Embracing Challenges and Changes with Chris Corner

Foreign.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner. It's a revisited episode if you like. This week we're catching up with Chris Corner. When we last spoke, he had recently.

Finished at Thomas Cook. His career's moved on a few times.

Since then, so we last spoke back in January 2020. We're in 2023, so it's three years on. Things have happened, moved a couple of roles, had some other challenges in his career that he's dealt with and moved on to. But I'll let you get onto the show. Enjoy it. When we last talked, he was at Thomas Cook, which had been through a. Had a torturous time, very interesting times. Enjoy that podcast. And then at the end of the show we catch up with Chris now. So it's a nice segue to one of our earlier episodes in 2020. Enjoy the show.

In this week's show I'm joined by Chris Corner, the former deputy group treasurer, Thomas Cook. Thomas Cook Group has been a British global travel group for many, many years. Originally founded way back in 1841. Then more recently though, in June 2007 there was a merger of Thomas Cook between Thomas Cook and then My Travel. The group operated in separate segments, so Tour, operated an airline and then operated travel agency. All came together so listed on both the London Stock Exchange, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, but more recently been through some times, Thomas Cook and all UK entities went into liquidation earlier this year in 2019, leaving 21,000 employees out there looking for a new role and everything else. And you know, we'll talk about some of that stuff. We don't want to dwell on it too much in the show. But enough about that, you can talk about that later. Chris, Chris, tell us about your career today and maybe how you first got started finance treasury, as it were.

Yeah, thanks, Mike. Hi everyone. I guess you say Lloyd's my first introduction to treasury, but also to the working world. So I joined their graduate training program straight out of University Lawyers of London is an insurance market some 300 and something years old now. And the Corporation of Lloyds, which is a part that I worked for, was essentially an umbrella organization that was providing services to the insurance market, which was made up of a number of insurance practitioners. So I wasn't involved in the actual technical insurance activities. The team I was part of was providing treasury services to the market as a whole. I guess when I left university I felt I had an interest in a financial career. I hadn't had any particular experience in that. I hadn't done any internships or comments or Anything of that sort. But going through all of the graduate recruitment literature that was available at the time, I was very interested in getting into financial organization in London. That seemed to be where all the roles were. And also when I was reading through this literature, treasury sounded like a really interesting part of banks and financial institutions that I was looking at. So during my first year on the graduate scheme at Lloyds, I arranged for one of my placements to be in the treasury team there. And it just felt like it was very, very natural fit for me. When I went in there, I had real interest in what they were doing and so immediately started on the treasury exams at that time. And really it's just on from there. Yeah, I felt it was the right thing for me. I guess at that time I didn't know that 20 plus years old we'd still be here. And I spent all of that time in treasury, but it felt right for me at the time. And as you say, a number of roles have come and gone since, but it's always been where I want to be.

So you have that role within sort of. It's an overall company, as you say, sort of overseeing assurance and financial services and things. But then you made a very move to a real solid company, as it were, and dealing with solid stuff because you joined Johnson Matthew, the FTSE 100, so top company, but chemicals, precious metals, massive group, but real commodities and products. So quite a shift. How has that sort of changed, as it were?

Yeah, I mean, that was a very intentional move. And again, I mean, looking back, I was still very new, very naive professionally at that time. But I did recognize that for all of the good things about Lloyd of London, it was a very unique organization and I was very attracted to Treasury. I've been attending a number of the qualifications classes and seminars and so on and talking to others. I thought I actually want to get into a true corporate treasury function. And that's where the opportunity came up with Johnson Matti. And they were really looking for someone there at that time who could come and be a bit of a jack of all trades because they had very good people in lots of positions, but not necessarily cover across the whole team. And so it gave me that opportunity to go in and relearn every aspect of a corporate treasury function. And again, I had a great time. It was a really good business. Really enjoyed my time there. And yeah, in the same time I got to see and learn about the FX ceiling, I got to learn about bonds and guarantees, precious metals management, as you say, for the chemicals side of the business as well. So that was a really good move for me and one that really set me up very well for the ongoing career.

And what was, you know, and Johnson Matthew itself, you know, what's treasury like in a chemicals precious metals company? Is it very commodities focused or what was the sort of the working, you know, the treasury workings of it, as it were?

Well, I guess at the time my role was very operational and again, I look back on my time there and it felt that it was very much focused on commodities. Again, there's a lot of work going on with precious metals refining at the time. So there were vast quantities of incredibly valuable materials flowing through the business. And so we had a couple of people dedicated to managing precious metals position on a day to day basis. But also, you know, some quite considerable funding amounts and FX exposures say that from the bonds and guarantees point of view, where you have a customer's materials that effectively you're holding onto while you're refining those before sending those back to the customer. So there's a huge amount of operational work to do there. At that stage of my career, I wasn't very involved in more of the senior activity and working with the board. So I can't really talk to where there might be differences from Johnson Matti to other businesses I've worked in today. But again, operationally there was a huge amount to do and treasury experience, I gained that. Absolutely, yes. Yeah.

And that was a sort of Stan you sort of contributor role, as it were. You then joined GE Insurance to actually lead a team. How was that sort of that transition? You know, had you led people at JM or, you know, was it, you know, GE was your first leadership role? Because that's a key theme about your roles ever since. And that was back in 2002.

Yes, Gu was my first management experience. And again, the move from JM really came. It just felt to me like a natural time to move on. I've been there about four years. I'd had a couple of promotions during my time there. But it did feel like if I wanted to make that next step and to get the managerial experience and perhaps see another part of the business quite early in my career, I decided I didn't really want to become specialized in one particular sector and so I wanted to get out than see another part of the world. So GE gave me that opportunity. A very different organization, a very different culture from when I was at Johnson Massey again, Johnson Massive being a very long standing, very British feel to it. And I think GE was a much More results focused organization, a much more demanding environment to be in. And so from a finance professional point of view, I think I really developed in terms of learning actually it's not just about putting in every ounce of effort that you have, but it's about delivering results. And if you deliver those results in ge. Yes, doors open and you move on. If you're not delivering results, then you absolutely get told about that very quickly.

Yeah, straight away. And then we're going into the leadership aspect because we've got some people listening today that will be like, oh yeah, I'm just about to move into my first boss job and I've got to lead and manage a team. What sort of piece of advice from maybe that role in particular? You were leading a team of four, all treasury activity outside of the us, but sort of what were you, what were you like as a boss? How did you do it? What were your keys to success?

I think, frankly I think the biggest key to success there was that the team that had been put together and it was actually a startup treasury function that we had there for that part of the business which was ahead of a potential sale or flotation. And the overall timber, the treasurer there was an internal hire, he'd come from GE Capital in Paris and he has put together a really good team of people and he had me reporting into him but then managing the day to day team. But again, I've got some really good people around me and I think also actually having everybody starting at about the same sort of time, you've got everybody coming in with the same mindset. No one's bringing any baggage, everyone's trying to deliver the same objectives. We've all bought into the same thing. And so that made my job quite a bit easier because you weren't dealing with lots of conflicting interests and priorities and old knowledge of their career. That's right, that's right. So that was really important. I guess my management style particularly then was really about just leading by example. Again, I'd had the really good experience from Johnson Matty, so I felt I was able to do all the day to day nuts and bolts of the treasury operations and to be recognizing from others in the where people needed hand holding to get them up to speed and what they needed to do or actually where people were very good at what they did already and you could just leave them to get on and do that. So I think from that point of view it was a relatively straightforward exercise. But also I was very conscious at that time again in my first leadership Role you need to be looking around and learning from others. So again, picking colleagues. Okay, who's doing things well. And again, I had a big boss who was a very active communicator and really taught me the value of frequent communication with the team. Being visible over communicating, if anything. But again, much better that way than not at all. Standing back and people feeling like you're disinterested. Absolutely.

I know that GE are a big proponent and always have been of technology and automation and things like that. What was the sort of technology journey for you? Again, people listening will be like, oh, GE automate everything. Or was it good? Or was it, you know, was it a new kind of thing? Because this is back in 2002, now we're in. So, you know, we're talking 17 years ago, but you know, we've both seen it change a lot over the time. You know, I've just been to a couple of back to back conferences in Nordics and everyone in the room, you know, was a technology provider. It just seemed, and it just seems that, you know, that's the constant march of things. I mean, we'll get back on, you know, what was it like there?

Well, in fact, I mean that, you know, judged up from my memory Project Pass, which shows how important it was to me at the time. Productivity, accuracy, simplicity and speed. So this was what was an overarching technology transformation work stream that we had and it was really high level sponsorship. There was no question we were going to deliver this, but it was such a big project and it became almost overwhelming because we were trying to deliver so much. And I think this was a good lesson for me to learn in this business that actually taking on much more manageable, bite sized chunks is often a better way to deliver progress, particularly around technology. Because this was across the whole of the finance function. Being led out of the U.S. again, it was very much a global business and trying to deliver a finance transformation globally with almost a big bang implementation. I guess as with most finance projects, you'd end up with some delays to implementation deadlines and so on. And in fact what ultimately happened was that the GE insurance business got bought out by Swiss RE in the summer of 2006, just at the point as we were about to finally implement all this work. So there was a good couple of years of work which was all doing the right stuff, all for good reasons. But ultimately we never got it up and running to the extent that it was designed to be live. Something else came up in the meantime. That's right. And so again I think key takeaway is just be a little bit more realistic. You need to be ambitious still, but realistic in terms of what you want to deliver rather than trying to come up with something that is absolutely best practice but perhaps takes far longer to put in place.

And then you did insurance, then precious metals insurance, different kind of insurance state. I think it's quite a different, yeah.

And in fact, just on that with ge, sorry. From a career point of view, the role of Insurance Solutions was interesting because it was a startup treasury team. It was going to be my first opportunity to have managerial experience. But I also wanted to then think, well, when that role comes to its natural end, you're in ge, you can work in pretty much any business, in pretty much any sector, in pretty much any country that you want in the world. And so that was really a big part of my decision to move to ge. Of course, what ultimately happened with the acquisition by Swiss Re, the moment that acquisition is announced, employees are prevented from talking to GE about any other roles because they want to retain the talent. So again, I've been there for years, I was beginning to get a little bit restless and think about the next role and all of a sudden that avenue was closed off to me, which was a little bit unfortunate. But again, as you say, coming on to my subsequent moves, at that point it was a question of, well, I need to change company because I didn't want to be, as I said, I didn't want to become an insurance treasury specialist. I wanted to get out and see another sector.

So with yourself, you. Well, I placed you as the group treasurer at Capita Group. And again, some people might know Capita. Some people are like who? Maybe you could explain, you know, because interesting business and lots of different businesses in there. Maybe you could explain that.

Yes, it's a capital support services business. I guess when I was there, which is around about 10 years ago now, a bit over 10 years ago, it had a pretty much 50, 50 split between public service contracts are essentially doing work for government departments and then 50% in commercial contracts. Quite a big chunk of that was within the financial services industry. So supporting insurance businesses with the claims management, for example, supporting the registrar's business with all the process outsourcing that goes on there. And it was a really interesting time to be part of that business. If you go back and look, I mean, just a fantastic growth story short term Capita and in fact the guys who set up the business back in the late 80s were still running the business and it was the three or four man business then still Running the business when it's a business with 30,000 employees 25 years later. So it was a really interesting place to be. It had that benefit of acting as though it was a small business, very entrepreneurial, but you still had that scale which from a Treasury point of view made a really interesting place to be.

Talk us through again the sort of setup for UN Treasury. How did you created this from scratch really? There were some treasury guys, but it was a sort of refreshing. The first focused group treasury, if that's the right way to put it. But maybe explain that for people if you would.

Yeah, so again, a business of that size clearly has to have treasury activity but as you said Mike, it was sort of done in different parts of the business. There'd be some people in accounts doing some of the business and people in the cashiers function doing some other treasury activity. There was a financial advisory business within Capita and the head of that would be the take on all of the funding activities. So it was very much a. Wasn't really even decentralized, it was just a not integrated function at that time. They wanted me to come in and try to pull everything together. So again that was really interesting because I didn't need to worry about it being a question of me having to set up all the processes from scratch. There were good people doing the right things, but being able to then just pull all that together into a centralized function was a really good opportunity. And of course building on what I've done at ge where I've been the number two in helping set up this new team actually at Capita now I had the opportunity to be the one leading on this. So again that was a really positive career progression for me as well.

And how was the sort of shift you'd been looking at the shape of some of these businesses? Johnson Matthie, okay UK based company, but very international, lots of overseas and everything else. GE doing all the treasury activities outside of the US then capita business process, outsourcing, FTSE 50, all the funds coming UK virtually with a few. I know there were some overseas but very limited. What was that like for you? So putting your FX stuff on hold.

Something, it didn't really play a part. There was so much to do and so much of interest that the fact that the FX piece, as you say, sort of went on hold and there was some very interesting Indian rupee hedging that we were doing at the time. We had a massive offshore office out in India and of course if we're doing contracts for 10, 12, 15 years and they're effectively being serviced from India. You need to know what your cost base is. So very difficult even today to be hedging Indian rupees out that far. So imagine that sort of 10 or 12 years ago. So there was some interesting FX work there, but as you say, that wasn't really the core of what I was doing. But there was so much other interesting stuff going on, whether operationally, but also on the funding side, give a number of private placements. When I was there in the US market, we were pulling together the bilateral bank facilities that we had to pull that together into a single club facility. So there was a lot to do. And the absence of the FX work, which, again, that's always been something I've enjoyed. The international nature of the various roles that I've had. Yeah, it wasn't really there at Capita, but that certainly wasn't a problem for me.

No, you grew it and things. And again with that, you were there for a number of years there, but time for a change and you joined BBC Worldwide. So again, for the people listening today, they're going, oh, this is, you know, it's a great checklist of some of the, you know, really great, solid treasury roles. So then you became the treasurer of BBC Worldwide. Again, people know BBC, but I know that it's different and perhaps you could explain. Again, you know, it's a global name, everyone knows the B. But what did you do?

So BBC Worldwide was the commercial army, the BBC. So it would take BBC content and sell that abroad. So within the UK and with the BBC's licensee arrangements, you essentially couldn't be selling that to UK consumers. But of course, you've got all this fantastic content that's loved around the world, whether by expats who want to get hold of that content, or indeed just others around the world who can come to know and love some of the programming. So that's what that business was doing. And we had the commercial freedom to go and do that in a way that didn't apply to the public service broadcasting elements of the BBC in the uk. Again, this was a startup treasury function. Effectively, at the time, there was a contemplation of BBC Worldwide being floated off or sold, so they needed a standalone treasury function to be able to manage that. So, again, it was about going in and just taking existing processes of making sure that they were really embedded within the Worldwide business. And there were the right discussions going on with the various clients, directors around the rest of the business to. To ensure that treasury was really supporting Worldwide in a way that was going to support any subsequent separation of that business.

And, you know, again, BBC, you know, team wise and things like that. Again, do you run a team there or, you know, how was it sort of set up?

Yeah, it was a small team. There were four of us at the points when we got the team fully established. But again, I think what I really benefited from Worldwide was the experiences that I'd had both at Capita and at ge, where again, I'd been helping to set up teams initially and then had my first go at leading that. And of course there are things that you would always do differently in these situations. Having another opportunity to do that was good, but it was also very attractive because I was really enjoying that aspect of what I was doing. Again, having pretty much a blank sheet of paper to create a new team I found really interesting. I think it's a fascinating part of what we do. Sometimes you go into a business and everything's running very smoothly and that can be great because it allows you to focus on more of the technical challenges that have been faced by the business or to engage more widely in the organization. But actually, at that point in my career, I found it really interesting to be really thinking about the detailed structure of the team and how best you set that up to deliver a really strong treasury function that the business needs.

Yeah, and then BBC to. Well, BBC Worldwide and then BBC itself, or how did the two sort of mingle, as it were.

Yeah, so, I mean, we work very closely with the BBC treasury team. Ultimately, they were the ones who owned the bank relationships. All of the funding for the BBC came into the BBC Group treasury team. So ultimately anything that we were doing Worldwide had to be within the structure that was set by the BBC Group treasury team. So we work very closely with those guys. I would sit down at least weekly, not more often than that with the group treasurer there to make sure that we were aligned in the work that we were doing. And in fact, over time it became apparent that there was a little bit of an inefficiency that was built into the BBC's treasury operations by virtue of having these two separate things and a bit of confusion, I think, externally from the banks when they're not quite sure at times should they be talking to the group team, should they be talking to the Worldwide team? And as long as there was the potential for this separation of Worldwide, that was something you just had to deal with. But actually that was taken off the table by the arrival of a new chair of the BBC Trust, probably about 18 months or two years after I joined. And at that point it was really a relatively simple conversation to say, you know what, I think we actually need to put this team back together. Given that the external landscape has now changed, this needs to be a consolidated function. And actually that was a dynamic that was going on elsewhere across the BBC at the time. The other functions where Worldwide had set up standalone teams, but treasury was really one of the first teams that, at that time, we took the opportunity to put everything back together. So, again, it wasn't what I'd gone into the BBC to do, but from a personal career point of view, I'd had a couple of years separated and setting up this standalone team, and just as that particular part of the role was coming to an end, we then turned around and put it all back together. So you then get another couple of years of that restructuring experience as well. I guess from that point of view, we took the opportunity then to be looking at all the use of technology at the time, making sure that we're developing use of the tms, for example, bringing on some of the other technology partners. So, again, another really interesting piece of work. So very much two phases to my.

Time at the BBC with the cash flows. Everyone's buying the media, it's obviously a big thing and things like that. The cash just came in all the time. It was very solid, healthy business. Or was it challenging in that aspect or not so much?

Well, I guess, again, big difference between BBC Public Service Broadcasting, you got the license fee. I might be a bit out of date now, but 3.7, 3.8 billion pounds a year and effectively it just came in, as you say. So from that point of view, the funding was never a particular challenge for the BBC, but within Worldwide, it was a commercial business that was subject to fluctuations in consumer demand and general economic sentiment in the various markets that we worked in. So there was certainly some exposure to those matters there, I think, as well. When you come to thinking about some of the other risks, though, again, huge FX exposures for that part of the business. Whilst the funding was relatively comfortable, certainly on the. On the public service side, there were some very meaningful other treasury activities.

You move from that to the. Well, the move to Thomas Cook. We'll bring it up today in a minute because been through some challenging times of late, but a move to a travel business, you're ticking a lot of boxes. You've done insurance, you've done precious metals, you've done BBC. Oh, I know, let's move to a travel group. And how did that come about? Or Was it just the attraction of another great treasury role?

Well, I think, to be honest, when I was looking to move on from the BBC and again I was in a good role, good people around me from a day to day point of view, no reason to leave, but I did feel I wanted to move on to get back into that corporate treasury environment again, a bit like when I was@lloyds. BBC is a great business, but it's not a big organization, but it's not a true corporate treasury function. And so I was able to have a good look around and buy my time waiting for the right roles to come up. And when I first heard about the Thomas Cook role, it sounded quite interesting, but I wasn't convinced about it. I went and had the interview and meeting the team, hearing about what needed to be done there, hearing about the profile of treasury within the organization, I was absolutely hooked. And in fact, I remember that week I had three interviews with different organizations and at the start of the week, Thomas Cook was very much third on my list. Yeah. And by the end of the week it was, I thought it worked.

I won this job. And you say it was, you know, sort of all over the place or, you know, sort of needed. What did it need or explain that?

Well, I think I wouldn't necessarily characterize it all over the place, but it was going through a really interesting time. So again, going back a little bit, history 2011, 2012, that the company was virtually out of business for weeks on end, could almost fall over at any point. And there had been this big recapitalization back in 2013 that really gave the business an opportunity to rebuild. But again, even before I joined, so 2013 to 2015, massive cost cutting, really trying to reposition the business as much more of a digital player, starting to close down all these shops. We had about 1200 stores around the UK, a lot of overlap. There'd been an acquisition with the co op travel business, so they were often a co op and a Thomas Cook store, sometimes side by side on the high street. So this huge transformation had already happened and I think if you'd asked me to join that business back in 2012, 2013, I would have probably thought it was too high risk for runaway by 2015. Yeah, they got a couple of runs up the ladder towards getting where they needed to get to, but it was still a very long ladder and there's still a number of steps still to go. And I thought that was where there was so much interest in work. Again, having been in all these companies that were Great businesses, but frankly they were the more comfortable end of the credit spectrum. You had banks saying, would you like to borrow some money? How much would you like to borrow? It was relatively straightforward from a credit perspective. So then go in somewhere like Thomas Cook, where you really had to fight every last pound that you were getting from the banks. Really tough negotiations around terms on those deals that you were doing. That was going to be a complete shift for me and one that I thought would really fill out my cv. Because you're going from, as I say, sort of a very comfortable end of the credit spectrum to something that is right on the other end. And for the first few years when I was there, it was just short of five years before the business went under. But we were making progress. It was slower than we wanted to, but it was going the right way. And it was only then summer last year, summer 2018, that things started to unravel. But we had a number of years of making some good progress in that business.

And with that, again, not to deep dive into it too much, but was it just the markets or hit hard or what was the sort of what was happening there?

Yeah, it's a combination of so many things. There's obviously been huge amounts of pressure commentary on this in the aftermath of the business going into insolvency. You know, it's not something that you can give a quick answer on, but I guess the two key factors for me are the amount of debt that the business had taken on essentially caused the recapitalization I referred to earlier on back in 2013. But at that stage we were still really highly levered. And I guess the expectation at that time was this was a sustainable business. But we need to make sure that we are delivering the transformation really quickly. And in the meantime we are paying very high rates of interest on some very long term bonds. So you end up paying a huge amount of the cash that you're generating as a business each year. It's a really competitive market, it's low margin. So you're generating this cash, but a huge amount of the cash you're generating is just going and servicing your debt. Yeah. And what you need in that environment is, you know, a few years, a bit of a clear run of being able to get back on your feet and then start to pay down that debt.

And then the money that you're bringing.

In actually you can start to reinvest in the business. And really we never got that clear run. And you think from my time in the business, 2015, the awful beach Attacks in Tunisia, which closed down the Tunisian market. Customers weren't allowed to travel to Tunisia so we can't sell holidays there. That was a big year round market, of course, big year round destination. Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt. Again, very popular UK customers in 2016, all the, again the awful Turkish terror attacks and disruption. Almost every week there'd be something else. Turkey was about 33%, 35% of our business in 2016, 2017 there was massive airline disruption, air traffic control strikes, it's a feature of air travel. But 2017 was particularly high. It was something like an extra 50 million quid that was spent on compensating passengers for delayed travel in 2017. Again, 50 million quid that you would otherwise be putting back into the business.

Yeah.

And then 2018, summer heat wave. I mean all of these things, listeners could well think, well that's just part of being in the travel business. But they were all things that we've not seen to that extent before. And I think that the heat wave is a great example of that. Where, yes, you have heat waves from time to time, but it was the first time we had such good weather across all of our source markets. So we are UK business, Scandinavian business, continental European business. The weather conditions across the whole of the northern half of Europe in 2018 were stronger than had been seen for something like 150, 200 years. And of course in that environment, people quite rightly think, well, I'll just stay home.

Yeah, don't need a holiday.

All of that. Yeah, that's it. All of that late booking market disappears and then what we subsequently found is actually that fed over into 2019 because people had realized, well, last year we could have got that holiday that would have been costing £1,000 ahead. Actually we could have got it last minute for £500 ahead this year. Why don't we wait until the last minute? Again, I haven't touched on Brexit yet again. It's just every year there was something that didn't give us that clear run. Yeah, yeah, I know. And ultimately because of the long term history, we never actually had enough, we never had enough money in our back pocket to be able to ride out the cumulative effects of all of these different storms that hit us and ultimately that's it. Once it did start to unravel, liquidity gets taken away. You, the providers, credit across the business. That started getting nervous just at the point is that you need people to be standing still and retaining their support for the business. You can understand each individual person being nervous Collectively, if everyone could stand together, it might have been a different situation. But again, you can't be blaming people for taking the decisions that they need to take their particular organization.

The effect on treasury or treasury coping during that time, how did you guys get through it?

Well, with great difficulties, I think we had a great team there and actually again, whilst it didn't end well, we've done some really positive work in the few years that I was there, particularly around financing. So actually back in 2017 we did a new bank deal and we increased the amount of funding that the group was able to get on a committed basis at that time. We refinanced one of our bonds to significant, in fact two of the bonds, but one of them made a significant reduction in the amount of interest that we were paying. We timed that very well in terms of going to market. In fact, it was the first European high yield bonds we launched after Donald Trump had just been elected in the us So a time of market uncertainty, but actually we benefited because no one else was going to market at the time. And so there were all these investors looking to do something with their money. We went to market at that time and it turned out to be a really good deal. So yeah, there were some good opportunities from a Treasury point of view during the last few years, but also very difficult in the last 12 months to be managing a situation where this is every stakeholder, every investor is getting more nervous. We had the banks committed liquidity there, but there was a huge amount of uncommitted funding that we had within the business. Whether that was around our FX and fuel hedging program, if it's around the bonds and guarantees that we issued to some of the local travel regulators. We had a huge fuel procurement program and sort of the fuel suppliers were starting to get nervous and perhaps looking to reduce some of the payment days that they made available to us. Regulators were wanting us to perhaps put up some, some additional funds to protect the local consumers there. So again, you've got all of these different stakeholders just sort of beginning to pull up that liquidity lever and trying to manage liquidity in what is already a difficult trading environment became even more difficult.

And so, you know, as we look to the future for you, obviously you're out there and everything else, but you know, when we started, you know, talking about you and you know, big theme is you're a great team builder leader if you like, and that's a key part of you, if you like. And if people are looking at your LinkedIn profile as we Approach the end of today's show, you know, they'll look back and they'll say, wow, that's, you know, you've got this great profile, you've got mct. So the top level of treasury qualification in the uk, you've got, you know, solid career path and things like that. So there'll be people reading through that and going, do you know what that. That's. I'd like to emulate that. Treasury analyst managers, they want to follow in your footsteps and some of the treasures out there, maybe some of the more internationals are going on, some great war stories there. But, you know, what sort of advice would you give those guys if, you know, say, analyst managers first? What nuggets would you give them? 2 or 3, maybe that as we close off today's show that you can sort of share with them. And, you know, the guys that should have a similar approach to you about treasury, if that's the right way.

Yeah, yeah, I guess. I mean, certainly for those more the analyst and maybe a manager level study is really, really important. I think it's a very competitive marketplace when it comes to moving between treasury roles and to have qualifications behind you that can distinguish you from others applying for the same roles is very important. It also acts, I think, is a really useful benchmark when potential employers are considering your application. Again, it sort of cuts out quite a lot of that interview where you're going through testing someone's technical skills. If you know they've got different levels of the corporate treasury qualifications, then that really helps. Again, in my own experience, again, I had the benefit of getting to treasury very early. As I talked about earlier on, I got all my. In those days, it was the NCT exit exams completed when I was 27. And that really, I think, set me up very well that when I was then looking to apply for other roles again, employers just know what your level is and they almost take some of those technical skills for granted in that application. So I'd really encourage people to work out what's the right qualification for them very much. For me, it was mct. I didn't go down the accounting routes intentionally, but again, for different people, it might be different subjects that work out what's going to help you get to where you want to get to and then absolutely commit to completing that as quickly as possible. I think the other thing I'd say is around making the best of whatever role that you're in, whatever situation that you're in. Again, we've touched on some of the issues. I've had to face during my career where my company's been acquired, we've had a restructuring, I've gone insolvent. None of these things I obviously choose to happen, but actually the fact that they did all happen has made me a better treasury professional. And so when there's a situation that's perhaps going a different way to what you wanted, embrace it, see the opportunities in that. It might not be ideal, it might mean that you need to change your approach and move on quickly, more quickly than you'd otherwise have expected to, but you can find the positive in anything. And I think, again, treasury is an area you're not going to have the benefit of just going in and rolling along very comfortably day after day after day. You need to be embracing whatever change is going on around you.

So, Chris, thanks for, you know, just talking through there. A lot of your experience and you've had lots of different things. Before we move to the close of the show, I just wanted to explore with you, just, just your general. You're seeing the world of treasury, seen it from a number of different aspects and everything else. What do you think are the biggest challenges, maybe for treasurers and, you know, treasury professionals and how, you know, how are you approaching them? How should you think other people, you've been to all these conferences and everything else, what do you think? Is it a rise of technology or is it the people aspects or what's the key thing for you in your head, as it were?

I think you need to draw the distinction between the day to day core activities of treasury, if I can put it that way, and some of the other challenges that can arise. Again, a lot of my role today is no different from 20 odd years ago when I started in terms of the things that we discussed around the funding, fx, bonding, cash management, counterparty risk, that's the core of treasury, but of course you can't take your eye off making sure that that continues to operate very well. At no point can you think, well, we've got that bit done, I can now go away and do this Brexit project or whatever it might be. So I think from that point of view, treasurers have to constantly be aware of the day to day and I guess the technology feeds into to that. There's always ways. Whilst the risks are no different from 20 years ago, the way you might manage those risks, very much will change and develop over time. So I think that's important, not to lose sight of the housekeeping, if you like. But then on the other hand, there are these continuous continuous new challenges that are arising and we touched on some of those that have affected Thomas Cook. But I guess these challenges, and I'm going back here, if we go back 10 years, to the global financial crisis and everything that followed from that, with recession, credit crunch, Eurozone crisis, Brexit, Brexit, subsequently, all of these things at the start of my career were almost unimaginable. And yet nowadays we don't necessarily know what's going to be the next one next year. But there is always something new going on. And I think it is about making sure that as a business treasurers, as the risk managers of a business are thinking that far ahead, thinking about what could be happening further down the line, and perhaps not trying to pretend they've got a crystal ball, but making sure that whatever happens further down the line, because something will, because it has been every year for the last 10, 12 years, we are in a position to be able to deal with that. And again, from a Thomas Cook perspective, we were always aware that we didn't have the level of committed funding that we wanted. It wasn't that we got caught out when things started to unravel, but we just hadn't been able to get to the point where we got all that funding committed. We hadn't got a sufficiently strong credit rating to attract sufficient investment in the business on a committed basis. But we were constantly trying to get there and in the end we weren't able to get there quickly enough. But it was something that, again, in a business, treasurers as risk managers need to be the voice in the business saying, hold on a minute. You'll have other parts of the business that are wanting to go into the new market to launch the new product to make that really exciting acquisition. And they may all be great things to do and they may be the right things to do, but you do need the treasurer just to be saying, what if, what if there's a danger that we become known as doom mongers. And that guy over there, he's such a pessimist. So you need to temper your language. But again, the experience of Thomas Cook in particular is one that you really mustn't take your eye off. These new challenges, these new risks just keep emerging.

Yeah, I think, I think the great point you made there is that the new norm is that everything's uncertain and prepared for that all the time. Always be prepared in that way.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.

Awesome advice there. So beat your competition by getting your qualifications because they're going to make you stand out give you that rubber stamp of expertise, if that's the right way to put it and you know, grab the uncertain, you know, because you know, it is an uncertain world and you can see, you know, anyone will be able to see through your LinkedIn profile that you've been through some solid companies and challenging times, but you've written it out. So. Yeah, well done.

So I hope you enjoyed that podcast with the amazing Chris Corner. When we last left the show or Chris last left the show and we didn't abandon him, we just left him in a very safe place. He was looking at a few different things. Chris when he finished up, we last spoke on the show. He's with Thomas Cook or just recently finished. Chris. Well, let's pick up the story from there. What happened to you? Post that last conversation back in January 2020. What happened to you?

Next.

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, so I've, I guess I've worked my way along to High street in a couple of roles, a couple of contract roles since then. So I mean firstly, not long after we, we spoke last, I was delighted to have the opportunity to work with Marks and Spencer's great UK High street name and this was actually reaching beyond core treasury, more of a commercial finance role, supporting the businesses increased strategic focus on their bank and services team. So this is the team within M and S that leads the M and S bank activities, M and S Energy, it's a couple of joint ventures that they ran and also working closely on a number of the digital initiatives across the organization around customer credit payments, journey and loyalty as well as the gifts cards. So you know, the banking services team was a very important and growing team and one that's continued to expand since my, my time in the business. So that was a 12 month contract that I did there and you know, lots of really interesting work but I, you know, very much wanted to get myself back into Treasury. And again, the episode that we've just listened to, you know, I'm 25 years in corporate treasury roles so I wanted to get back into the front line. So then into another contract role with wba, Walgreens Boots alliance, the major US pharmaceutical retail business. Very much larger than my usual organization. I mean WBA has annual sales in excess of £100 billion. So you know, treasury team, there was sort of 30, 35 people. So whole size and scale that was very new to me. But there was some really interesting transformation work going on within the treasury team and I was asked to come and join to help lead what was called the center of Excellence so the front office operations and controls functions within Global treasury to help lead them through this period of change, a couple of major internal projects. Firstly, a massive banking transformation program, which was simplifying all of the banking from around about 10,000 bank accounts down to under a thousand. So major simplification there and also a TMS implementation, which is always an interesting project to work through for any treasurer. But alongside that there were some really interesting corporate initiatives underway. So they were in the process of disposing of Alliance Healthcare, which was a major pharmaceutical wholesale business, which is around about a fifth of the business from a sales perspective, but perhaps half the treasury complexity. Again, when I joined, they weren't quite sure what the team was going to need to look like 12 months down the line. And that was part of the nature of this being a contract role, was to go and help with that. Of course, while I was with the business, there was a strategic review of Boots. So for our US listeners, Boots is, you know, the equivalent of of Walgreens, but in. In the uk, and they were looking at Boots position within the business and whether that should be sold off. And ultimately, after about six months, the decision was taken not to sell Boots, primarily because of the challenges within the financial markets. You know, we started the strategic review in January 22, just ahead of the Ukraine war, and clearly those external circumstances got a got lot more difficult as we went through the year. So the book strategic review concluded with no change, but a huge amount of really interesting work to be gone through there. And alongside all of that, there's been a rebalancing of the team's geographic profile to better reflect the group's increased strategic focus on US healthcare. So, again, a huge amount of change going on across the business and across the treasury team as a whole. So really interesting to help work through that. That finished at the end of last year.

Yeah.

But before we go on to that, I just want to just dive in there. So you worked in a few different interim roles and obviously it's a bit different to being in a permanent role, but they've been longer scale, longer term. And you've talked about in the past about key to successful treasury and things. What are these experiences of being in a couple of. Doing a couple of interim roles? What have they taught you so far?

I think first and foremost, the fundamentals of treasury stay the same, whether you're in a permanent role or an interim role. So you're there to make sure you've got prudent financial risk management across the business. You've Got the funding, the cash flow, the hedging, all working efficiently for the business. I suppose as an interim you have some rather short term targets but it's important to balance the business need to continue to do the right thing for the medium and the long term. So even looking beyond the time horizon that, that I expected to be with each of the businesses, you know, and trying to deliver things today so that my role and my time with each business was a success. You know, you need to make sure that you are keeping that eye on what's needed longer term. And I suppose part of that, you know, working with people in my teams that were going to be with the business a lot longer in permanent positions and making sure that I'm constantly checking in with them that, you know, what we're doing right now to deliver on the here and now is still consistent with what's going to be needed beyond that term.

What would you then say are the keys to being a successful interim? You touched on it a little bit there but if someone said yeah, that was, Chris was great in that. What are the takeaways? If you like, if someone is listening today and they're an interim or they're thinking oh, shall I go in interim role, is it about going in and learning the culture or getting to know the people but at the same time having the back right treasury's long term or been into that. How does it work for you would you say?

I think, I mean my start point was to make sure that absolute alignment between myself and my boss when I joined as to what was required. I think in an interim role you absolutely have to hit the ground running. You don't have the same scope to take a while to build up your knowledge of the business. So clearly there is always an induction, there's always a period in which you are getting to understand the company and the team and the role but needing to hit the ground running within that interim role. So make sure you've got absolute agreement with the boss as to what's, what's expected and keep checking back in. So we would have, you know, weekly updates with the global treasurer at WBA for example, just to make sure that you know what I'd done last week, what I was going to do the next week was on track and over time you know that weekly became fortnightly but I think, you know, at the outset it's getting that, that agreement and also then just making sure you've got really strong relationships across your, your immediate team. So work out who are the coalitions I suppose the coalitions that you need to build, which ones are the absolute priority, which groups of people do you need to be pulling together and working most closely with at the start and then expanding that as you go through the year and I guess frankly making choices and being intentional in choices around what I'm not going to do. Again, if I was a permanent role, you probably try to take on a little bit more than you would do as an interim. But again, as long as it's checking back in with the boss and they're in agreement that this is what I am going to do, A, B, C, X, Y, Z, I'm going to leave to one side and me and making sure that that's, that's agreed and understood by everybody.

When you say that, do you mean that's more like, oh, here's a three year project and you go actually I shouldn't probably get involved in that because I'm not going to be here for three years.

Something.

Yeah, that's it, that's it. Or indeed, you know, you want me to do 10 things but actually, you know, I can do these five things really well. Let me get those done and we can come back and look at the other five things later on rather than go in and try and take all 10 things on. And if you're only going to be there 12 months, you might run out of time.

That's a great piece of advice actually. Again, it's not for want of doing, you want to get the 10 done but you're like actually just be realistic and you know, this is a Treasury professional.

Yeah, that's it.

Okay. And then bring us up today. What was the, the new challenge?

So the new challenge, I am continuing to sell things to consumers but moving slightly away from the high street. So a company called Kingfisher, which is an international home improvement company, they have five, what they call retail banners, the most well known of which are B and Q, the UK and Ireland and Castorama in France. So five of these banners operating in eight countries across Europe. So Kingfisher is a component of the FTSE 100 index and you know, very much backed sort of towards the, the size of company that I've typ worked with in the past. So the profile of treasury at Kingfisher is a lot more closely aligned with some of my skills and experience prior to being with wba. So as I say, some really good experience at WBA but getting back much more closely to the type of treasury profile that I've worked in previously.

And so as we wrap up today's show. It's been amazing to catch up with yourself as well. We talked about either the weathering the challenges, because obviously that was based on your Thomas Cook background and everything else and, well, we'll keep that title, but the challenges for your next steps. You know, what recommendations, we gave some takeaways before, but any further reflections, like, now crumbs. We've been through Covid, we've done everything else. If you look back over that time, we're three years later. What would you say?

Well, I think again, thinking back to how I felt finishing at Thomas Cook, obviously quite sort of bruised by what was a really tough experience there for all involved. And Weathering the Challenges was a great title at that time. I think most of your listeners will now be feeling much the same, having gone through the last few years. So we're all a lot better these days at weathering the challenges, and I think we all expect those challenges to continue. We're just in this sort of permanent state of change, permanent state of challenge, being hit by various external factors, whether it's sort of geopolitical conflict or political disruption, climate crisis, all of these things that we need to continue to make sure that treasury remains agile and resilient against nothing. For me, that the big challenge is to make sure that we as treasurers can, you know, we keep looking for opportunities to expand our influence. We've got to make sure that we keep the day job and all of the core treasury activities on track. But let's make sure that we are working with our business partners to continue to keep treasury aligned with the business strategy as that evolves. And business strategies will inevitably evolve to deal with all of the challenges that are being faced. And I think the one area that I would pick out is all of the, the sustainability challenges that are going on. And, yeah, this isn't something that is directly treasury or, you know, it touches every part of the business, but I think it's a great opportunity for treasurers to use their financial and risk management skills and rigor, work with, and, you know, secure credibility across, across the wider organization. So I'd really encourage everyone to get involved in whatever their businesses are doing around sustainability and broader ESG activities, because I think there's some, some really valuable treasury skills that we can, we can bring to our colleagues there.

Fantastic. Thank you, Chris, for another great show. Another good update. Yeah, keep, keep resilient out there. I think we'll stick with that one. Yeah, great words and thanks very much, sir. And look forward to catching up soon.

That's great. Thanks everyone. Thanks Mike.

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.