Guiding a Company Through a Pandemic with Andrea Sottoriva

Foreign.

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, delighted to be joined by Andrea Sotoriva, the group treasurer and finance director at ceta. Now for those who don't know, CETA is the world's leading specialist in air transport, communications and information technology, 100% dedicated to air transport. They co innovate with their customers, providing seamless, safe and sustainable air travel. Obviously front page news if you like, post pandemic and as it gets back on its feet and we'll get into that later on in the show. I actually said to Andrea earlier, I was listening to a previous podcast I did with another podcast channel, very good podcast with him. But he was doing that mid or early stage pandemic. So I think now we're sort of taking this the story on to the next stage. But as I do each and every week, I want to go back to the origins of where Andrea then discovered finance and Treasury. So as always, Andrea, it's your career. So if you, you know, take us back to the beginning if you would. Over to you, sir.

Thanks a lot, Mike. First of all, very good introduction. I hope that this podcast will help. I hope so too. People who are not today in treasury to decide to move and have a career in Treasury, I will try to explain to you also why. So first of all, regarding my career, I would say in a nutshell, I had all my career in finance, but I end up in treasury only eight years ago. I would say each of us has a career that goes into some direction, but I also do believe that all our experience make us for what we are today. Okay, so I will explain to you at the end maybe of the call why I strongly believe that every experience that I had in my life is important for what I do today. So to make it short, I started my career in basically accounting or in auditing. I started in Ernst and Young in Italy. I am an Italian. Then I moved into a bank. That was my first experience in a bank. I moved into a bank just by chance because I had one of my former colleagues in high school who worked there and he told me, yeah, why don't you join us? We do a very interesting job. We basically focus on what is called proprietary trading. So basically we were working for in Tesa Sao Paulo Bank And I was in the middle office there. Then I move into a bigger bank, Citigroup, and I moved to London. It's been a very interesting experience because I had the opportunity first to move into a really international environment and second, because I was working in a very interesting area. So again, it was middle management, risk management, into the trading of bonds and stocks. Then I moved to Italy. I moved back to Italy, but not to Milan, which is where I'm from. But I moved to Rome to join General Electric because they wanted to implement some of the tools that we use in investment banking in a different sector, which was the operating lease for General Electric. I basically performed two roles. The first one was in asset management and the second one was in fpa. So financial planning and analysis, both of these experiences have been very helpful for me to have a full understanding of how the financials of a company and really, you know, work together and to have an exposure to the whole business. And after that, and here we are in year 2007, I joined SITA. So I've been working for CETA since 2007, so a very long time. I started first as a sort of, you know, regional controller. So I was in charge of all the finance function for seven countries in South Europe.

Why did you? You know, many people will know Citi, they'll know ge, but they won't know ceta. So I know that when again, I've heard you describe it, you describe the organization really well, because I think also that why did it attract you and everything else. But maybe you can explain for someone that has no clue what the company does. Can you just outline that for the listener?

Absolutely. So first of all, as you mentioned, CETA is not well known out of its industry, but it is well known within the ati. So the air transport. So we are leader in providing software to airport and airlines. Okay. I think you explained very well what we do. We are just to give you an idea. It's a truly international company. So we are present in 180 countries, we handle more than 1,000 airports, and it's a truly international and multinational company. So it means that we have our head office here in Geneva, but we are present in nearly all the countries in the world. So for me, joining SITA was the opportunity to really work in a sector that I did not know. So the ATI industry in a truly international environment where you interlock with people all across the world every day. And I joined them in Italy. I had the opportunity basically to set up my own team because as I said, I was in charge of finance, basically set up the whole finance department from scratch. And then I handled seven countries. So you can imagine having handling seven countries which were very important for CETA. So CETA was founded 75 years ago in Paris. Now the head office are in Geneva, but if you want, the original headquarter was in France. And actually France was one of the seven geographic areas that I covered. I had a role of regional controller. So it means overseeing all the finance operations for these seven countries. And then after four years I had the opportunity to move into European role, so a bigger role in charge of cash collection. So now we are trying, I think we are going into the direction of treasury because, you know, one of the major activities of treasury is the liquidity, liquidity handling. And so knowing the cash collection means knowing one of the two part of the coins, which is very relevant for what I do today. I spent a year and a half in cash collection and then I had the opportunity to move to the head office and to have the role of global treasurer for cita. And therefore I decided to move out of Italy and move to Geneva and I moved here with my family. So it was eight years ago. So just to clarify, I'm in charge of treasury for the whole group. So it means handling all the countries where we are handling 120 currencies, covering the hygiene that we have and handling the liquidity for the whole company.

I listened to the podcast. I liked it and it was really good. I know you and I know the organization and I know some also similar organizations. I didn't think you skated past that. You have bank accounts in 153 countries. Crumbs. You know, it's like you pay employees 137 countries. No, hardly anyone in treasury does that breadth. You know, they. Everyone says, oh yeah, I deal in, you know, 100 countries. My blah, blah, blah. But you do everything, you know, like you are truly global. And I thought that was actually, it spanned my head a little bit and I'm thinking crumbs. Wow. Can you just explain again why it's so broad with you guys and, and what challenge for the you as a treasurer that is? Because I think that's fascinating in its very self. So can you just do that for the audience?

Well, excellent question. First of all, Mike, as I said, we are present in 180 countries. So let's assume that in every country in the world we have at least, at least a couple of people in an airport. Okay. Who has to be able to make sure that our Systems work all the time, 24 hours a day. This means that I need to have bank accounts in all these countries. Say 180 countries, 180 bank accounts. In addition to that, Sita was born 75 years ago as a cooperative, okay? This means that making it very simple, all the airlines in the world said instead of going outside and buy services for them, they decided to set up their own company who work for them. So we were entirely owned by all of them and working in exclusive for them. So we were monopolists on the market. We set up our own first, if you want. It's called. It was called Citatex. So it was a sort of, you know, SMS to make sure that all the airlines and airport in the world would talk each other. That was 75 years ago. As you know, we had the, you know, Internet came on board and therefore the whole technological environment changed completely. And therefore Citadel decided, okay, to be on the market in competitor and then basically in competition with many other companies that we are set up. And therefore we set up a new company which is a company for profit. So I would say up to last year we kept two souls. One is the cooperative, the original one. The other one was, you know, a company for profit, okay, which offer, you know, services to the whole environment where we are not only to airlines and airport, but also we started dealing with ground handlers, with governments, for example, with, you know, many different actors that are today present in the air transport industry. This year, okay, Sita decided again to take another transformation. We have now become a full for profit company. So moving back to the bank accounts, up to the end of last year, we had, let's say 180 countries, so 180 bank accounts for each of the legal entities. So we had two legal entities. So time two, okay? In addition to that, we have many countries where you cannot execute transactions, but using a local bank account. So for example, if you have to pay taxes in some countries or you have to pay salaries, you need to have a bank account with the local bank. So it means adding other bank accounts. So you can imagine, okay, in the end how many bank accounts we need to have, okay? So we are around 500 bank accounts and handling them all at the same time, all the time. It's extremely complex, as you can imagine. So in order to handle it, we have put in place a lot of technological advancements, okay? So first of all, we have put in place a full centralization of our accounts payable and cash disbursement in Prague, okay? So we have Set up a share service center in Prague nearly 10 years ago. Then we put in place host to host with some of our banks. Okay. And now we are evolving. And so we will discuss later into this interview. Now we move into Zwift. So why my job is interesting, it's because you need to handle a huge complexity. So despite we are not a huge company in terms of turnover, we have a role to play. So we need to be operative all the time in all our countries. So I cannot afford the luxury of not paying some our employees all over the world anytime. First. Second, I need to streamline the payment process as much as I can. And third, okay, there are some local complexities of which I have to be aware in order to not infringe any local regulations.

Let's move on to treasury per se within the role. And what I mean by that is, you know, you've got this global sort of outlook, really truly global and international. How do you get your head around it? How do you as a treasurer prioritize your time and think, right, this is where, you know, maybe when you first started, I know that you said that there was a sort of a gap before you actually came in as a treasurer where there hadn't been a treasurer. So you got the, the team on task and everything else. But what are the fires that you think, right, this is the current things we've got to put out and deal with priorities. And then where do you then see, okay, this is what we need to do next, people, you know, how do you see that?

Okay, so first of all, Mike, we need to consider the environment where we are in today because the priorities for Treasury, I would say, change over time. And you cannot ignore the environment where you are. So in year 2020, all the world has been hit by the COVID 19. But just to give you an idea, our industry has been hit. There was a moment where our passengers, the passengers on flights decreased by 77%. So you can imagine, out of the blue, it's like, you know, the business where you have disappeared. So what do you do? Of course, the first and most urgent task for treasury was to, you know, have a deep analysis on liquidity to understand how much liquid we were. Okay. And for how much money, how much time we would be able to survive without any business. So what we have done, okay, I'll give you some highlights, level information and then if you want we can go more in details. We are the following. First of all, thanks God we had built our cash balance over the prior years and therefore we approach the COVID 19, the crisis with a very healthy financial position, but I would say very healthy liquidity position nevertheless. Okay? We noticed, as you have probably heard, that many of our customers, which are by the way, also our owners, because Sita is owned by more than 400 airlines, some of them went into bankruptcy because they were not able basically to continue without having any business. So what we did was to understand for how long we would survive. And also we reviewed our committed lines, okay? And all the relationships that we. That we had with our banks. And then we also try to understand when our committed lines would expire. And we wanted to make sure that our banking partners would be really partners for us. And therefore we decided to go first to the shoeshine market, okay? And we issue a debt. First of all, it was the first time in the history that CETA did it, because CETA is not a quoted company, is not, as you explained also in your introduction, is not very well known on the out of our industry, okay? But we decided to approach the market to explain what we do, okay? And we raise some, some cash. So first of all, it's been a very interesting activity for many reasons. The first, the first one is that I played a major role because we did not have at that time any corporate communication department. So basically I had to handle the relationship with all the potential banks, okay? Or investors. And they asked tons of questions, not only on the financials, but also on what we do on our governance and also on esg. Maybe the rest of the call today we will talk about esg. Yeah, the good out. So the outcome of the shoeshan was very positive. So basically our. Basically it was the debt was oversubscribed, okay? So we approach the market with 75 million. Actually we were over subscribed at 95 million euros and we raised basically cash from five new institutions. So previously you mentioned how you handle these huge footprint. Of course, we have many banks, we handle more than 100 banks. But I would say I had a relationship, a close relationship with five banks before the COVID 19. After the COVID 19, we embarked five new banks who decided basically to lend money to Sita, okay? So we start getting known on the market and we had five new banks.

Andrea, I'm going to jump in there and ask you, because if you're a publicly quoted company, you go on your beauty parade and you know, you do your presentations. I've spoken to a number of treasurers that do this. Actually, I say that there's actually two or three other treasurers I know in a Similar situation where they've had to suddenly we're not publicly quoted. It's not a regular thing. You know, there's this regular roadshow with a lot of them on. We're going to present our results and when you get the cfo, you know, the CFO does it, or actually we get the treasurer involved and everything else. As you said, you didn't have a corporate comms team. You, you had to do this yourself from a non publicly quoted company. You know, sometimes I say on the podcast to people, what, what was your checklist? Well, I'm gonna ask you, what was your checklist? You know, how did you then think, right, how are we going to do this to elicit interest, to make sure it's structured in the right way that you know, both internally and externally those people and it's an unusual question. I don't normally ask this on the podcast, but I think it's interesting because there'll be other people in a similar situation. And if you're junior in your career and think, well, hang on, how are you this applicable to me? Well, number one, you might be doing it later in your career. Number two, you might be also helping your boss having to go through this if you're a non quoted company. But also in presentation terms, it's about how do you present the work of treasury or everything else I would say, how did you approach it?

So first of all, we have decided to assign the role of representing CETA to two banks. And these two banks basically publish externally an external view on ceta. So basically each of the bank have their own research department, okay, who analyze a company, they are completely independent, they analyze the company and then send out a report. This report shows basically how this company is seen by these specific department. By the way, just for you to know, you have no possibility to influence their own opinion even within their bank because they are totally isolated. So we provided all our financials. So despite, as you said, we are not quoted, we are audited. Okay. And so we sent all our financial statements to these, to this, this bank. And also they asked us tons of questions. We answered all the questions and then they sent out an external view on us. Then we presented, okay, ceta, okay, which means that there was a list of potential investors who were invited to a Roche. As you explained, we to this roadshow, we had our cfo, our corporate finance and me and we presented sita. So we presented SITA in terms of organizations, in terms of what we do. Making it very simple of course, because many of them had no clue what Sita did. We went into the financials and then we opened a question and answer session which was supposed to last 15 minutes. It lasts 45 minutes. A lot of questions answered also during the call. But then we open our books for a month. So for a, for the following month, basically all potential investors could ask questions. And I had to answer all the questions within 48 hours. So it's been quite a tough period. Okay. And they ask questions which range from tell me what you do or your organization or your financial. So it's been a great experience because you need two layers with many departments internally, according to the request that you get. You need to get their buy in and their cooperation, but you need to build also your own experience. So for example, all the financials, you know, I had a lot of interactions with our FPA who offer basically to step in. But you know, each department have their own priorities. So you cannot ask other department to stay on hold for a month. Of course, yeah, but in the end, as I said, we also organize some calls because I answer some questions over the, you know, in written, but then we offer to make ourselves available for calls. And we had calls with some of these potential investors. The good news is that now we start getting known on the market. So we receive, you know, as I said, five banks step in. And also after that there were some banks who came to us later on, okay? And told us, we are here, we want to lend you some money. The, the strange thing is that I don't need money. So as I said, we have handled very well our liquidity, okay? So we raised this debt despite we didn't need money, okay? Simply to test to start getting known on the market and to make sure that there would be banks who support us in case of need. So as I told you, it went oversubscribe. We raised 95 million euros. And then the day after I got these euros, I start getting calls from the banks and say, okay, now you start paying negative interest in Euros because, you know, we are, we have negative interest in Euros. I said, I don't want to pay because I don't need the money and I don't want to pay. So I start, you know, engaging with banks. The good news is that in the end we don't pay anything. We managed to find a way to not to pay, you know, interest on this money, but this money is actually park, okay, Because I don't need it. Nevertheless, now, in this year, in March, we decided also to syndicate all our committed lines, which is the next step. I would say, in the evolution of our Treasury. So it means I had, as I said, committed lines with five banks, but they have different duration, different terms and condition and so on. I said, I want to simplify this because I cannot spend all my time talking to all these banks who ask information in different period of the year in order to renew my committed lines. So we have given the role to two banks of these two mandate for the syndication. Now we are closing it. We are, you know, at the last, the last stroke of this exercise, the good news is that the five banks decided to confirm their commitments and therefore they are part of our syndication. But on top of it, I also got four new banks who is going to step in. So I will move from five to nine banks and I will have a stable period, okay, with the same term and conditions for all of them for the next three plus two years. So it's three plus one plus one.

So you've sorted it. You sorted out the balance sheet. You've got that solidity, if you like, for you. But at the same time, you're going through a global pandemic and you're a travel company, you know, like, oh, my goodness. I wanted to ask on two, number one, how was it it externally? Now we can see this. You know, everyone can, you know, guess in the external markets and everything else. So I wanted to just get your views from how you ban down the hatches and everything else. And then I wanted to sort of use the internal journey that you and the treasury team are working from home and everything else to sort of go on that. So externally, you know, obviously, you know, virtually overnight, everyone, the plane stopped. I mean, planes were moving around, but they were empty. What was that like? And, you know, how did you guys get through it? And then let's move on to then was like more drilling down into your treasury team.

Okay, so let's say externally, first of all, we did a lot of simulations. First of all, we are in an industry which suffer a lot, but we offer, as I said, software services. So we are not an airline and we are not an airport. Okay? So this means that it is in our interest that our industry resume. Okay? But we manage basically to weather the storm very well externally as well. We say after the pandemic, we also had the war in Ukraine. And therefore, I would say we live in a period where basically the changes continue to come and it's nearly impossible to forecast them. So you need to be ready to adapt to a new situation all the time. So this means that, for example, an attention to the working capital is actually one of my top priorities. So you need to make sure that you handle it properly all the time, that you handle the liquidity all the time. You have a stable banking group of banking partners with which you can continue to talk and try to explore new possibilities also in terms of technology and so on. Now the market is also, you know, as you have seen in newspapers, is resuming all across the world, but we are not at the level of 2019. So what we do is basically we continue to perform some scenario simulation where we try to understand the direction where we go. And at the same time, we have put in place a rigorous cost containment program in year 2020, which is still ongoing. So we need to be ready when the market will fully resume. Okay. But we have done a full review on our cost. Between variable and fixed cost. There were a lot of activities that we put in place to make sure that we are agile, but we're going to be able to, you know, start at full speed when required. Just to give you an example on working capital, as I explained earlier in the, in the interview, some of our customers, which are also our, our stakeholders, ask us basically to delay payments, right? Because they were suffering a lot in 2020. So instead of pushing back because you may say, okay, no, I don't give it to you, we said, okay, let's try to open a conversation with them, but at the same time discuss with our suppliers. So we said, okay, we're going to give some delays to our customers on one side, but we're going to negotiate same, you know, delays in payment with our suppliers. So that was a way for us to handle the working capital during the crisis, okay. Which basically meant to have an open conversation with the whole value chain, with the customers, suppliers, contractors and so on at the same time.

Time, let's move internally. Let's. Let's talk about. So in terms of the shape of the team, how many in the treasury team now or were there?

So we are, okay, the team is composed by nine people, okay? We are spread in three different countries. The majority of them are here in Geneva with me. Because in Geneva we have the head office, therefore we have the senior management. But we also have two other branches. One is in Prague, where we have our shared service center. Therefore, we need to be close to the AP cash disbursement. And then we have another important office in India in Mumbai, which is a place where basically CETA has a very important, more than 200 people there. But also we have outsourced part of our payment process to an Indian company. So being there makes sense. So to summarize, these nine people in treasury are organized by competence, but none of them is a regional treasurer. So I do not have anybody who looks at individual countries, but I have all the people who have a global view but with different competencies. So I have cash management, investment management, the bank management, the footprint, the treasury management system and so on.

Okay, so you've got those guys then went into, you know, let's talk about how was the working from home, how was, you know, how did you organize yourselves through pandemic and that now where are you? What's the mix next? You know, as you come out of it, what was it like?

So first of all, for us, working remotely was part of our job already before the COVID because as I said, handling people in different countries is my day to day job. Also before the COVID 19 we were completely able to handle all our systems from home from one day to the other. Now the evolution during the pandemic has meant many things. First of all, we push all our banks to accept all our electronic signatories because as you remember, they kept asking for physical signatures of documents. Despite we were in year 2020. We said nobody is working from the office, so either you accept it or you don't get your documents signed. We push at that time, they accept it. Now I see that some of them want to go back to the history. We say, I don't care, we continue to handle that electronically. Nobody is in the office. Now. This doesn't mean that now we are getting out of the COVID 19, we have to come back to the office three times a week. I would say Sita has been quite flexible in understanding also the needs of the employees. Now we have some agility in terms of coming or not coming to the office. For us, working from a laptop is our day to day activity. But I would say when we meet, face to face is very helpful. So we do a lot of interactions. I organize a lot of exercise together, although it's in front of the screen. And hopefully soon we will also meet face to face again. But in order to reinforce the team, I think, Mike, it's important to remember that we are all human beings. So during those periods, working from home meant that some of us start having some, I would say some thoughts about, you know, staying at home and thinking. And thinking. So it's very important that you keep a communication open with all your people. You talk to them, you pick up the phone, you speak, because it's a way to be sure that they feel that you are there, you are present, although you are not physically there. You have to show that you are behind them.

Yeah, I mean, I've had that with a number of clients, actually, that have fund the virtual water cooler moment, if you like. Yeah, I think it's the only way to sort of keep in touch with your team, isn't it? Sort of, you know, throughout the pandemic. But then coming out of it, someone said the other day, they said, those have sort of stopped, if you like, but they haven't really. They said, actually it's now. Now you're getting back into the office and, you know, some of the days, but you're still not seeing the people. And, and they said, actually they've slightly lost. I won't say who it is because they said they're having. They realized they slightly lost that, you know, during pandemic there was a byproduct of. Actually you were talking to your team so much more now you're like, well, we're back in the office a couple of days a week. And they said, well, actually, when they come back in the office, they hardly talk to their team because everyone says, oh, water cooler, have a coffee. So we're so busy when we're in there, you know, we've got meetings, got this, got this. And they said, actually they're now going to sort of. Of backtrack a little bit and, and next, in the next, you know, sort of month, they're putting aside one day per month when they're all going to try and be in the office and all try and have lunch together or, and, or, you know, if they can't do lunch, at least all have, you know, some coffees together and stuff like that, just to see each other's faces because, you know, they said, it's crazy. I went back in the office. I was in the office three days last week. I went, oh, yeah? Was it good? He went, it was great, but I didn't see any of the tickets. Oh, okay. He said, yeah, it was pointless in a way because he was meeting lots of suppliers, which is great, but I think everyone's got to work in that relationship aspect when five years ago, we didn't need to, you know, you were sitting next to your team five days a week, whereas it's a very different world now sort of thing. But it sounds like you've got that under control and you're still focusing on that yourselves.

Would you say, first of all, as you said, we need to Organize a lot of events and stick to them. Okay. Despite you go back to the office, you're involved in many meetings. But for example, as you know, I took the opportunity of discovered crisis also to go back to study because I think in our job it's very important to, to continue to learn, right. And so you can learn online, you can find many things. But I decided to take two courses. One is to improve my leadership skills and the other one is a course, it's. It's called Gerana Management foundation with imd, which is one of the best universities in the world here in Geneva. And here at this course, I learn also some tricks on how to make your team stronger. Okay. So what I learned is actually I have already used in the office. So we start trying to understand what is behind each of us, okay? To have a little bit of history and share it with the rest of the team so that we understand each other. Because it's very important when you are under stress. Each of us, each of us react in a different way. But if you know the person, you know, what is his experience, maybe you can understand better. And also we start sharing, you know, feedback each other very openly. Okay? There are a lot of tools to do that. And in the end, you improve, you know, the trust, you improve the trust within the different team members, especially when you are under stress, because it is still a stress period and it's important to have respect each other. So each of us is doing his or her own job at the best. Okay? So nobody is trying to underperform. Right. But we need to understand what is behind each of us, what are the problems we face. And I'm sure that working together, we can only win.

Yeah. Now, before we run out of time, you touched on the esg, so I thought that was, that's a key, that's key to yourself. So let's, let's cover that before we wrap up today's show. You know, we used to do that thing called a commute toward the office and back, but people don't do that anymore. But we usually run the show to about 40 minutes. So I don't want to run out of time with you today. And I know it's great fun talking to you. And I'll do this at the next conference when I see you in real life, which would be amazing. But esg, obviously it's a key thing with you guys in the travel industry. Can you just, you know, talk, talk to that? And then we'll do the sort of wrap up and we'll Give the top tips to people. But yeah. What are your thoughts?

Well, ESG is a revolution that is here to stay. So we have to become more and more conscious of it and include the ESG parameters in all our activities. That's just an introduct. Just to explain to you. I started to introduce ESG KPIs in our committed lines in the second half of 2020. It was the first time we discussed about it. And then when we went to the shoe shine, basically many investors asked us about it, many of them. And now we are doing a syndication which includes also ESG targets which are very much detailed, much more than in the past. So now we are talking about. First of all, we are already a neutral co emission company, but we are now putting in place scope one, scope two, Scope three targets for ceta, which means that we will be able to control basically the whole value chain. Not only us, not only the direct emissions, but also the indirect emissions and also, you know, the, the contractors, the customers emissions and so on. This means that from a finance point of view we need to be closely involved because we will have to measure them. But we also have to be an actor for change, an agent for change within our own. We have to make sure that this mentality is included from the top to the bottom. Because only working together we can improve the heart and the environment.

How are you an agent of change? How do you be that champion without it detracting from your day job? How do you make it part of you or part of the culture?

Well, first of all, as I said, I decided my own to include it into the committed line. And when I raise it, okay, even within finance, I said why do you do that? I mean, it's going to take a long time and so on. I said it's going to be a big reputational advantage for us. It's not the money because you get, once you achieve your KPIs on ESG, you get a reduction in commission in banking fees which is quite small. But the impact on reputation is huge. As I said, many investors ask about it. They want to understand what we do. And many central banks give money to the banks. Okay. With the condition that I have to invest in company who are serious about this. Okay. And they are going more and more in detail now they are asking the KPIs to be stamped by auditors. Okay. Just to show you the evolution. So we can be agent of change. Absolutely. Because financially we need to measure them and we're going to have a financial advantage. But also within Our firms, I mean, finance is an agent of change. We have to work together with all our are here. We have now, you know, a department which is in charge of crs. Okay, so basically the, you know, the reporting concerning all our activities in terms of environment and so on, we need to participate, we need to understand what they do. We need to really understand how we can improve the company where we are and each of us can play and we need, we have a voice to raise about.

It leads us nicely towards the end of the show today. Now, what we'll do in the show notes, as we always do, we'll put Andrea's LinkedIn profile.

Profile.

It'd be an amazing person to have in your network. I can tell you guys today that, you know, definitely someone you want to have there. And as I said earlier, you know, be great to catch up in real life again soon because we're starting to go back on the conference circuit, which I'm looking forward to. But I heard you on the other podcast and you talked about curiosity, comfort zone, some other things and stuff. But if you look back and reflect on this and I, I've often said this over the shows and people look at your profile and go, wow, okay, I'm in finance or I'm in banking, and actually this is the way I'd like to springboard my career. What, what are the top tips you would give to someone? We've had anything between, you know, one lady just said, just do this. I was like, wow, okay. And it was a nice short one. And we've had like five and 10 tips. And we're not saying do the 10. That was quite, quite a lot. You know, one of the top tips takeaways for anyone listening today that they grabbing the notepad and say, oh, do this, do this. What would you say to the listeners today if you would.

Well, first of all, follow your passion. So we spend many hours during the day doing a job. Don't waste it, okay? Do something that you really like first. Go to the end, okay? So be resilient in what you do. Don't hang on when you see difficulties. If you really want to get something, you will get. Okay? So we live in an environment where you can learn whatever you want. You have a lot of tools, you can study online, whatever. So do you. Opportunities are there. It's up to us to decide either to make it or not to make it. Third, sometimes you need to move out of your comfort zone. So as I said, I have started, you know, these two courses. These are taught me that you can speak about everything, right. You can put on the spot, you can be put on the spot to talk about something you've never heard, think about it and express your own ideas, which will be, well come for sure. So each of us have their own interest. Express your interest, communicate your passion. Also, when you speak in public, you know, Micah, you know, I speak in public sometimes. Communicate what, what you think, you know, how you see the things. There's no right or no wrong. But as long as you communicate what you trust, people will listen.

Yeah, well, I'm not going to interrupt or talk over this. I'm going to re. Reflect on those in a moment. And, but, but one of the interesting ones and I think, Andrew, we've spoken about this before, but I was speaking in Chicago about, about three, four years ago and I was doing this quite in depth speech about, about the podcast, some of the tips and everything else, and I suddenly stopped it. I said actually, because can I just stop this for a minute? And they were like, what? I said, do you know what? I hate speaking. And they're like, right, you speak everywhere. I said, no, yeah, it's, I didn't want to get on the plane and come across here. And I heard you talk about this before, Andre, that you, you know, you've pushed yourself out of your comfort zone. And I said, said, look, I know by doing public speaking, whilst I might not enjoy it, it means I've got opportunities like this to the podcast. You know, I've become a better recruiter, I've listened more, I've met more people. But also, you know, it, it means you're a better presenter and you think through your ideas. And I think that's something that a lot of treasurers have some embrace and some begrudgingly embrace, but you definitely have and I think that is admirable. So because I love, you know, I've seen, seen a couple of your speeches and some of the panels you've been on and stuff. And I, you know, on, you know, big high five for that, if that's the right way to put it. So, and just on there. So we've got passion, got resilience. And the key one is obviously educate yourself. And the main way to do that through a podcast called the TreasurycareerCorner.com sorry I had to show, you know, that, that one, anyone's listening today, they're already listening to that. I don't know why. So, but anyway, and any final words, you know, just before we wrap up because amazing podcast is saying even connect to you through LinkedIn, anything, you know, as they walk away the sunset, what would you say?

Well, there's no rocket science to me, Mike. Every job can be done. That's what I have really learned. Whatever. As I said during the interview, what we make all our experiences, make ourselves as we are today. So try to use it, okay? Because even if you look at my career sometimes you may say, but why did you do that? Why did you do that? Well, in the end, when we. When we face a problem, all our experiences come together. And don't be afraid to ask. We are not perfect. I have made a lot of mistakes. I can publicly take responsibilities for this and I continue to make mistakes. But I enjoy talking to people. The people around us will help us if we ask for help. Don't hide behind the problems, try to resolve them. We live in a very uncertain period where nobody knows how to move forward. Nobody. So try to talk each other and try to do your best and you will succeed in one way or the other.

Amazing. Thank you, sir. Connect to Andre, he's amazing and we'll leave you in peace and can't wait to see in real life soon. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you. Bye M. Thanks a lot.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe.

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