From Treasury to M&A to Self-Employment with Johan Nystedt

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 them 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, delight to be joined by good old friend of mine, Johan Neisted, the founder and president of neistat in Enterprise Solutions llc. Well, the group itself provides advisory technology services to enterprise risk management clients. Prior to founding the firm, Johan was actually the SVP finance for RR Donnelly. We headed up M and A Investor relations and corporate fba. Before that was where actually I met Johann over the odd beer or three or several. Anyway, move on. He was the Chief Risk Officer, treasurer, head of IR at conagra Addition, he's had many other senior roles throughout the years. That's what we're going to deep dive in in a minute. But we're going to take Johan back to the dim, distant past. We'll then talk through his career where he and why he started up this, this firm and where it's going to go to. And then we'll, as always in each week's show we'll talk about the future particularly. I think that's very much linked to what Johan's doing as well. So I'll shut up. It's Johan's story. Over to you, sir. Take us back to the beginning of your career and how you discovered finance and then Treasury. Back to you, sir.

Well, thank you so much, Mike, I appreciate that. I actually started a couple of companies in Europe, in Sweden, predominantly, even before I came to the United States States quite some time ago. When I came over to the United States, I had the chance to work at Philip Morris, nowadays Altria, which was exciting to me. I just finished my MBA from Stockton School of Economics. I came to the United States, I looked at this big business. They were in all sorts of interest in consumer pride areas beyond tobacco, they were heavily invested in food space, Miller Beer, they had a capital corporation, etc. So that really allowed me to go from the type of startup companies that I was engaged with in the 80s and 90s to go to the first kind of conglomerate after that. So it was really a way to gain additional experience by going to some big businesses that I found to be very interesting. Then, Mike, from Philip Morris, you know, I went on to Kraft Foods. The reason for that was that I was heavily engaged in the Kraft Foods IPO while still being with Altria. This was back in 2001 or so, and on the heels of being engaged, being part of a core team working on the Kraft IPO in 2001, you know, later on, when the board, determined to spin off Kraft entirely from Altria, was asked by the team at CRAFT to join them to build and staff treasury for craft. Those were my first couple of steps after I came to the United States.

Okay. And Johan, did you know treasury then or was it all new to yourself or what was the background?

I didn't. So at Altria, I started to work in M and A. So I wasn't at the very beginning directly involved in Treasury M and A and strategic planning. But I joined treasury at Altria in 2001 or so. It was just a natural progression. They had the sense that it's good to kind of help to rotate people or move people along. And that was certainly very much appreciated by myself as well. You know, I always found it to be really helpful to become as broad as you can. I think for me it was always exciting to, you know, go from one area to the other area. And I think the companies I've been working at, you know, certainly facilitated that as well for me. And that was really exciting.

And, you know, you then kicked into, you know, treasury. Well, you know, a good move with craft foods. Now I know the group, you know, the group. Some of our listeners may not know the group. If you can, you know, give people a bit of an insight because then that influenced a number of the things that you sort of took part in. You know, things like everything through to, you know, Cadbury's and various other bits. Tell us about craft foods and then we'll move on through gently into Levi and things like that.

Sounds good. So Kraft Foods is one of the biggest global food companies in the world. Back when I joined Kraft Foods, as I mentioned, it was. It was just being spun off by Altria, the previous owner. Prior to the spin off, there had already been an IPO where 20% or so of CRAFT was listed on the public market space. We put together before the spin, the capital structure of Craft, you know, the death rate, credit ratings, et cetera, they had the wrong credit facility that we established. And then at the time of the actual spin, after the IPO in 2007, 2008, that's when Kraft became its standalone company. They operate in, you know, way over 100 markets, campus around the world. They own all sorts of products in snacks to, you know, all sorts of food businesses. I was engaged in treasury and M and A for crafts So I had a chance to be part of a number of, of divestitures, acquisitions. And I would say CRAFT itself is kind of a product of a whole number of corporate development activity, inorganic activity in its past.

And then you made the move from. So that was based in Lovely, Illinois and you then made the move to Levi. How did that come about? And what, what a move that was? So talk us through.

It was a really interesting progression for me. So at the time, we are now somewhere in 2010, 2011 timeframe, Kraft had just acquired Cadbury, the UK chocolatier, in a really interesting transaction. I think there's been a lot written about it. I was in the midst of it. It was maybe not the friendliest acquisition of all times. There was a lot of reluctance I think from the Cadbury side and among public at large in the UK to kind of protect the crown jewel from, from Craft acquiring it. But it was a really interesting acquisition because of how complex it was. But once we had that done and the Cadbury was successfully acquired and the integration looked to be well on its way, you know, from a pure treasury perspective, I felt a little bit like I was a little bit of twiddling my thumbs because clearly Kraft was going to nurse its balance sheet for quite some time after this big acquisition of this fine UK company. So when I was approached by one of the recruiting firms about this treasurer job at Levi Strauss on the west coast in San Francisco, I thought, hey, that could be really exciting. I've been living on the east coast of the United States. I've been living in the middle of the United States. What about going to the west coast of the United States and experience California with my family? So that's what we did because it was again interesting. I always thought it was important to push myself, I think important for anybody to push themselves out of their comfort zone. Levi Strauss represented a totally different industry versus craft and food. It also allowed me for the first time to work for a below investment grade company. At the time, Levi's was rated single B, I believe. And that by itself was exciting because, you know, you really get more. I mean cash is king everywhere. But if you have a single B rating, I think your priorities shift a little bit. And they had a so called ABL revolving credit facility. It's an asset backed facility because of its credit rating. So that was exciting to learn more about. And also the fact that for Levi I had the chance to go beyond Treasury. I was a treasurer, but go beyond treasury to assume a couple of other finance hours as well. So those were the key drivers.

And you made that move before then making the move to ConAgra and again, so you went Midwest, straight across west coast. And he did four or five years with Levi and then, you know, the Windy City dragged you back kicking a screaming. What. What happened?

Yeah, so you're correct. I was think I spent about five years with Levi Strauss from the west coast, you know, great five years, not only from a professional perspective, but also to live with my, my wife and kids on the west, on the west coast for a while. Certainly appreciated that. What kind of drew me back to the Midwest is that conagra. I found out that conagra Brands was going to move its headquarters from Omaha, Nebraska to Chicago. And I connected with the CFO there at the time and I said, hey, I'm hearing that you guys are going to move your headquarters from Nebraska to Chicago. I've been in the food space in the past. I kind of like it when, you know, to be part of corporate restructurings and corporate initiatives because it tends to provide for a lot of good stuff to do and learn. So I contacted them, I think it was on Tuesday. By Friday, the same week I had my interviews with that CFO and the CEO and a few others. And I was really excited about it because of the prospect of again being engaged in a little bit of corporate history for that company. So that drew me back to the Midwest.

Amazing. And Again, I know ConAgra, we both do and things like that. What was that like? And sort of again from a Treasury perspective you've just mentioned there, and I think it's interesting you'd food groups and sort of commodities that sense then went through Levi, which is more apparel and then back to food. What, what drew you back by the free lunches?

I actually kind of look to expand my industry experience. Everything else equal. You know, clearly going back to food was known territory from the industry perspective. And there were enough many exciting things about conagra even though back to the food space that I still felt that this is going to be challenging, which is a good thing. You know, in particular when you move the headquarters. And it wasn't like all the functions moved. A lot of finance was still going to stay in Omaha, Nebraska, still is there today, as far as I know. So treasury, for example, the piece I oversaw, treasury investor relations and later on became the chief risk officer on top of that. But from a Treasury perspective, you know, we definitely, we wanted to have the debt capital markets team, so the capital structure team in Chicago, you know, we had some Very, very strong cash management teams, credit teams and insurance teams that stayed in Omaha. No reason to move them as it was working out really well. But we decided that we needed to have the investor relations functions in Chicago close to the CEO so, you know, provide an opportunity to really think about the different treasury and treasury related areas as well as investor relations and kind of think about what talent do we have, you know, where is it located now and where does it make the most sense to have it in the future. And that was a really exciting, exciting size to go through and work pretty.

Well for them and then bring us to the next move. And RR Donnelly. So you know that natural step, you know, food, apparel, food and then business communications and marketing. So you know, how did that come about? What was that and what was that like for you in A difference of Treasury? I know you and I spoke about this before and we've talked about over a beer and or two what was it like moving from, you know, because I talked to someone the other day about how working in say FMCG or you know, a product you can touch and a lot of the companies have different ways of approaching it, but you're going to quite a different business stream, as it were.

Yeah, no, that is correct. It's a different business stream, it's a different industry. But even though, you know, as you work with a company. Case of R. Donley I was a senior vice president of finance and my three main areas was M and A, heading up M and A heading up investor relations and heading up corporate fpa. Even though the way you do that and the outcome is industry dependent and dependent on the company, the company size, the credit ratings, all sorts of factors. The approach of getting to the right answer tends to be fairly similar. For example, for treasury, right. It's really important to look at the capital structure. It's really important.