From Banking to Treasury: The Career Move That Seemed Like a Step Back But It Wasn’t

Coming up on this episode of the.

Treasury Career Corner podcast, the sacrifice that I'd have to make at that point in time in my career was going to be on the compensation front and the title front. And I was okay with that because I am a true believer in playing the long game. If you have to step sideways or potentially even step backwards in order to position yourself for longer term success in an area that you really want to work in, your passion is in. So when you, when I thought about that move, because I don't think it's easy for everyone to take a pay cut or take a title cut, they feel like, I've worked this hard, why would I step backwards again? Careers are long and if you're thinking about kind of the end goal as to where you want to get to to make a transition like that, I would do it 100 out of a hundred times over again. I had this friend of mine when we were younger who had this theory that every game of solitaire could be won. But the reason I say that is because I think a corporate career can be on that parallel. If you play your hand correctly, if you realize the opportunity in the moment and you handle it correctly, you're going to have a very successful career.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Let's get on with the show. In this week's show, I'm delighted we're joined by Keith Galb, the vice president and assistant treasurer at Bristol Myers Whip, a lovely colleague of Sandra Ramos Alves, who's been here before. She's been on the podcast a couple of times. Lovely lady Keith works alongside Sandra and she said to me, Keith's great. You've got to get him on your show. I was like, right, but we'll put a link to those shows in the show notes. But to let you guys know, Bristol's Myers Squibb are a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients around the world get over and prevail over serious diseases, built a sustainable pipeline of potential therapies. You'll hear this if you go back to listen some of the other ones as well. But Bristol Mars Group Global Pharmaceutical, which Keith is going to explain a bit more about a bit later on in the show. But Keith, over to you, sir. How did your Career, get started and how you got started in finance and then treasury over to you.

Sure. First, thanks for having me on, Mike. Love the show. I think it's a great platform for treasury folks to talk about what's our passion. It's interesting because my early career path, I started it at Lehman Brothers, I was in banking and I had an internship in an accounting group. And then they offered me a full time job. And then the middle, maybe a year into that full time job, the SBP of that area called me and just said, look, I get the sense that maybe you'd like to do some things outside of accounting. Are you interested in other areas of the firm? And I said, absolutely. Certainly young enough. Let's, let's see what else is out there. And he said, I know the treasurer pretty well. I know head of the controller. I'll send your resume over there and let's see what comes back. Treasurer called immediately and said we had three open roles. Have him come over, we can interview and we can see if he's a fit for one. So I went over there, I interviewed for all three. I ended up finding the asset and Liability management role the most engaging and they agreed and they offered me the position, which I accepted. Now what's interesting is that the controller then circled back and said, wait a second, I was traveling to Japan. I didn't see this email. We have open roles, certainly always looking for young talent. And by that time I'd already accepted and I didn't want to go back on that. So I often sometimes look back and think how different a career I might have had had I got that controller and spoke to them about their open roles. But I have absolutely zero regrets. I worked in Treasury Lehman in a variety of different roles. Asset and liability management, interest risk rate management and liquidity management as well. And then from there I moved actually into the front office, sales and trading. And then the financial crisis hit and the career kind of took a path, a different path from there?

Well, just from there. Well, it's actually the nice linkage, actually. So when I first started in treasury recruitment, they were like, I said, what's Treasury? And they said, we don't know, here's all these treasury guys. And I was like, okay. So I started getting no treasury similar way. And the first two roles I've recruited were two heads of alm. And back in the time when you could barely find out the books about it. So head of ALM for Barclays, head of ALM for NatWest. I sure learned very quickly, but can you explain for the listeners, asset liability management is the group risk and the bank's balance sheet, not the external balance sheet. Can you just give them a quick potted history or explanation? If someone's listening today and they're a Treasury, corporate treasury person, they go, hang on, how does that relate to corporate Treasury? It does, but it's the corporate treasury within the bank. So how would you explain it?

Yeah, that's right. So this is going back into the early 2000s. Certainly things may have evolved within the banking infrastructure since then, but asset and liability management, back when I was doing the role was exactly right. We were primarily looking after the company's liabilities from the long term debt, short term borrowing side as well as the cash investing side. We monitored the maturities, we looked at the debt maturity profile, we identified any risk within it, we looked at the cash, we did all the reporting on the investments, ensuring that we were liquidity properly funded. Anything related to that nature, anytime there was an external borrowing, we made sure that the infrastructure was set up. We ensured that all the securities were properly booked within the TMS and that they flowed through to the company's ERP system. It was a really great early hands on look and what was really beneficial for that, which kind of set the tone for my entire career, is I got to focus very singular and we talk a lot about inch wide, mile deep. It was really that kind of expertise. Being singular focused proved really beneficial because after I rotated out of ALM and into interest rate risk management and then liquidity management, I just got to spend a year plus in these singular focused disciplines that when I moved into more of a broader treasury function on the corporate side, I felt I was really well prepared from the time that I spent in banking on that. And it's still, even though it was very early on in my career, was absolutely invaluable experience.

And can you then you and I know it. 2008 Lehman's crisis for New Start crumbs. Yeah, that's crazy. 17 years ago I was there.

Yeah.

We were six years into the business, treasury recruitment company and luckily for us, the one lucky thing, we didn't do very much banking recruitment. We still do. We do more corporate treasury recruitment with the corporates, but it affected everyone. You were there though, at the coalface. What was that like? Or can you explain what it was in a nutshell in your simplest terms?

Yeah, at the highest level, I look back sometimes and still wonder if it was a mismanagement of risk or misunderstanding of risk. It goes back to the Very basic when you think about mortgages playing its part. It was a really interesting idea of mortgage securitization, bundling up mortgages and then selling them as securities. And these securities were usually backed by the US government. And then we moved into this model where we became private label and the quality of the loans themselves got called into question. And eventually it. It was a type of situation that really infected, really impacted the entire chain. Because if you think about it, the homeowners themselves were probably getting put into mortgages that maybe they couldn't afford. They had teaser rates and things like that. And then you look at the mortgage underwriters that were assuming a lot of risk, lending out these risky loans. They were involved in the chain. The banks were then buying up these loans, looking to securitize them and then ultimately sell them to bond investors. So. So when the financial crisis hit, not only did it impact that chain, it really started to dive into all areas of the US economy. Freezing, liquidity, unemployment, skyrocketing. It was a really concerning time. And ultimately it was a true testament that the economy was able to recover and move on. But it certainly was a very scary period in time. And for someone that had been in banking, had only knew banking and jobs similar to the ones that I had were getting eliminated left and right. It was absolutely a concerning time.

So what then happened? Because you made a couple of moves, you just merc, but then straight back into Barclays Capital. Just talk us through.

Yeah. So at that time, it was interesting. I applied for a Treasury job at Shearing Plow. Unfortunately, that role had already been offered to someone by the time I got into the pool. But my resume got flagged by someone. My resume got flagged by someone in that recruiting process that was looking for a dedicated finance person to work in their marketing department. So I accepted that job. Just saying, look, I. I just need to work at this time period it was interesting is my first day at Shearing Plow was the day that Merck bought them. So I didn't even. I was getting dressed in the morning. I wasn't even sure if I was supposed to go in, but I was there for a year. They were going through the acquisition, and at that point in time, someone that I had worked very closely with at Lehman Brothers had gone over to Barclays and was building out his team, and he asked me if I wanted to come over. So I returned to Barclays there. And at that point in time, you saw, it was a really interesting look into company culture. And I'm sure it's all been sorted out now. But you had two institutions in Barclays and Lehman that probably had very different styles and viewed the world in a very different way. So cultural wise and stylistic wise. It was just maybe not quite the perfect fit for me. And that was really the point in time where I started thinking about what else do I want to do in my career and do I want to remain in banking or do I want to do something else? And right around that time period, I started realizing how much I actually missed some of the treasury work I was doing because I was in a little bit of a different capacity at Barclays and I started thinking about what my path back to treasury might look like and how we can facilitate that.

And so you made that move or you and I had a. We had our pre show chat. You then you'd been there three years and you thought. And again we talked about the fact that I get approached lots of the time by lots of banking individuals, say hey, I can do Treasury, I can go into corporate Treasury. I'm like, yeah you can, but you'd have to come back down. And then across and they're like. And in fact this week's newsletter was about exactly that or focused in a little bit on that. Can you talk us through that decision making process? Because it was a great conversation you and I had.

Yeah, it is definitely not easy. And that's not even just from banking to corporate. That could really be any industry switch. It comes with a little bit of a transition period and may even come with some sacrifices. And when in my instance I had worked in banking at that point in time for around 12 years, I had established myself in more of a leadership position. But I realized that I was going to be crossing over an entirely different sector, certainly different business treasury set up differently. And the willingness to do that, the sacrifice that I'd have to make at that point in time in my career was going to be on the compensation front and the title front. And I was okay with that because we could certainly expand on this. I am a true believer in playing the long game. At that point in time I had worked 12 years. I figured I'm going to work another 30. And if you have to step sideways or potentially even step backwards in order to position yourself for longer term success in an area that you really want to work in, your passion is in and for me, a chance. The company that I was going to work for was a spin out. It was an animal health company called Zoetis. They were spinning out of Pfizer and Their treasury department was in the infancy stages and I'm one that type of person likes to continuously challenge yourself. And I looked and said this thing needs to be built. Like how cool of an opportunity is this? Most of the times you step into a role and someone's done it for some period of time and you make it your own. You put the changes, but rarely do you walk into a role where your CFO on the first day is saying, what should our credit rating be? And it was really grassroots and just an awesome experience. So when I thought about that move because I don't think it's easy for everyone to take a pay cut or take a title cut. They feel like, I've worked this hard, why would I step backwards again? Careers are long and if you're thinking about kind of the end goal as to where you want to get to to make a transition like that, I would do it 100 out of 100 times over again.

And Zoetis Animal healthcare or just talk through if you would the business because then also I wanted to go through the, as you say, the playbook. So if someone's in a similar situation, they're joining a company like that and it's a blank. You open the book and hang on, the pages are blank. How did you do it? How did you go about it?

Yeah. So the business of Zoet is animal health. There are some similarities to human health, but the big difference obviously is the medications are for companion animals and livestock. And the difference there is, there's really not the insurance company dynamic. It's really direct to consumer model. They sell directly into the veterinarians and the livestock producers. And very similar to way a consumer stable product would price. If the market deems its value and can pay for it, then that's where the price is. If not, you have to make kind of price adjustments. And they also don't have quite the same challenges that the human health have with loe, which stands for loss of exclusivity. You take a company like Bristol Myers, the other large pharmaceutical companies that have significant revenue generating products, the moment they're the, they lose exclusivity on that brand. There's going to be generic companies that come in and flood the market and instantly causing price reductions for the current manufacturer. Animal health's a little bit different. You have the generic dynamic. But since the products themselves don't usually gross the amount that some of the larger human health products, the generic companies will typically spend their resources trying to replicate more of the human health side. So the LOE is not as, is not as prominent a dynamic in that space. And then in terms of how I went in there, it was really just with some humility go in there understanding that you don't know everything. Like I was a banking guy. I felt really confident in my technical skill set when it came to capital structure and derivatives and liquidity management strategies. But it's a whole new business, it's a whole new industry. It's a, a company that manufactures and sells tangible products versus very different from the banking model. And then going in and thinking about how to establish things had a lot of conversations. What should the company look like? A lot of pure benchmarking. How do we want to set this up? Conversations with banks, research on companies that had been spun out before. And then ultimately it is some of the most rewarding work I've ever done in my entire life because those opportunities are few and far between. And even though it was a public company, you'll feel that kind of private sense of ownership. Look what we built. All of this wasn't here when we started and that was my responsibility was in Treasury. But same thing could be said for FP and A and commercial finance and manufacturing finance. It was a group of people that kind of collectively came together to build something. And even though I'm no longer with the company, I still actively follow them. And a lot of good friends and former colleagues there, they're doing fantastic. And it was just, it really built my skill set for the role that I'm in now.

And you were there for nearly a decade. So what were the, some of the most complex transactions you did or was it all easy? You just surely just go to the market, say we're healthcare. Great, thanks very much. Easy. Easy street.

Yeah, I would probably never use the word easy in any role I've had. I don't necessarily think any professional should seek out easy. I think part of the excitement around the line of work that you're in is that you want to challenge yourself. And I would say the overarching hardest part is there were no other standalone animal health companies at the time. So let's just say it's you're spinning out, you know, a company in the human health space. There's maybe a non core asset and a large pharma is spinning them out. There might be some standalone companies that you can compare yourself to. Zoetis didn't have that. We were really unique in that phase. So getting into kind of okay, how predictable are our cash flows, how much debt can actually is needed to support the business. And then when you're a, when you're a newly spun company, you're usually left relatively highly levered and very little liquidity. That kind of usually dividended up to the parents. So you, you looked at it in phases. Okay, what are very compartmentalized like Gantt chart almost. What does the first one to two years look like? What does the first two to four year look like? And then you start thinking about, okay, now that you start getting more evolved, like what should our financial policy be? Do we want to be a dividend paying company? Do we want to be a company that's heavily focused on M and A? Do we want to move up the credit spectrum and be an A rated company and try to reduce interest expense? So it was really more just about trying to align what we were doing in treasury with the overall operations of the company and the strategic direction that management really saw us moving in. So we tried to make sure that we positioned ourselves to be very agile and that we can move with the business, we could support business growth. But we also were certainly very good risk management and core disciplines on the treasury front.

And then you evolved that role and went into the investor relations and I know you said you had a blast there because you enjoyed that out with, you know you do anyway that you're very affable and when we met and everything else, you're outgoing, you talk to people. What was that like for you going out with that messaging around strategy and you've talked about that and getting it right, as you say, over planning. But now you've got to. How did that change for you being in investor relations?

Yeah. So it's interesting but you could certainly have a discussion how long is appropriate to stay in enroll. I think I tend to stay on the longer side and I'll certainly debate people that think you should rotate quite frequently. I do think there's advantages and disadvantages of both. But the reason I stayed in the treasury role for so long is I just felt like the work wasn't done. It wasn't to the place that I wanted to hand it off to someone else. Our cfo who was a great mentor of mine, he had offered me a few different roles during that core period. One was in commercial finance, one was in FP&A. And I just kept telling him, I just feel, feel like the job is not done. And he said, okay, when the job is done, you let me know and we'll get you something to do. And then when there was movement going on and a position in IR Opened up, he called me and he said, look, I don't know if the job is done or not, but I've got a role that I think you can really excel in. And I really think you give a hard look at it. And that was an ir. And I met with the head of IR who's still there today. Fantastic professional, great mentor for me in that space. Learned a lot from him. And I just found it very engaging. You're a spokesman for the company. You get to look into all of the business areas, really get on firm footing and understand the strategic direction of the company. You're framing the message, you're helping. You're managing up to your CFO and your CEO on how the external world is perceiving your company and what the messaging might be. And it was, it was one of those roles. I'll never forget it because my first month there, that head of IR said, look, I'm going to take calls with investors. You just listen in. And I listened in. And I remember thinking, there is absolutely no way that I am going to ever get to the level that he's on. And it was overwhelming. And there was obviously some fear that kind of sets in. But it's a really great lesson to anyone that tries to do something different. Don't worry about the vertical climb. Everyone's going to have to make it. There's going to be some growing pains, there's going to be some mistakes, but can you learn from them? Can you try to perfect your craft even though maybe nothing can be perfected? And then fast forward six months, eight months in, the comfort level became overwhelming. He started turning me loose to meet with more of our larger institutional investors on their own. And I really just enjoyed it. It was experience that I think I still to this day tell every young person I come across, try to rotate through a few different groups when the time is right. IR is one of them. Because the old expression, be comfortable being uncomfortable may not be more fitting than when you're in that role. If I go into a meeting with upper management now, I have a pretty good idea of the questions that they're going to ask. There's always a few curveballs and you can try to prepare for the ones they're going to ask and adapt on the fly to the curveballs. With IR and you're meeting external institutional investors, prospective investors, you have no idea what they're going to ask. So you're going in, you're prepared, you have a high level understanding, but when they start coming at you, you've got to be on your feet, thinking fast and make sure that you deliver the message that's consistent with the company's message and you move on through there. But great experience.

And so what happened next? What. How did you come and join Bristol Myers Group?

Yeah, so my two channels after that were treasury and ir. And I had a really great relationship with the treasurer and a really great relationship with the head of ir. And my understanding from conversations with them was just we're probably going to be in these roles for a considerable period of time. And while I was still extremely happy doing what I was doing in ir, I said I'll be on the lookout for the home run job, the absolute no brainer. And that's really a well said way of. I look at all career opportunities like I look for. I like to stay at companies for a while, grow within the organization, love the relationship you can build and getting into the work. But every now and again there's just going to be that opportunity that is just going to be impossible to turn down. And when the Bristol assistant treasurer role opened up and Sandra, obviously you've had on the show, some of my banking partners had nothing but the best things to say about her. I thought it was certainly something I should consider. And then as we got more into the interviewing process, understood the scope of the role, saw where Bristol was in the journey and again just a new challenge. It was one of those just absolutely cannot turn it down roles. It was really hard to leave a place like Zoetis. It's a great company, really well run, great colleagues. But I just felt for my personal development and the skill set that I wanted to build and the longer term career trajectory, that move was just the right one.

And how does it contrast? You've done obviously probably similar drivers sometimes as you say, Zoetz is brand new markets and things like that. What are the, the similarities and the contrast if you like, between the roles but actually the industries maybe and how that then affects treasury and things.

Probably the only similarities that I can think of is the technicals. Right. Bond issuances are bond issuances, FX derivatives, interest rate derivatives, cash strategies and liquidity management, things like that. All of those same principles apply. Once I got into the human health side, the scale of things was much different. Zoetis, we probably had about four, $5 billion, $6 billion of debt. Bristol Myers right now has probably somewhere in the upper 40s. Zoetis didn't have a very large FX program. We're about 9 billion at Bristol. The cash that we keep on the balance sheet is probably five times greater. Even the cross currency strategies for net investment hedging are larger. So everything is just more scale wise is larger. And then the other huge difference is the M and A dynamic. We talked a little bit earlier on. We talked about the loss of exclusivity, right? So you take a company like Bristol Myers, some of our key products are facing loss of exclusivity. I've heard our CFO say, very well said a few times, pharmaceutical companies reinvent themselves once every seven years or so as a new product start facing LOE and you have the new product ramping up. And those new products come from your investments in internal innovation as well as sourcing external innovation. We remain relatively active on the M and A front and treasury obviously plays a very significant role in that. So it the ability to come in and have a very significant grasp of the balance sheet. What our firepower could be, how we could deploy capital for growth, balancing it with shareholder distributions on the scale of a company like BMS was certainly a very large change for me. And again, I do not think you should take a role if you do not feel like it's going to challenge you. Everyone's got their different, everyone's got their different priorities in line. Some people will certainly look for compensation and title and quality of life and all these things and that's all important. But for someone like myself, like I want to be challenged, I don't think I'd want to take a role that I felt I didn't need to develop while I was in to do it efficiently.

And just going back to your role actually how do you split other responsibility areas? Because someone. So you're the VP and assistant treasurer. How's it split up? Obviously when we talk to Sandra, she's the treasurer overseas. How do you guys split up and how's that developed?

Yeah, so I would say the basic way to describe that is Sandra has several direct reports. So obviously within treasury our corporate insurance team is there. Sandra that's into Sandra directly. And then there's our cash management team that's into Sandra directly as well. And then I have the remaining items in Treasury. So that includes our capital markets group which is capital structure Initiatives. We do all of our cash flow forecasting and modeling. I oversee our Financial Risk management group which does our FX and interest rate hedging as well as our net investment hedging and liquidity management. We oversee the company's cash. I oversee our international treasury team which is obviously responsible for capitalizations and loans around the world. And Repatriation back to the US As a large US domicile multinational company, we operate in several markets around the world, but we look to bring the cash back to the US as efficiently as possible. And then our pensions and benefits team, so we look after the company's 401k plans and some of the legacy pension plans around the world as an opportunity to de risk them and things of that nature. So that's my core responsibility.

And when I talked to Sandra, I joked with her about winning awards because that's all she's about. That's all she wants. She wants the glory. But we were joking. It's about she and I have talked about you guys winning awards for innovation and for changing things. Why is that important? Or from your, your seat, if you like. What is, what have you overseen, if you like, for that side of things?

Yeah, I don't think the rewards are necessarily something that we just seek out. I think the rewards are a byproduct of the way that we manage our treasury team and what's core to us. And what I mean by that is there are certain areas within treasury that could be very easy to implement and then just say, okay, that's done, let's move on to something else. And sure, we obviously are in the moving on to something else mole, but we never forget about the things that we've done. We constantly reassess what we've done in the past. And is there opportunities to effectively manage that now? I think a great example of that is some of the things that we do on our cash flow hedging program. So we have a large cash flow hedging program, obviously, as we sell in several different currencies outside the US and we use a combination of options and forwards to hedge those risks. But we also do a lot of restructuring around them. So these are transactions that we've put on in the past. We look at the current market value of them now we look at whether or not there's opportunities to, to restrike options into forwards at more favorable levels without compromising any risk for the companies. We just don't forget about things that we've done. We're always constantly challenging ourselves and reassessing. And one of the things I always say is just because something may not have been appropriate for us a year or two ago doesn't mean it's not appropriate for us now. And I think our interest rate hedging program is a great example of that. We started looking at interest rate hedging probably right around the time I Joined maybe even slightly before. I think risk management interest rate principles are obviously important but at the time it was a really tricky yield curve. You had an inverted yield curve so swaps were really expensive. But then you fast forward that was 2022 when you had the significant inflation, you had the Russia and Ukraine war starting. But then you look at in 2023 when you had started the disruption in the regional banks and you were going through the challenges with Credit Suisse. Our interest income forecast was being shifted by millions of dollars a day because we model it off the forward curve and as the risk in the banking sector started to get priced in market, put more rate cuts in there and then if things looked like they were stabilizing the rate cuts came out and it was just throwing our forecast all over the place. And we said look, we don't necessarily know if we're positioned properly from an interest rate standpoint. If interest rates go to zero, our interest income is going to follow and that's going to be a significant EPS hit to the company. We certainly rolled out this plan. We worked with our cfo, we talked about the value of interest rate hedging. He, he was fully on board with the strategy and we implemented the program. So this was something that we had looked at several years in the past. Couldn't get the timing right but we kept up the consistent, the kind of consistent assessment of that. And I think that's just a microcosm for the way that we look at things in treasury consistently reevaluating and reassessing.

And what difference do you feel that's made? Is it just that you've de risked it and when the CFO comes to your desk and go yeah, we've got that under control or why is that making such a difference?

Yeah, I think the reason it makes a difference is because I think most CFOs ours certainly wouldn't be different is when they report corporate earnings, I think they want those earnings to be about the operations of the company. And there are always things that could introduce some noise into the earnings picture. You could have FX risks, you could have interest rate risk, you could have other different dynamics. And in treasury we have tools at our disposal to try to mitigate or offset some of that risk, to really get more of a balanced profile and allow the earnings to be a representative of the business strength versus having it a muddied up picture in there. So I think what it's done is it's given us greater forecasting transparency with having some of that balance on there. So that when we're going through and we're bridging interest income and interest expense, we're providing these forecasts. It's a much easier story to follow and gives us a much more consistent picture.

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Yeah, from a technical standpoint, the current market environment is certainly maybe not for the faint of heart. You've got. You've got decisions coming from the Fed, you've got tariffs, you've got other geopolitical risks going on. There's significant volatility around the FX market. So certainly the technical aspect of making sure that you're positioned yourself properly and again that you know there's nothing maybe that you should be doing that you haven't done, that's certainly step one. I think the IT aspects and the use of AI in Treasury is a real big one certainly as I don't think resources have been growing. So looking for more automations and systems to free up people to do more of the analytical work is certainly beneficial and challenging at the same time. And then for me personally, I never managed a team this large before coming to Bristol Myers. I certainly had people report into me, but it was a large team. So in addition to mentoring some of the younger folks, ensuring that the technical skill set is to where we need it, you also have to make sure you're really trying to get people into their ideal career. Fit people that have come into treasury, they have all different aspirations. Some of them want to just grow and be a treasurer, some of them are happy in their current role, some of them want to rotate and see different things, some of them want to be CFOs. So when we think about our people aspect how do we position them in the right roles and lay out the right plan, get them the right developmental opportunities to make sure that we're setting them up on the best path to ultimately achieve their career aspirations. So that for me, because I had always been managed smaller teams, I was doing more of the hands on work and could focus more just about delivering the product. That's still important today, but making sure that the culture of the group and you're fostering careers is equally as important.

And how many are you managing now, people wise and what levels?

It's moved around a little bit, but let's just say about 10 and have everyone from senior managers up through senior directors and those there in between. It's a great group. A lot of treasury knowledge. So that's one of the things that I think allows us to do. Some of the exciting things that we do is that we're not necessarily just a rotational group. We do certainly have people that come in for a couple years and do onto different things. But I think at the core, someone like myself, Sandra and some of our other leaders have years of treasury experience, depth of knowledge, a real solid technical background that, that we're comfortable getting into some of the more exotic or elaborate type of transactions that you can do.

In this space and looking at some of those individuals without naming names. It's okay. We can cut them out in the edit anyway, don't worry. Yeah, but joking aside, the of the your team, you've got more junior members of staff or less experienced and then you've got more experienced. How do you. How do you manage them? How do you. How does the approach contrast? If you like. Is it. I know that such and such. Yeah, they're great. You just set them off and off they go and we'll. I'll see you at. In three months for a coffee or this A bit more hand holding and coaching them or what are the. Your keys to success? Because I know that you and I talked about this and it's a preloaded question. We've already talked a bit about this, but this is for the listeners now.

Yeah. So it's interesting when you manage a larger team you realize that people are very different and everyone stylistically has different approaches. Right. So I do think the overwhelming key theme, and certainly not breaking new ground here, is communication. We in treasury pride ourselves on being just a transparent group. I've said that our treasurer, Sandra, who you obviously know very well and we spoke about is the most approachable SVP I think I've ever come across. Our Most junior level people are just comfortable having an honest conversation with her. So everything starts there. When your chips are on the table and you can speak honestly and openly, then you don't really have to worry about reading the tea leaves too much because it's just being said to directly. And then the other thing is just turn people's skill sets loose. Just unleash your talent. There are certain areas where obviously, you know, mistakes have got to be limited or completely eliminated. And then there's other areas where you can give people flow flexibility to have some kind of trial and error and versus directly giving them the assignment. Hey, this is what we need to do. These are the steps A, B and C. Let them take a shot at it and then see what comes back for the product and then talk through maybe some things that could have been done differently or maybe you'd have considered a different approach. But unleash the skill sets. Don't, don't micromanage too much is the biggest thing. I think people, these are all professionals regardless of their junior level. Sure some might need a little bit more guidance than others, but even people at the director level are people that are 12 to 15 years in their career, some of them with a wealth experience. You have them on your team for a reason, let them do what they do and just make sure that as you oversee and manage that you're being constructive and helpful. But allow people the freedom and flexibility to do their thing.

One of the points I'll make, and you and I, you've mentioned obviously Sandra. I'm good friends with Sandra and things like that. Sandra shared the stage with me, Treasury Career Corner live in London. So that was really good. One of the key things we talked about was after the session I said, she said, oh my God. Oh, how was I? Was I okay? She's brilliant, we know this. But she's not a natural extrovert sort of thing. You're a little bit more, I would say extrovert than maybe Sandra. When I then called her to be a guest with me, she's going to be share the stage with me at AFP Boston. I called her and she said, oh God, do I have to, Richard? I was like, yes, you've got to join me. She was like, okay, yes, I'll do it. Because she was getting out of her comfort zone and people I think will be surprised that Global Treasurer Bristol, like, she's not naturally into that. She's had to lean into that. Now you've got that extrovert outgoing. How do you manage that? When you see others maybe that haven't got it, you've touched on a little bit there, but I just want to explore that a little bit.

Yeah. And please don't edit this, because I want her to hear it. I think she's a lot harder on herself than actually comes across in that space. I've heard her podcast. I've seen her speak on these panels. She certainly seems very natural. But to your point, there's not necessarily a blueprint formula. Right. There are some people that are really comfortable openly speaking and being in front of management. I've taken some of my younger people and have conversations with our cfo, and it looks like they've been doing this for a decade. And then other people are maybe a little bit more reserved. Again, I always say lean into your strengths. Let's talk about the areas that need to be developed and how we can develop them and then go from there. We're all different people, and I think one of the things that Sandra and I have taken a lot of pride in is building a very diverse skill set and very different personality types of. If you came and you met our treasury team, there's. They're certainly not clones of each other. We're all different our own way. We all bring something unique to the table. And I think just honing in and accentuating those strengths and then looking to develop areas. If people are certainly maybe a little bit more introverted, let's look for opportunities to have them present at town halls and just get more comfortable with this. Like, I do believe that talent is just a commitment to preparation and that most skills can absolutely be developed. And that is including certainly being a little bit more introverted, but being completely capable of doing presentations and being comfortable in front of management and other stakeholders.

It's a practice skill as well. I've said before, I remember doing this breakout. One time I was doing a session in Chicago and I just stood on stage. I suddenly broke the fourth wall and I went, guys, I hate public speaking. They're like, really? I was like, no, I've trained myself to do this because that's how you. That's one of the skills. It's not my favorite skill. It's the thing you learn, isn't it, and develop now? And coming from that, I wanted. What advice would you give to. We're not that far off the end of the show, but would you give to treasury professionals if they are? You've moved industries from. And financial services, but then also some different corporates and things. If someone is thinking about Doing that is. That's the way to go, do you think? Obviously treasury is treasury, right? They will cross the piece.

Yeah. So the advice that I would give them is a couple of things. The first is patience. Things do not happen overnight. From the time that I decided I wanted to cross over onto the corporate side, it was probably a good year and a half before I landed. But over that time period, my desire to do something different never wavered. So certainly patience. The second is, again, just what I tell my younger people is never make short term decisions that are going to derail your longer term aspirations. So if you see yourself, you're sitting there and I'll just use banking again because we've talked about sitting in banking and you've got a significant title and your compensation is significant, but you see yourself as a corporate treasurer, doing nothing has consequences too. Should you turn down an opportunity and stay where you are just because you don't want to take a title decrease or a pay decrease, then are you really helping yourself in the, in the longer term? And I would argue no. And then the other thing that I would say is people should really. And this is why it's a great platform for this and treasury personnel certainly speak to each other. Be mindful of your network, people you come across, people you meet. I like to say that every interaction with someone, you're either building a relationship or you're tearing one down. And I think if you use that as the backdrop, you surround yourself with people that can share their experiences that can maybe help you on your journey. Just leave a good impression on people. When you're in roles, work hard, be a team player, be someone that's reliable and that other groups can count upon. Be someone that people want to work with, potentially want to work for, and you'll usually be just fine. I've said this a hundred times, I've yet to see someone that he or she is smart, hard working, a good cultural fit, really reliable and pleasurable to be around that just can't get the right opportunity. I just don't, I don't see that. If you people are always thinking about what's their next opportunity, but if you take care of the one that you're in now, your next one will find you.

Yeah, lovely. We're gonna, that'll be, we'll be playing that back on repeat, I think. Love that bit. I'm not going to give a shout out, it makes me feel sick saying this, but Leanne Perkins, great friend of the business and share the stage with her a number of times. Exactly as you say she calls it. And I won this phrase. But as she says, your network is your net worth and she works at that. She's bloody brilliant at that stuff.

So I couldn't agree more, Mike, on that front. One of the people that I'm still closest with to this day is a boss of mine that I haven't had, that I haven't worked for 20 years. He and I still talk multiple times a year where we are in our career. Obviously he's getting a little bit closer to retirement, but we still stay active. And it's just the value of your network, people that you're that you can go to for advice, sounding boards, if you have concerns or questions. Hey, am I thinking about this the right way? People? There is so much that people don't know and can't necessarily solve from themselves. They may have a good idea, but just having someone that you can trust to bounce things off or multiple people, which your network would be to bounce things off and give you career advice, even if they're more junior. It's just you're looking for someone to help you think through things that maybe you haven't thought out and be comfortable that you're landing on the right decision. It's invaluable. So I always give that to young people. Be really cognizant about building relationships, not burning bridges. It's a very small industry. Careers are long. It doesn't mean you have to do something that you're to be fake and disingenuous and things like that, but just ensure that you're putting yourself in the best possible position to succeed. And having a really diverse and expansive network is certainly priority on that list.

And both you and Sandra, exact examples of that. And that's what you've done and you've done it and you took those decisions, if you like. Not the risks, the decisions. And that's the great way we did it in early in your career and things. We're going to put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. And this is our weekly, the weekly wrap up on the podcast Takeaways. Now that can be for people. Maybe early mid career, late career. Some of the. That's why people tune in. They like to hear some of the stories from yourself or the advice. What advice are those levels you're going to give for people to take away with them today?

The advice that I would give is be very calculated. I am very deliberate in everything I do. If you look at my resume, you're not going to see A ton of movement. You're not going to see a lot of things where it's just, oof. I don't make. That doesn't necessarily make sense. So be deliberate. That's not to say anyone's got the crystal ball to know if their next move is going to be a good one or not, but ensure that you believe that you're taking your next opportunity for the right reasons. And the right reasons, again, for me, is your starting point and a finishing point. And for me it's linear. Everything's about moving on that line. You can take a step backwards, that's fine, but ultimately it's still beneficial to getting to ultimately where you want to end up. So I will always tell young people that. And the other thing is do what you're passionate about, not necessarily just what you're good at. If there's areas of interest that you want to get in that are really exciting, you just go for it. Have the courage to go for it. I have this. I had this friend of mine when we were younger who had this theory that every game of solitaire could be won if you. Doesn't matter how you dealt them, if you made every move correctly, it can be one. Now, I think mathematically he's completely incorrect, but he was 12 at the time, so let's cut him some slack. But the reason I say that is because I think a corporate career can be on that parallel. If you play your hand correctly, if you realize the opportunity in the moment and you handle it correctly, you're going to have a very successful career. You just have to be careful about stepping in the pitfalls or doing something that's relatively difficult to unwind. So be very deliberate, calculated, do what you're passionate about, build a network and enjoy the ride.

Amazing. I won't repeat all that because it was just a great wrap up, Keith. Thank you very much, sir, and looking forward to seeing you in New York very soon.

Thanks again, Mike. Appreciate you having me. Great platform. Love what it does for the treasury personnel.

Thank you, sir. Today's episode of the Treasury Career Corner was brought to you with the support of our partners, icd. If you're looking for a smarter way to manage your short term investments, ICD's independent portal gives you access to a full range of investment products, integrated analytics and a simple centralized platform built specifically for for Treasury. If you head over to treasuryrecruitment. Com Partners, you can learn more and we'll be able to connect you with the right person. ICD for both you and your business. Many thanks for listening to the show and thanks for your continued support.