think one thing that we haven't stopped talking about is digitalization and I think that's, I don't think that's ever going to stop. I think it became a priority during COVID It was a priority before, there's no doubt about that. But I think that disruption of a global pandemic definitely pushed it to a different area. But it's changed phases as we've kind of progressed. Right. And I can see that when digitalization first started it was moving away from Excel and digitalization moved along Covid. It was kind of having these digital platforms to be able to support the decision making process, the RPAs. And today we're talking about generative AI, how that plays a role than the treasury function itself. I think we've had multiple conversations where we've talked about AI in cash forecasting, we've talked about AI and risk management, we talked about AI in kind of guessing where the next best decision making kind of process is going to be. So it's been, it's been very AI focused Mike, for the past say year, year and a half. Who knows what's going to be a couple of years down the line. But I think AI is going to have a very large impact. A lot of the decision making processes and a lot of the workflows that we have here within the Treasury. I think it's going to enable us to not only just automate the process, but support in the decision making of that automation thing with RPA where we had robotic process automation, we had all these bots that were doing limited value added processes along the value chain and we're going to complement that with the AR where we take that limited value add and have that support a decision made to have an impact in one of the businesses that you're managing. So this has been the focal point and this has been the discussions for the past couple of get togethers that we've had.

I think it's also interesting. I was talking to a treasurer recently and he was talking about how they as a global group have their own internal AI bot. Now to explain that just qualify a little bit was incredible because he said it's actually a training, it's bot and as a, as a group it's not available externally, it's only available internally. But if you've got a question about the group you can ask the bot and it will tell you who to find it, where to find it. So it's got lots of confidential information but it's ring fenced so they're careful about it. And as he said, even he the other day was looking up something. How do I. Hang on. That saved him probably two or three phone calls and a touch base. There's. Hang on, I can ask this. That speed. Exactly. Say speeding workflows, it's not taking them away, it's just, it's, it's helping. That's what it should be. I think I agree.

Fully, fully agree. I think it's definitely going to change the pace of the way we do work too.

Yeah.

Which it creates more opportunities to focus on the value add other than focusing on the thing. So no, for that individual, three phone calls could be a long time.

Oh yeah. And just like. And then leaving three messages, then them coming back to him. Take a day and he did this and it was like literally said 10 minutes later he was already putting in the policy with its help. You know it wasn't created by it. What it was. Hang on. We've got to focus on this, this and this. So other areas, you know, before you know, we're not that far off this show, end of the show but any other areas that you think that you're talking to people about.

So another area that we're focusing on I guess within the digitalization aspect also is cash forecasting. I think as cash is becoming more expensive and we're moving to a more regular world now. Right. Cash isn't free anymore. Cash forecasting is having. And cash positioning is having a lot more of an impact in the decision making processes. And I think to be able to find a solution that is tailored to an organization as large as LVMH and being able to kind of execute that correctly. It's also an area that other treasures are talking about and it's, it's, it's a focal point knowing that cash is expensive. We can't accept mistakes with cash anymore in the sense that if you don't position correctly, an overdraft is not free anymore or it's not 1 or 10, 20 basis points. So we're a little bit more sensitive towards our cash management along the way. So that's definitely another big focal point that we were discussing in these get togethers.

Yeah, yeah. As I said earlier, I can't wait to see you real life. And we'll actually have share a couple of beers after talking through your career with a lovely audience as we will be doing a Times Square, the beginning of. Wow, lovely march. Incredible. So looking forward to that. But before, before then, put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. This is the wrap up. You hear each and every week. What are the takeaways or you know, if you're junior in your career, a bit further on in your career, someone listens to delay. Wow, that was great. But what are the things that you think other treasurers should be thinking about or, and, or more junior treasury professionals? What should they do?

So I think this is the, this is the hardest part, right, Mike? So I think one thing that worked for me is I was not always had a target, not that I had a target of being here today at this specific time, but it was a conceptual enough of a target where I am here now and try to not sway away from that target. Could be very, very happy where you are and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with also moving on and moving forward. Be able to not only improve yourself, also improve the amount of value add you create to your company. Don't be afraid to take risks. And I think that's an easy one in the sense that it's said a lot but it's not done as much. I would, I would definitely recommend that also. And I think the last one is, is be ready. One of my leaders in my previous roles always said you can have the best opportunities in the world. You could be presenting to all the bright people that you can be presenting to. But if you're not ready for that next role, it's going to stick out and it'll stick out very fast. Being ready for that means prove yourself, look at the marketplace, talk to others, network, get part of things like this, events like these and that really creates that edge for you to be able to take yourself, if you want to, to the next place you want to be.

A mini summary moving forward. Keep moving forward. Don't be afraid. And managing management of risk of risk management. We're careful there is not taking risk for the sake that they go no one we qualify in that as you say, be ready. Open network. Amazing advice. Thank you, sir. Knew it was going to be like this and that's exactly why you're on the show. So thank you very much. Great to see you and look forward to say, seeing in real life very soon. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you, Mike.

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