Chris Corner reflects on his treasury career through major acquisitions and restructuring. He emphasizes how adaptability and forward-thinking helped him navigate challenges and grow in the role.
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 and 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 four 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'm an insurance treasury specialist. I wanted to get out and see another sector 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. 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 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.
