Forging Ahead in Treasury with Todd Yoder

So welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week, talk to treasurers about how they've built their careers, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next and this week's show. Delighted to be joined by Todd Yoder, Director of Global Corporate treasury at Fluorg Corporation. Now founded in 1912, Fluor Corporation is a global engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction and maintenance company headquartered in the US they work across the world, headquartered in Texas, revenues of approaching 20 billion I think it was in 2018, 53,000 employees across 100 countries. So a truly global multinational. So you're going to hear from Todd a little bit later on in the show exactly what the company is about and some of the different things that he gets involved in in his role as the Director of Global Corporate treasury there. But as with all these shows, I want to get straight into the guest chat and go right back to the very beginning for Todd. So Todd, tell us about how your career got started and how you discovered the wonderful world of treasury, if you would so maybe go out to college and then bring us through to the modern day as it were. Over to you.

Mike, thank you for reaching out and inviting me to participate in your podcast. I'm a fan of the podcast and so very honored to be a part of it. This is a great opportunity, I think, you know, as a treasurer in this stage of my career, to do some reflection. So this has been a good exercise for me. So my, I started out as a, as a kid growing up, my dad owned a construction company and so I grew up as a, as a kid on the construction site and my dad being an entrepreneur. I got an educated from a very young age about running your own business and how that works and some of the challenges that come along with it. So that's kind of really the start of my business entrepreneurial education. I did go to university right after high school, but I was eager to join the workforce and I was really, really fortunate that I was able to find a part time job as an accounts payable clerk. It was for a privately held chain of high end retail jewelry stores. So it was a very interesting position and it got a lot more interesting over the six years I was there. But it gave me an opportunity to get exposure to accounting and more of the business and entrepreneurial and actually led to, by the time I left that company six years later, I had grown to almost being a business partner to the owners of the business at One point I remember being 25 years old and responsible for 15 direct reports and under them another 150 or so indirect reports at 25 years old. And this group of people was a very diverse group of people, ranged in age from 20 to 60 years old. So very diverse group of people. But it was kind of a crash course very early on in how to manage people and how to get the best out of people on how to have some of those hard conversations. I can remember being in my 20s and having to let people go from the business. And at that age that was a tough thing to do, but it was very, very good education.

And what tips would you give people? There might be people listening today, 25, 28 year old treasury analysts or senior treasury analysts managing someone. And then things change. There might be a Treasury manager and thinking, oh, finance manager, I've, you know, things are changing, I've got to let them go. Or, you know, how do you process that? How do you deal with that sort of thing?

Yeah, well, you know, I was young and I didn't have an instruction book on how to do it. The owners of the business, they, you know, they just kept challenging me and stretch goals and giving me more and more responsibility. So that part of the job was something that I learned, you know, as I went. And the first one I can remember was very, very tough to do. You know, you learn to stick. What is the objective of the company and how does the person fit into the role? You know, just because it's not a good fit for you in this position, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It could be a great opportunity for you to find something that maybe you're more excited about, that's more meaningful to you. I always say it's kind of a mantra. There's a famous psychologist, I think his name is Rao. And a lot of what he talks about, he speaks at a lot of the Ivy League schools, is, you know, perspective. And perspective is, you know, with anything that happens to you in life, it can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. And a lot of times people, you know, they focus on, oh, this is a bad thing. I was asked to leave my job. But things can be a good thing and they can be a bad thing. And you don't know, no one knows until the future comes. And I haven't met anyone yet that can predict the future. So when something happens to you, just put it in perspective and use that mantra, this could be a good thing thing, this could be a bad thing. So I'M going to drive on and we'll see where it goes from here.

And then you, you left that role and that obviously sounds really sort of prepare you for some of the other treasury roles. And you sort of moved into that treasury position, but then you joined, is that right? Zimmer, is that, that, is that the.

Next move from there? September 11, 2001 and the bottom kind of dropped out of the luxury goods market. Been here six years and they've challenged me a lot. But what can I do for a different company and a different opportunity? And so I was kind something different. And so I joined a marketing company as the controller head of finance. And I learned a lot at that company about branding and how important branding is and you know, objectives and strategies and tactics and touch points and you know, the entire world of branding. In addition to the finance roles I had there. And so I was running finance, I was setting up credit, senior credit facilities and real estate for the company as it expanded. And while I was there working a lot with the banks, I thought I want to learn the banking side of the business. So I decided to take a role in banking and I went into a commercial credit role and so analyzing commercial credits and working with CFOs on their businesses and putting together presentations for our board of directors on loan proposals and different funding mechanisms. And I did a lot of things for the bank as far as loan loss reserves and fed funds and borrowing. So it was a great, great experience. But about a year into that I decided it was time for graduate school. And so in the mid-2000s, I enrolled an MBA program at the University of Notre Dame. And I left the bank lucky enough to to have a professor who spent around 20 years at McDonald's in their treasury group and he taught international business. And I kind of fell in love with treasury and international business at that point. The end of my degree, I found a position in treasury with Zimmer Orthopedic Company. It's a multinational company and more of a manufacturing type environment where they manufacture hips and knee replacements and they have a trauma division and a dental division. And so I was tossed into to a lot of really fun stuff there at Zimmer.

And then with that role it was obviously very international treasury if you like, you know, looking at some of your previous stuff you'd touched on cash management, liquidity and everything else. But that was a more formalized treasury position as such. We'll talk later on again in the show about your thirst for knowledge and everything else. But you did that role. You Moved through it and then you took the next role at Whirlpoint. But what did Zimmer give you? If you like in treasury terms, that's in your, in your back pocket, as it were.

Yeah, Zimmer, you know, so I'm approaching my 30s at that point and Zimmer had a culture of, it was kind of a sink or swim culture. My first week at Zimmer they asked me to hey, we want to buy a jet. It's $23 million and we want to know if we should buy this or we should lease it. Financing implications and consequences. There's tax to consider and what are those impacts? And Tuesday, today, on Friday, we want you to present to the CFO on what the recommendation is and why, what the impacts are. And so it was a great challenge and the sink or swim environment was perfect for me at that point in my career and I latched onto it. So it was working hard and I made it through that, I guess and passed that initial test and then it was okay. We have cash management globally. We have four major banking hubs around the world and we want you to run cash management, we want you to run short term investments and we have a 2 to 3 billion dollars at any given time FX hedging portfolio and we want you to run that as well. So it was a very small group with a big responsibility, a lot of work to do. And so I got a chance to, to get really into the hedge accounting. The impacts and you know, being a manufacturing type environment, you know, they're looking at year over year impacts from foreign currency and then they're looking at plan versus actual impacts. That's a big focus. And then so how are we performing and do we want to use vanilla forward contracts or do we want to use options? What are the pros and cons of that? And back in those days it was call up three different banks and trade off the spot and then, you know, and then move and trade into the forward curve. It wasn't a nice digital platform with a lot of auto pricers on the other side. And it was a different, different environment back then.

And then you did three years there, but moved on to join what was Anthem. So you again, health industry, you know, orthopedics and healthcare and things. But actually you joined a healthcare benefits company. You know, maybe talk about if you were just a how that was different or similar, you know, obviously some maybe crossovers, but in treasury terms, pretty different drivers for the business, would that be right?

Absolutely. It's all about net interest Income in the insurance business. And so when I was leaving Zimmer, I was given an opportunity to head up FP&A for a hips and trauma division of the business. And a lot of that was working with the marketing and presidents of those business lines. So that was great experience. As part of that, toward, towards the end of that, I was asked to move into a controller role, which is where I had been earlier in my career. I really loved treasury and at that point spending a year away from treasury decided I wanted to get back into Treasury. And it was kind of one of those things in the company when you're given an opportunity, it's a good idea to take it. If you don't take it, it's a black mouth. Yeah, yeah. And so I thought, you know, it's best just to part on very good terms. And I, at the same time I had an opportunity, a recruiter reached out for capital markets with wellpoint. It was one of the largest insurance companies in the world with about $70 billion in revenue, $14 billion in cash while I was there. And we had 10 million with external managers and 4 billion internally and then a debt portfolio of around 9 to $10 billion. Good opportunity to come in. And I did a lot of hedging, pre hedging on debt issuance and there we had had discussions back when I was at Zimmer about doing a. But wellpoint was a seasoned issuer and so I had the first opportunity, hands on to lead a debt issuance with the treasurer there. So it was extremely good experience. I hedged in interest rate derivatives while I was there and got to build out the company's first foreign currency hedging program. They had recently acquired some business in Europe. Part of the claims process, when you're traveling outside of the US and there's a claim, how does foreign currency come into impact? So I was able to build that out for the company. $4 billion worth of shares that we repurchased just in a 12 month period over $4 billion. So accelerated share repurchase programs and how they work. So it was a lot of fun. It was great, great experience. The treasurer there, a University of Chicago MBA and one of those true geniuses that you run into in your career that definitely leave a mark and a positive mark. So it was to me, going into work and working, having the opportunity to work with him was, was really a lot of fun and I was loving it.

Yeah. And then the move. What, why move then if you made these, you know, these roles were in Indiana and Things like that. And then you made a move to Texas. You know, how did you got this inspirational, you know, boss and everything else, continuing the growth of your career. Was it just that the number one job came up or how come you moved?

It was one of those things where you get the call from the recruiter. And I usually will take those calls because I think it's an opportunity to learn. So they asked me if I would have a call with the treasurer of Fluor Corporation. And surprisingly, by the end of the conversation, she was so impressive that I agreed to fly down to Texas, just outside of Dallas here, where we're headquartered, and meet with her and some other people from the company that she wanted me to meet as well.

Sorry. As a tip for people, what would. When you say she. Well, it sounds like she hooked you. You know, you've been baited a little bit. And they said, you know, what was it about that conversation? Now, again, this is to give tips to the listening audience. What was it there that just grabbed your interest and said, right, I'm getting on the plane. You know, what happened?

It was just her knowledge of treasury, and she described to me where she was at and where she was taking the treasury organ and really what she needed to build out the hedging strategy for the company. They hadn't issued debt in around 20 years, and so they were planning to do a debut debt issuance, seeing balance sheet impact. We had the discussion about how in your procurement, in your supply chain, people push currency risk. So if you have a procurement, a buyer or a contracts manager, they push currency risk downstream, and they think they're doing a great job. But what they don't realize is a lot of times they're paying a contingency, and sometimes those can be really expensive in order to push that risk down. So we just had a really, really good conversation. She's super intelligent. You know, she wanted me to meet the controller of the business and some of the other finance executives and treasury executives. And so I thought, you know, this is worth taking a little time away from work and going down and having the conversation and to learn a little bit more. Building something from the ground up at that stage was really hard to ignore.

The company itself. Again, people can look it up. But just in a nutshell, how would you describe Fluor?

Yeah, so Fluor Corporation, it's an engineering, procurement, construction, fabrication and maintenance and services business. You know, at Fluor, we build some of the world's most complex projects from, like, the San Francisco Bay Bridge is a project Fluor did we build mines, copper mines? We've done diamond mines. Gordie Howe Bridge project with the LA People Mover project and then oil refineries We've done, we're currently finishing up some, some very large oil refineries in Kuwait and then the fabrication business we have for large module construction in China. So we have our hands in a lot of different areas and it's a. We're all over the world and in some of the most remote places. We recently announced a project in Mozambique called the ROVU project which is $65 billion I think is one of the estimates I heard and recently discussions on approvals of around $30 billion. And so one piece of that we have a limited notice to proceed with with some of our joint venture partners. So Fluor is just a very, very global business. It's different from so Zimmer you have a manufacturing environment. Treasury, a manufacturing environment is very, very different than like a Fluor corporation where we're. And so these are a lot of, you know the mega projects can be 15 plus billion dollar projects. So the way I look at them is they're almost like standalone companies. You know we have a CFO and a CEO. We call them project directors and finance managers but really they're to me they're CFO and CEO roles. It's a lot of projects that a project may be three to five years in length and then they move to a different part of the world and there's a lot going on, there's a dull moment. It's not like a manufacturing environment where you kind of get into a rhythm on things. And I say it's a lot easier than an animal like Fluor from a Treasury perspective.

And if anyone looks you up on the web as I did and did the pre research for yourself, they will see and we talked about this before the show that a key thing I noticed about Todd and from this research was if you like your obsessive thirst for knowledge, that's the right way to put it. You know, what drives that, why bother? Because will see videos where you talk about FX risk mitigation. More recently it's about robotics and AI which we can move into. But why are you so driven for that thing? What is it about that that makes you go I want to learn more about that? What's that part of you? If you like.

But I think that's just, you know, everyone's wired differently and for some reason I'm wired to have an insatiable thirst for, for knowledge and understanding on topics that I'm interested in. So if I have interest in a certain area, I can't stop until I feel like I have a very good understanding of how it works and behind the curtain and what's really going on.

So when you were growing up, when you went on the building site and you'd have making your shift bricks and things like that, were you taking apart radios and things like that, or was that something? Looking at, how does this work?

Yeah, you must have done some really good research. And my mother loves to tell the story. One year I got a BB gun for my birthday and I was really fascinated by this BB gun. So I wanted to find out how it worked. So I took it apart piece by piece, took it apart to see how it worked. And then she realized that no one in the family knew how to put it back together. But to me, I figured out how it worked at the end of the day, the day. So I was happy, you know. Then later on I did the same thing with a telephone. Back when we used to have, you know, the telephones and they dial, so I had to take analog ones and stuff. Yeah. So I was like, yeah.

And now you do the same in adulthood with treasury. You're taking it to bits and you're saying, well, look, you know, can we now streamline this? And again, this is one of the other things that again, if people look at your background, they might say, oh, is he, you know, more an IT systems driven type treasurer? And I don't think you are when again from our discussions, but it was more the use of IT more in a practical sense than that. Again, we talked about the fact that you want to use it, you want to use automation to make your job as a treasurer more interesting. Would that be the right way to describe it?

Would you say, there are a lot of opportunities out there right now and I'm not an IT expert, so definitely have to cover that. I don't even play one on tv. That is not my forte. But with robotic process automation and APIs, artificial intelligence, which is a very general term and it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. But, you know, one of the things I was very interested in is Jeff Bezos and how, I think it was around 10 years ago or more when he came out and basically said, you know, if you're a business division and you're creating data and you're not creating an API with your function and your data so that it can be accessed easily and efficiently and streamlined by other parts of the business, you no longer have a job that has turned out pretty well for him. He's gained some wealth from that perspective. And I think that is where there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. When I think a lot of treasurers, I think when they hear API because there's the buzzword bingo out there, right? I think look at Gartner and the overhyped artificial intelligence and where it's at. But APIs are not just real time banking information PSD2, but open APIs are. They are a conduit to do a lot of amazing things, not just with the banking partners, but internally within your organization to be able to pull different and at Fuller. We're a very complex company with a lot of moving pieces and we have some of the best engineers in the world and we have some of the best buyers, supply chain and then construction, you know, some of the best construction workers that actually build these projects in the world. So the company has some of the best people in the world, but it's a very complex organization. And so the communication between all of these different moving pieces is critical. And so I think there is a lot of opportunity. And treasury, you know, tends to be involved with the fintechs and the innovation and technology that's out there. And so sometimes we are the ones that kind of bring ideas into the organization and talk about how it can benefit the organization and learn from those other business functions and discipline. Does this make sense? How would this improve your role within the organization and make things more efficient?

And looking at that sort of future drive and different things, is that the big push? Do you see that? Treasurers again? Sometimes when I talk to treasurers, we sort of look at the interface between yourself and the CFO and. And you're being used a lot of the time as the point man for the cfo. So that there's all these different technologies, there's all these different initiatives coming to us as a company. Can you lead out in the front and filter this for me? Is that what you're finding your role is similar to?

In some ways, I think my role here at Fluor and I've taken on a lot of that. So I'm involved with. We have a blockchain steering committee that we formed a couple years ago. We have a smart infrastructure steering committee and then we have innovation programs, innovation and transformation programs. But I think my role, because when I came into Fluor, my objective was to learn the business because in order to be effective in the treasury role, I think, you know, you have to have a servant's heart. But you have to lead without fear and live without regret. But I went out and made built relationships with different business functions across the world and in different countries and really did a lot of listening and a lot less talking to learn what are the challenges that they're facing, what are some potential opportunities for the organization to make those improvements and utilize technology to do that.

So, Todd, moving on, as we approach the end of today's show, if you like, what we will do is we'll put the link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So if it's worthwhile connecting with Todd and and he feels it's good to have you in his network, feel free. But you look back over your career and people can see that on LinkedIn. For instance, what would you say or what advice would you give to some of the listeners today? So they might be treasury analysts, managers or coming up the curve or other treasurers and developing their treasury teams and things. But just looking back at you and your career, what the fundamentals for you and the advice you'd give to other treasury professionals to, you know, have a similar background to you, would you say?

Yeah, I would say be humble. Humility, I think, is extremely important. There's always so much that you can learn and it really doesn't matter what stage of your career that you're in. If you have the right approach and the right attitude and you're humble and you have some humility, you can always learn. And so learning to me, especially when it's new technologies and stuff that you're not akin to, it's just a great opportunity. The other one would be lead without fear. So never let fear drive your decisions. So never be afraid to share your experience and your perspective on things. And the other thing I say, I'm a firm believer in your career. People don't make your career for you, you make your career. I think that was early in my career, I thought you go in and you work really, really hard. You work harder than everyone else and you do really good work. And then your career gets managed by your supervisors. And that's not the reality. Once I grasped and understood that you make your own career, those supervisors and those business leaders, they don't have the time to make your career for you and show you the next steps. So you have to take that initiative to think, you know, this is what I do, this is my job. How can I bring value to the business? What can I do that is creative, that is using my skills, my education, my experience, my perspective to bring value to the business and then run with it and show those supervisors and leaders that you can take that initiative and you make your own career. You're Wayne Gretzky or one of them. You know, that said, you miss every shot that you don't take, so don't be afraid to take the shot.

What a wrap up. Amazing. That was great advice there from Todd Yoder. As I say, we'll put his details in the show notes. Great. Thank you for today's show, Todd. I really enjoyed it. As we said just slightly earlier on as well, we will be doing some further sort of special edition shows as well, because each and every week we talk to treasurers like Todd about their careers. And that's fantastic. And that's what people want and they come to expect. And we said it's like coming to a cookery show. And that's what we, you know, we show you how to cook or we show you how a treasurer got to where they are. But you don't want to turn it on. And it will be about wine or about beer. You know, what we want to do is keep it the focus on careers. But we're going to do some other special edition shows. Todd's kindly agreed to be one of the guests on that and we might ask questions about it, about different developments in treasury and things. So guys out there, keep listening. But again, Todd, amazing to talk to you today. Thanks for your time. I'm sure there'll be a flood of LinkedIn requests to connect with you, so good luck. Just been a pleasure. Thank you, sir. Thanks for your time.

All right. Thank you, Mike. It's been an honor to participate in your podcast. I'm a big fan and so looking forward to a future conversation with you.

Thank you, sir. Many thanks.