How Three Treasury Leaders Are Driving Strategy, Transformation and Impact at Zimmer Biomet, Capr...

Three years down the line, my treasurer comes to me and says, you're going to London. I'm like, maybe there's a conference or something that she wants me to go to. No, you're going to stay in London. Okay. So I went to London to be the treasurer for Pepsi in Europe. Now, for those who don't know the company, Pepsi in Europe is Iceland at one end and in Russia at the other end. So it's like 11, 12, 13, 14 times, and I don't even know what. There are operations in every country. And it was a very interesting time because that's when the European crisis happened. We had operations in Spain, we had operations in Greece, and in Cyprus. We find out that you can't move money in and out of Cyprus. The Cypriot banks were so weak that you didn't want to put your money in your bank. So I go to Cyprus and I find this safe where they had €30,000 of coins. You told us not to put money in the banks. What do we do with the money? All the coins that we collected from all the vending machines and put it over here.

And one day the analyst there said, you know, I'm leaving, and I really feel like you would be good for this role. It wasn't happening tax. So I said, sure, let me investigate this and dig into it. And I just saw somebody from Toys R Us.

Hi.

So I moved over to treasury and was the analyst there for a good five years. And I was focused on cash management, which I loved. It was very structured, and I found that I loved that. And then I moved on to be a senior analyst at Toys R Us, which then moved into FX and intercompany and all that jazz. Right at the end of Toys R Us. Wonderful run. I actually had an interview at Michael Kors. And my second interview was the day that they announced the bankruptcy at Toys R Us. It was all perfect timing. When I went for my interview at Michael Kors, the manager, the hiring manager, she's the assistant treasurer. She told me immediately, like, I'm going to make you a manager when you get here. So that was my goal. And just be very clear, I never set out to be a treasurer. I was very happy doing what I was doing. But life happens.

Then I had an opportunity to be a CFO for a startup company in Switzerland. So that was like, I'm always a person, always look at stretch roles. Get out of your comfort zone. I love learning new things very fast. So I took that opportunity. Unfortunately, it only lasts for eight months. Then not because of me, the company went well. I had to shut it down after eight months because to your story about the Ukraine, the investors were a Ukraine family and they were bringing the money. We had no revenue. We're at the beginning, we had a lot of costs. And that's what I also learned is how to manage liquidity and the forecast accuracy. Because if you spend too much money and you say it lasts for three months, but it only lasts for two months, we got a problem. But Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. Money didn't get out of Ukraine. I couldn't pay the bills. And by law, as a cfo, I have to shut down the business, otherwise I'm personally liable because we didn't pay salaries anymore. We didn't pay anything anymore for two months. So that was a great experience.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast. This is another live episode. We recorded this one live in New York with a room of over 100 treasury professionals. And I love doing these live sessions. You guys keep on coming to them. Got many spread throughout the year that you can come and join us in this particular episode on stage. Joining me were Pradipto Bagci, treasurer at Zimmer Biomet, Ty Carl Fraser, vice President and Treasurer, Capri holdings, and Dennis Brower, the VP and corporate treasurer, Element Solutions. We cover how they broke into treasury, how they've grown their careers, what they do to stay visible with their CFOs and the finance teams. Lots of practical takeaways that you can use within your own treasury career. And as always, don't forget to grab your CTP credits at the end of the episode with a quick quiz. So have a listen, do the quiz and you get your CTP credits anyway. As I say, each and every week, let's get on with the show. So any of the repeat offenders who have come to these sessions, you know the way this works. You know you have to be present with us in the room and we know we need some enthusiasm to kick us off. So Good evening, New York. I'll give that about 40%. I know it's been a long day and this is one of the reasons, actually you guys have made the effort to come here and we're grateful for that because you're investing in yourselves. We put together three incredible treasurers and myself to give you some great career advice. You also get CTP credits for coming here, making the effort to come out this so.

Right.

Good evening, New York. Right now you are awake. The other bit with this, switch off your phones, at least put them on silent. It's not so we get interrupted. It's so that you take some time for yourselves. Because when was the last time you got to do this? Well, actually about six months ago in March. We had a great session and that's why we're repeating it. So thanks very much for more of you joining us this time. So you're present with us now. What I do need you to do is look around. Where's Lawrence? Right, there's Lawrence there, our beautiful host. You have to be nice to him and go get your drinks tickets from him as well as team at Kyriba. Please get your hands up. Those guys. Nilus. Yeah, there you go. Go and speak to those tis. There you go. Thank you very much. And Treasury Spring. Great. Go and get your drinks tickets from them. Otherwise you're gonna have a very thirsty night. So who am I? Mike Richards, run the treasury recruitment company. You guys have heard this? Done it for 25 years. 28 years, actually. I love talking to treasurers. You've probably seen this slide before, so we're going to skip past it. There's the team. They're amazing. They're doing lots of the hard work. There you go. This is how it all started. So I, back before COVID started a podcast, I thought we do 10 now we're approaching episode 400. Done one every single week. By listening to the podcast, you also get CTB credits. You go do a short quiz after it. You get it. It's an investment in yourself and your professional development. We're approaching, as I say, episode 400. We will have Tony Massone, global treasurer for Amazon, as the upcoming guest on that show, meeting him tomorrow. We're talking about it as well, so looking forward to that. But this is what we're going to do with the evening. I'm going to get each of the guests to introduce themselves. Short intro and a little bit about their careers and how they developed. So you take their time over that. Then we'll talk about how they built their careers and where they see it going a bit later as well. Then we'll do Q and A and invest in the question and ask when did you get a chance to talk to three treasurers and put them on the spot? You didn't. So this is going to be great. And then they've got some great takeaways for you. Enough of me talking. I'll let each of my panelists introduce themselves. Pradipto, over to you.

Thank you, Mike. Hello, everybody. Thanks for coming. I'm Pradipto Bakchi, the treasurer at Zimmer Biomet. I've been in treasury for the last, let's say, 15, 20 years. Background, I'm an engineer. As soon as I graduated, I realized engineering was not my thing. Too bad. But it did give me a set of skills that let me leverage that to initially go into consulting, work for different companies, implementing systems, and then go through MBA school and be ready for a career in finance. And when looking at different options for careers in finance, one thing that was very important to me was that whatever I did had to be intellectually stimulating. It couldn't be that I do something on day one and do something very similar day two, and the same thing continues. So my first career choice is which company do I join? And this is probably a very important decision that everybody makes, especially if you have the ability to decide which company you want to join straight out of college. So I joined IBM because they had a rotational program that took you to different parts of finance and you got a chance to see what careers would look like 5, 10, 15 years down the line if you chose to go down a certain path. So I was at IBM for five years, did lots of different things. Billions of dollars of funding, manage investments, went through the investment crisis, lots of great training. And that is important because early in my career I got to do a lot of things that typically, especially around capital markets, that typically career treasury people get to do maybe a little later in their career. So that set me up very well. And I went to work for Pepsi to build their capital markets capabilities because Pepsi at that point was going from being a brand company to more of a operating company, which is capital intensive. That was a great experience. Three years down the line, my treasurer comes to me and says, you're going to London? I'm like, maybe there's a conference or something that she wants me to go to. No, you're going to stay in London. Okay. So I went to London to be the treasurer for Pepsi in Europe. Now, for those who don't know, the company, Pepsi in Europe is Iceland at one end and Russia at the other end. So it's like 11, 12, 13, 14 times, and I don't even know what. There are operations in every country. And it was a very interesting time because that's when the European crisis happened. We had operations in Spain, we had operations in Greece and in Cyprus. We find out that you can't move money in and out of Cyprus. The Cypriot banks are so weak that you didn't want to put your money in your bank. So I go to Cyprus and I find this safe where they had €30,000 of coins. You told us not to put money in the banks. What do we do with the money? All the coins that we collected from all the vending machines and put it over here. But those are learning opportunities because you learned what could go wrong and how do you create processes that are more resilient. So once that ended, Russia and Ukraine went to war. Russia was Pepsi's second largest market. I had teams in Russia and Ukraine, and my Ukrainian team reported to my Russian team. Not ideal, but when you build strong relationships, you see how these people work through it professionally, because other than your national identity, you also have a professional identity. And when you work with people, you develop human bonds that power you through situations like this. So after eight years at Pepsi, I had the opportunity to go and work for a great man, Steve Koffold, who was a treasurer at a company called Allergan. So Steve has a very interesting career, and the reason I wanted to go there was when he was treasurer at Allergan. Allergan went from like a billion 2 billion of debt to 40 billion plus dollars in debt in probably 6, 7 years. Something along those lines. Think of the kind of transition the treasury function has to do to go from $2 billion to 40 plus billion in such a short period of time. Managing that, managing the banks, managing the rating agencies, managing internal expectations, interest, expense forecast. So it was a great pleasure working for Steve because Steve essentially let me do whatever I wanted to do my first week or maybe my second week in the company. He says, we are selling our generics business. We'll have $34 billion in cash. We need to do something. We need to decide what to do with it. I'm like, okay, so I put a plan together. Of course, there were big capital allocation decisions where we had to pay down debt, but we are still sitting with a lot of cash after all of that 20 billion-plus. So I scratched something on a piece of paper. Yeah, let's go and show it to the cfo. What do you mean, show it to the cfo? Because he trusted me enough to make such a big decision and run with it. And it's leaders like him who I've been very fortunate to have in my career that have helped me move forward. Why do I tell you this? Seek out such leaders. Even if your boss is not that person, there's somebody else in that organization. Who's that? Who wants to see you grow, do better, and is cheering you from the sidelines. So we had a good four year run and our company was bought by Abbvie and I had no desire to move to Chicago. And that's when I had the opportunity to become the treasurer at Zimmer Biomet. Been there five years. Great company. Fully remote. For those who don't know what Zimmer Biomet does, it makes replacement skeletal parts. Hips, knees, screws, plates. Unfortunately, at least half this room will need one over the next 50 years and we are the market leader. So you're in good hands. Stepping to the treasurer chair from being assistant treasurer. It's a big difference in the sense that as treasurer you're really paid to think, to decide, to strategize. Execution is important but. But you depend on the team to do a lot of the execution. It's a big mindset change because you've come through the ranks doing stuff. And the fact that no, you need to step back, you don't do it, you let others do it. You supervise, but you come up with ideas for them to execute. That's a big shift. And at Zimmer I've had the opportunity.

To do that so well, I'm going to dig more into some of the other bits and cover the other bits with you guys. Ty, we're going to move on to yourself.

So I have a little bit of a different story. I went to school, I went to college to be a math teacher and quickly decided that was not for me. I then took some time off of college to raise my child and when he became five years old, I decided that it was time to get back into school. So I went back as an adult and I went to get an accounting degree. My first job was at Toys R Us and I was hired as an tax analyst and did that for about two years and then decided again was not for me. So back during that time, because it was so long ago, people, you know, used to hand walk your wires over to the treasury department and so I would take my taxes payments and bring them over to treasury and one day the analyst there said, you know, I'm leaving and I really feel like you would be good for this role. It wasn't happening tax. So I said, sure, let me investigate this and dig into it. And I just somebody from Toys R Us.

So hi.

So I moved over to treasury and was analyst there for a good five years and I was focused on cash management, which I loved. It was very structured and I found that I loved that. And then I moved on to be a senior analyst at Toys R Us, which then Moved into FX and intercompany and all that jazz. Right at the end of Toys R Us. Wonderful run. I actually had an interview at Michael Kors, and my second interview was the day that they announced the bankruptcy at Toys R Us. It was all perfect timing when I went for my interview at Michael Kors. The manager, the hiring manager, she's the assistant treasurer. She told me immediately, like, I'm going to make you a manager when you get here. So that was my goal. And just be very clear, I never set out to be a treasurer. I was very happy doing what I was doing. But life happens. And while I was in that role, I became manager. And then Covid came, and my assistant treasurer decided that she was going to leave. So it was the second week that we were home, and it was her last week. So then I stepped into, you know, I'm the manager, but I'm also. There's no assistant treasurer anymore, and it was just me and the treasurer. And so from that time, I grew in the role and learned more and took on more, and I was promoted to director, then senior director, then assistant treasurer. And during that time, we had Tapestry come along, and they were supposed to be purchasing our company. I lost my treasurer during that time. And so since about 14 months, I've been doing the treasurer role. But I'm like the biggest baby here. So I just got the title in June, so just became Treasure.

Oh, we will come back to you, because I want to dig in more. I know, Dennis.

Yeah, so my name is Dennis Brower. I'm the corporate treasurer at Element Solutions, Inc. It's a specialty chemicals company. So our chemicals are in products that you use every day. So it's your iPhone, smartphones, it's laptops, cars, packaging. And what our chemicals do is it makes the product last longer and work better. I can spend hours explaining all the details. We can do that with drinks afterwards. But. So I'm half German, half Swiss. I'm not American. And I lived during my childhood, 14 years abroad. I lived in Denmark, Ireland, Spain, and then back in Germany, did my studies, and I moved to Switzerland during my being abroad. And I think that's very important for my career is, you know, I learned to adapt quickly, observe different cultures, initiate the first step. Because when you go to new schools as a kid, you have to say, hey, I'm new here. What's your name? So that helped me in my career. But also I speak multiple languages, which definitely helps running a Treasury team globally. That I can speak French, I can speak German, I Can Spanish and English of course, but definitely helps. My career was at Treasury. I started to work in FP&A and business finance. So I worked for Siemens, HP and Cisco. So in Cisco I started as the analyst and within five years I was running the global FP and A team. Great time. I would have stayed there but unfortunately the CEO at that time wanted to sell the business. So I was part of the team setting the business. We sold the Belkin that time accessory business. Then I had an opportunity to be a CFO for a startup company in Switzerland. So that was like I'm always a person, always look at stretch roles, get out of your comfort zone. I love learning new things very fast. So I took that opportunity. Unfortunately it only lasts for eight months. Not because of me. The company went well. I had to shut it down after eight months because to your story about the Ukraine. The investors were a Ukraine family and they were bringing the money. We had no revenue at the beginning. We had a lot of costs and that's what I also learned is how to manage liquidity and the forecast accuracy. Because if you spend too much money and you say it lasts for three months, we only last for two months. We got a problem. But Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. Money didn't get out of Ukraine. I couldn't pay the bills and by law as a CFO I have to shut down the business otherwise I'm personally liable because we didn't pay salaries anymore. We didn't pay anything anymore for two months. So that was a great experience. Eight months or nine months of my career. And then I came into the treasury world and it was by accident through a recruitment company in Switzerland. They knew somebody, a company that wanted to open a Swiss principal structure in the U.S. it was a SPAC company in Switzerland. It was a SPAC company created in the us they quite the first company and they wanted to acquire more companies. So they wanted to have a Swiss principal structure and, and they needed somebody in finance. So I talked for two hours with the CEO of the company at that time and he said, we're going to work for us. I'm going to make you a job offer. But I didn't know what it was. So then I got a job offer and I said treasurer for Europe said okay, I'll take that opportunity. And the funny thing is the first two years being the media treasurer, I didn't do much treasury because we acquired, I think it's like nine companies worth over $10 billion. And it was a big mess. We had I think at one stage like 140 different banking partners, 600 bank accounts. Our CFO wanted to know the bank balance. It took me like a week to get the bank balance, but it's really old. So I did a lot of learning and integration building a Treasury team from scratch. The more we acquired, the more bigger companies that had some treasury people, but not really was partially Asia, then was part of the us So I did a couple of years, then I became the assistant treasurer and then within a year my boss at that time the treasurer became the CFO and he asked me to be the treasurer moved to the us. I moved from Geneva, Switzerland to the us and with the last six years we've been doing a lot. I mean we're still not really automated TMS system wise. We do have part TMS system but we've done a lot. I mean we have cash poolings globally, 90% is in cash pools. We're getting a lot of cash back to the US pretty simple. We're investing 95% of our cash at the moment on a daily basis. So a lot of achievements. But one of the biggest focus for this year that I've started is yes, the treasury is really focused on strategy. But discussion I had with the CFO was we should expand that to everybody if possible in the treasury team. So what we're looking at the moment is seeing how we can move routine low added value tasks into the finance shared service team so that the treasury team can provide more strategy and also. Right. More added value. And it also cross functional. You know, we're doing a supply chain financing. We're looking at how we can work together to do better. We're working on closing workday one. We're at work day two at the moment. So there's things like how can treasure because there's certain things like fx, you know, there's limitation when we get the reports for the mark to market. Unrealized month end is on day one. Right. But in order to close them day one, they need it a day before. So we're trying to work together.

I love it. So I'm going to start the next question with you, Ty, and then we'll go to Dennis and back Education and early years in treasury for you and your team. Obviously we partnered up with AFP because you know, I was approached by the CEO who said your podcast is really educational. Would you consider it being up for credits? I'm like, yeah, this would be great. There's a lot more work than I thought. But the fact is this is, you know, by all these people here listening to you. You know, some will be early stages of their career and thinking, do I do a professional treasury qualification? Some of you have, some of you haven't got it. You know, what difference has it made to you? Any parts of your education for you, first of all. And then we'll go to Dennis, then back to yourself.

So for me, I have my degree in accounting and I knew I needed that to get into the door. And once I was in the door, I was busy working. I was also a mom, so I just felt like I didn't really have enough time to get an mba and I wasn't sure if I really needed it at that point. Once I became a manager, I felt like, okay, this is where my career is, this is where I'm moving. And I thought it was important for me to get the ctp. I think it has given me credibility, it's given me a great foundation. If you're new to treasury, you know, there's no course on it, you learn it on hand. But, and it's funny because I even purchased like the newer versions of the CTP books just to kind of have an updated guidance, right? Because it's this full book of everything that you can think of in Treasury. So for me I feel like it was very needed. And also you have the relationship with AFP from it, which, you know, leaning into my network and all the programming and educational series that they have available is just amazing.

Cool. Dennis, Just education in general maybe?

Well, I have a Master in Economics and you know, 30 years ago it was different. I don't think you need to have a Bachelor or Master to do certain jobs or general old jobs. Today you need to have a Bachelor or Master's to get into your first job. I can see it myself when I look for people, even as an analyst, I want to have a bachelor at least when it gets to qualification, I think it's nice to have, I mean our cfo, he only has a bachelor, right? And he's the CFO of a two and a half billion dollar business. So I think it's nice to have, but I think a career being successful, I think it's really to get in you need a degree, an education and afterwards is learning the job stretch roles, learning by doing and then learning from others within the organization. I think that works very well and it's worked for me very well in the last 20 years. But again, if you want to do additional qualification, I think it's nice to have, but I don't think It's a requirement, in my opinion.

Well, I'm a sucker for education. So at a minimum, you will not be hurt by an extra degree. Right now, early in your career where you do not have a lot in your resume that attracts attention, it is these credentials that do. But as you grow mid career and more senior, it's your experience that matters more. Now, that said, there are some very unique technical skills within the treasury world, especially with treasury operations, how money moves, things like that. So something like a CTP for that could be very helpful because those technical details matter. In my case, as like I said, I'm an engineer and what has helped me from my engineering is I can do numbers in my head, I can think logically, I can take a problem, break it down structurally and then manage it. So that's how my education helped me. And I also have an mba, and what that gave me is a wider way of looking at the world. So if you read something in the papers today, how does that translate to what it means for the company? So it gave me the tools to do those things. Doesn't mean you need an MBA to do that. You could get a CFA or you could just read a bunch of books. But it is important to stay abreast of what's happening in your field. How you do it is up to you, and if you do it, it will show up in how you show up at work and how you talk to people.

I want to stay with yourself for a moment. How do you balance, if you like, we've talked there about technical expertise, you know, doing study, doing everything else. How do you balance that with when you're building your teams, the softer leadership skills? Because a lot of treasurers I talked to on the podcast, I say, and I think when we did our podcast, we talked about it and it actually, a lot of you are accidental leaders. You know, I say, I go to treasurer. Great. You now lead a team of 20 people. You might do this. How much leadership training you go none of the. I've just learned along the way. So how do you deal with that?

Well, treasury is a little different from the other finance functions because even in the largest of organizations, treasury team tends to be smaller. So therefore you can exert a lot more direct control and have direct relationship with a lot more people. And when you do that, you're able to coach. You can see how people are developing. Because the challenge most senior leaders have is this. I'm on the top of the organization. The people who need the most attention and the most development are the ones who are just entering the organization. And the bigger the organization, the vaster the gap between the two. So how do I make sure that there's a transmitting mechanism for making sure that there is development all along the way in Treasury? It's a little easier.

When you're coaching and leading your team. Are you looking? You mentioned about CTP earlier. When you're looking, is that a must have or is that a nice to have or where are you?

Yeah, you need to have the degree to get in the door. So that's a bachelor's degree and I'm not really looking at. It's funny, my direct report is here and I didn't even realize what her degree was in until maybe months later when we were talking. And I'm like, oh, okay. Just because her resume fit what I needed. So I don't really lean on it that much. I just knew that you need to have an education, a college education. And then I look for experience.

Okay, Dennis?

Well, my treasury organization is very lean. So when he's very lean, you're all working together. There's training, there's coaching. Normally I have like two senior below me and then it's junior people. So the three of us senior, we make sure we train. But building up a team when it's so lean, depending on the job, I need the right skill set, otherwise I'm going to fail. If it's a junior position, I'll be open to hire somebody that doesn't have. And we did that because, you know, there's cost cutting. I can't hire senior people or the skill set. So I hire junior people and we train them. So I'm okay to do that. But if I need somebody in fx, a senior FX person, I need somebody that has FX backgrounds, then I need the education and experience behind it.

I know we talked and you and I have talked about keeping treasury visible with your CFO and your finance organization. When we did our session last year or early this year rather than Summer Simmons, brilliant lady, she talked about how at Victoria's Secret she's created this Corporate Treasury 101. She goes out to the different parts of the business to tax to FP&A and they spread the word of Treasury. And what was amazing was, I don't know if you remember, but we had Sandra Ramos Alves from Bristol Master, we had Frank Meluccio and they both went, we're stealing that idea. We're taking that with us and we're going to do that in our own businesses and great way to educate the businesses. How do you spread the word of treasury and keep it visible within your organization?

There's just two things, right? So I mean any project we do in treasury, it impacts everybody in the organization. It hits tax, it was cash pulling. You're going to talk to it, you're going to talk to tax, talk to finance. So we have a lot of cross functional projects. But before that what I did is like 7, 8 years ago I created a Treasury dashboard and the team contributed to the dashboard where we put in the key metrics. What's important for treasury, what we're tracking, if it's cash, is investments, is our debt structure, our interest structure, but also putting key projects that we're working on and we distributed that to the whole finance organization. We also had monthly more like senior management teams where we had the CFO staff calls, where we share all our projects, where we work together. So I think the dashboard is a big one where we share information to the whole finance organization.

But we working on and the team, where are they based? You know they all hybrid or what's the sort of makeup in Treasury?

Yeah, for me today, 100% remote. So I'm the only one based in the US then I have somebody in Mexico, I have people in Barcelona, I got somebody in Shanghai and Singapore.

How do you coach them then?

A lot of meetings. So that's the challenge with the hybrid model as well. Like for me it's like 100% working from home or less. So a lot of emails exchange which is tiring. But I also have my commitment that I have early calls or have late night calls, but I take the time because end of the day I want my team to succeed. I train my team in the way that I want them to take my job one day. Now if you're lean, it's difficult to give them exposure to everything in treasury but I do try to rotate, I try to include people in cross functional activities. Like if somebody's using affects, then this person will have in forecasting. So I need to do that otherwise people are going to leave the company. But it's a challenge. But other hand, the hybrid model you have access to talent. If you don't have it, you don't have that access anymore. But unfortunately I don't have a team here in the US so it's 100% remote.

Ty okay, so I think we have two things that we're talking about here. One, how do we get treasury in front and the other then we're talking about the teaching our teams. So for me, I think that I'm in a unique position now where I am the new treasurer of the company. And over this last 14 months, there's been a bunch of things that have been coming up and treasury has been informed after the fact. So I've been making it very clear you need to get us in the room ahead of time so that we can have these conversations. I have a Bank group of 14, and so when I hear that we're doing things outside that my bankers can do, I get very upset about it and I let them know that. And so I think, you know, going forward, that's something that I'm going to try to push, let my team know, like anytime we can try to get in front of things and just make the business understand how important we are to the decisions, I'm trying to do that. On the flip side, as far as making sure that my team, which is very lean, continues to grow and get educated, I don't ever want to overwhelm them because again, we're a small team and we are down a person now, because I am the assistant treasurer who became the treasurer and haven't been replaced. So I think it's important to invite them into the room. If I have meetings that they can attend, even if they don't really understand fully what's going on, I invite them in and then we kind of regroup about it during the week on our weekly calls. If we have questions about it, but at least they're in the room and can hear it for themselves. And then I just trust that going forward, if there's something that I give to them to learn, take on when we have these meetings going forward, then I can step back and let them lead it. And if there's any questions, I can just step in for them.

Cool. Predicto.

So when I was at Allergan, one of the things we did for visibility is used to have these lunch and learns we would have other finance people, or anybody in the company for that matter, come and hear what we do. Because in most companies, people don't know that treasury exists. Second, if they know that treasury does exist, they're not sure what they exist and why do they exist? Maybe they move money around. They're not sure. So what we found is people were really excited once they learned what it is that we do in Treasury. And a lot of people put forward interest in saying, yeah, my next rotation will be in Treasury. Now that was a problem because nobody wants to leave Treasury. So it's very easy to make Treasury a Desirable part of a company finance organization's rotation. But you have to be thoughtful about it because seats don't open up as often because fortunately or unfortunately, people in treasury think the rest of the business is boring.

And staying with you for a moment, you mentioned about Steve being a mentor to yourself and he, you know, great guy and everything else. But who as well as Steve, you know, he's been your mentor. How do you mentor others? What would you say has been important?

It's a formal and an informal process. It starts with curiosity. If somebody is curious about the business, curious about what it is that the treasurer does, or curious about how somebody's career grew, they tend to reach out and have conversations. What I have found in my career is when I did that very senior executives are very generous with their time. Because when I was junior, what I didn't realize is the people who were senior at that time, at some point they were junior and they knew exactly where I was coming from. I did not know what their reaction would be. So people are usually very generous with their time and their advice when you reach out to them. But then it also becomes obligatory on you to make sure that you're not wasting their time and you are someone that the person is proud to say, yes, I work with him, I mentor him, I talk to him. Because if you are not performing, if you are not doing well, that reflects on your mentor's reputation as well. So it's a two way street. But it is hard. Nobody likes networking. It doesn't come naturally to anybody study. But you have to do that, ty.

Your experiences of it.

So I do have formal and informal mentoring. I'm part of our mentoring program at Capri, which has been very fulfilling for me. You know, I'm talking to someone right now that's in the FP and A department and kind of giving him insight not only on treasury, but on his career in general. So I love doing that. And then informally, I think with my team, I'm just constantly, you know, pouring into them where I can. And I have an open door policy, which I know everybody says, but I feel like I really do. And so they can come in with any questions and concerns and know that I'm going to have their back no matter what. So they can come to me with, you know, ease and understand that they're going to get a response from me or I'll get a response for them.

Dennis?

Yeah, so I agree with you. Within the team, I take the time, give guidance, I give honest feedback. What's good, what's bad and how to improve. What I have done in my career when I ask for mentors is to. To ask way out of finance. I ask somebody in the business unit to be my mentor to get a better understanding in the business, what's going on, what they're working on, where the challenges are. Because in treasury, as a treasurer, it's also important for us to understand the business, like what we're doing, where the challenges are, where can we help as Treasury. That's your point as well, earlier, to make sure treasury is visible. It's also like there's so many things that we touch within the business that could impact, like fx. If there's something. If there's massive loss, it hits their numbers locally. Right. So it's something that I did in my career is having mentors outside the finance organization, of course, within the team. I take the time, I mean, and I'm not mentoring everybody. So it's like somebody, back to your point, who's really curious and wants a career, he wants to learn more and he wants to take on more. I'm more than happy to help and give guidance on how I did it and give that feedback.

Are there any particular bits of career advice you've got from them or other people that have stuck with you over time and stuff? Again, for the listeners, you know, for anyone here, yeah, for sure.

Take on stretch roles, take the risk. If it works out, great. If it doesn't, fine, but do it. Get out of your comfort zone. I mean, like today, like I told you, like I was so busy, I was busy the last days, it's quarter end that I close to cancel and I said, no, I'm going to do this. It's really that. Just get out of your comfort zone, do things and being curious. I think those are the things.

Yeah, I would echo the to do. Just do it. Afraid, you know, imposter syndrome is real and even if you are not comfortable with what you're doing, do it anyway. That's one thing. The other thing that I received, I was told never take no for an answer. And I said, you know what? That makes sense in every aspect. You can negotiate. So that's something I always do.

Good time.

You know, to your point, when you look at mentorship, it depends on what it is that you're looking for in a mentor. So when you wanted somebody outside of finance because you wanted to understand the business, so that's a very specific kind of mentor you want. So it's important for everybody going into looking for a mentor to say, what are the two or three things that I want of this mentor? And then decide if that's the right person because you're wasting everybody's time.

Our podcast is sponsored by Trade Web. Trade Web are an independent platform trusted by thousands of treasury professionals worldwide to manage their short term investments. One global treasurer recently told me it was one of the smartest technology decisions they've ever made. No license fees, rapid setup and tangible returns. If you're looking for a smarter, simpler way to manage your liquidity, then head over to Our Partners page, treasury recruitment.com forward/partners. Find out much, much more. Now let's get back to the episode. I'll chip in here as well. It's an interesting one for me. Anyone that follows me and I know you guys do, they've been on the podcast and stuff is I was working with a business coach and she said, you got this great advice. You get to talk to a treasurer every single week. And I was delivering a session for JP Morgan and I said, do you know what? I used to be a really good recruiter.

Oh, okay.

I said, now a bloody great recruiter. And they're like, oh, right, you know, big head, they're all this. And I was like, no. I said, I have straight lined the knowledge of you guys for 400 weeks. Sometimes I wonder about it, but what it's taught me is I've heard your pain points, I've heard the good bits, I've heard the bad bits, and I've got this incredible advice from all of you. And that's what I feed back to you. And that's what we do. I do a weekly video, we do a weekly newsletter, and that's just some. I'll get asked a question and I just feed it back to you guys because you're all asking it. When we have a beer later, you'll say, oh, what should I do with my resume? How should I do this? How should I position myself for success? I'm like, oh, okay. So I get asked those questions as well. So, you know, with that in mind, you know, giving advice to these guys out here, what should they be doing to elevate themselves, you know, not just the role of treasury, but themselves as treasury professionals. If you like, we'll start with you.

So it depends on who your audience is because you need to elevate yourself to several different audiences. One is you need to have the respect of your own treasury team. In larger teams, you want to make sure that people know what you're doing and they appreciate that. You're doing good work, right? The second is in the broader finance organization. You want to make sure that to the extent there's cross functional collaboration and you're part of it, people know and understand what value you bring to the table. Now, these are your internal constituencies. Then you also have to look at your external constituencies, the banks that you work with. What do your bankers think of you? Do your bankers know? I mean, do you have a personal relationship with them? Because you should over time develop a personal relationship where you can have these professional conversations with them about, hey, what are others doing? My career is stuck in a rut right now. What do you think I should be doing? Because these are people who talk to similar professionals like you in all other organizations. Their best place to actually give you advice. So you need to elevate yourself to the bankers as well. Think of forums like this where you meet your peers, build those relationships so that over time you can just pick up the phone and say, hey, what's happening in your organization? How are you solving some problem? If you're part of peer groups like the NOI group, try to build your relationships over there. Because at the end of the day, treasury, unlike the rest of finance, is a very small world. People know each other. Your reputations travel much farther than you think they do, both the good and the bad. And you have to control the narrative. And the way you do that is by having this feedback mechanism where if there's some impression of you that's going around that's not necessarily accurate, you have people who will feed that back to you or the good as well. So you have to control the narrative.

I agree. I think networking is very important. Highly recommend to do that. I think that in these type of events it's very important to get out here and networking. I always say if I'm at an event and I don't know anyone there to at least walk away with that. Three people that I have met new connect with and not just connecting with them, but kind of building that relationship. So it's not just like, hey, I met you here, how's it going? It's hey, can we talk? Can we have a meeting, can we discuss things? And when I first became assistant treasurer, I did that. I reached out to different peer groups, right? So I was reaching out to PVH and Ralph Lauren just to find out and meet their assistant treasures over there. So like minds and figure out what they're doing with their businesses. But now those are relationships that I have and I can lean on them for anything. When it comes to when I'm doing my business and what should be happening and what they're doing and what's the norm right now. So I think networking is very important and, you know, you can really benefit from it.

Before I pass it to you, Dennis, I'm just going to say to you guys in the audience, I usually do this at the end. We've got some great takeaways for you, and we'll do question and answer in a minute. But the key part of what Ty just talked about there, networking in the middle, it's work. What you guys have done by turning up tonight, it would have been easier for you not to bother. You know, go back to your corner office, working from home and everything else you are investing in yourselves by coming here today. Now, one of the other things I would say about that, and I did this in Texas earlier this year and it went exceedingly well after this. When you go out for the networking session, you've got to put in some of the work. You have to meet and connect with and speak to at least five people you haven't spoken to before. So that could be our sponsors. So definitely speak to them, because otherwise, again, without their sponsorship and their support, we wouldn't be here. These events wouldn't happen, number one. Number two, go out there. And as Ty said, you can't just go, great. I'm a treasurer. Yeah, connect to me on LinkedIn. That doesn't count. That doesn't work. What you need to do, you have a little elevator pitch. It's who you are, maybe what you do. But one thing about your company or your role, the difference you've made. Why? Because it will make you stick in their minds as well. Dennis, what are your thoughts?

That's the point we discussed earlier. Like Dito, nothing much to add. Networking is definitely key. I think what I also do is talking to other treasurers on specific projects I'm working on to get their feedback, what's going on, and then build up the relationship, networking. But it's more or less the same.

That's great.

Sorry.

I think before we move on, I think that treasury is also built on trust. So I feel like if you're putting out work that people can rely on your numbers, you're telling the story behind it, then they would be more likely to call on you and rely on you and trust you. So I think that it's also very important, not just internally, but also with your bankers, when you're talking to them and the things that you're telling them Feeding them.

So questions from you guys for this amazing panel. Who have we got? Come on, give us some questions. Come on. When did you last get an opportunity to do this? Come in.

First of all, thank you for coming here and meeting with.

You're all from very different industries. So what are your biggest challenges from your respective industry and company?

Money, different industries. As treasurers, what are your biggest challenges? Maybe it touches on what you talked about earlier. Predicto because of the different countries you're in. Over to you first.

So unlike other functions, treasury tends to be a lot more industry agnostic. We really don't care where the money comes from as long as it keeps flowing. But there are definitely industry specific issues. So for example, if you're a pharma company or a technology company, you will be spending inordinate amounts of time managing your cash. That is important. It shows up in the returns. If you are an acquisitive company, especially in the pharma side where you're constantly acquiring expertise in managing your balance sheet, your leverage, those things become important. If you're a company in the FMCG world, like a Pepsi or a Coke where you operate in every country physically because you can't manufacture chips in the US and fly it over, you have to manufacture and distribute locally, then your treasury focus is very different because they have to worry about how do those 2,000 trucks that leave every day with bags of chips and soda and collect maybe $2,000 at the end of the day, how does the driver deposit that money in a bank account in every country in the world? So very different focuses, but these are things that can be learned. The good thing about treasury is unlike I leave the insurance company aside because they are their own animal insurance and financial services. But outside of insurance and financial services, treasury skills, your industry background doesn't really matter a lot.

Are there any other inputs?

I mean, I'm a little different. I'm in retail. So we do struggle a little bit with sales right now dealing with the tariffs as well. So that's something where we're focused. In addition, in my company's position specific, we are going through a rebuild session time. Right. So presenting that to the banks, making sure that they're still seeing that we're a strong company and that we have this comeback story that's going to happen. That's what my focus is right now, where my strategy and everything is going towards.

Dennis?

Sure. You know, we used to be a much bigger business. We used to be. We had a section in industrial chemicals and we had agricultural Chemicals. So doing business in agriculture until you get the cash working capital wise, it's like the cash cover cycle and is like 300 days. So there's massive challenge in funding the business. But I think where we all are challenged to your question doesn't matter which industry it is, is how to get cash back to the US From a cash registration especially, you know, there are countries in the world where it's trapped and you got to figure out how to get the money back. I think that's something common. It doesn't matter which industry you are is. It's finding ways. I mean, there's ways to get cash out of China, etc. But it's just another lot of work. But because we had a business in Africa, it's very difficult. I think it was Burkina Faso where we had, I don't know, $20 million. We couldn't get it out and there were discussion about, oh, should we just go down with the suitcases? Which was a joke. But like. Or should we just buy real estate? Yeah, but I think that's the challenge is the cash repetition. Doesn't matter which industry you are, if you're a global company, at least from a Treasury side, is getting the cash back to the US that's always the focus, is getting the cash back to.

The US and one of our podcast guests recently said, well, if you couldn't do that, they said that's what made them special as the treasurer.

Correct.

They said that's where we can add the value because we've got all these different relationships. And I think you guys. You know, again, I was featured on Seth's podcast and I said, Treasury's cool. You know, this is it, you know, because you touch all different parts of the business as well. So there was a question, I think over the back somewhere. Yeah. Yes, please.

Tariffs and administration. How do you guys deal with that organization?

It was quite faint. So uncertainty, did you say? Right. Terrorists. Yeah, all over the place. The other markets and stuff. Yeah.

I mean, we have done our analysis, I mean, not by my treasury donors, but done by tax specifically. They were analyzing the whole business and we found out that it's very minimal. But for example, what we had to do in treasury is, is open additional accounts in Mexico or somewhere in Asia to handle the tariffs. But from our business perspective, there's not much impact, which I'm not happy.

Right.

I don't have to do any work on that, Ty.

Our impact is minimal as well. But I do work very, very closely with the FP and a team and our tax teams to. We're constantly refreshing our forecast and doing analysis over and over again. So it's just a lot of communication and just making sure that our forecasts are reflected properly. What they're assuming is going to happen.

Well, I came here tonight to escape from all the tariff nightmare that I've been dealing with. Well, the reality is this. If you are a multinational company with complex manufacturing footprint, the tariff impacts are really, really deep and it cuts in ways that you didn't think about because the devil is in the detail. Right? So what that means for a Treasury organization is, yes, your cost of goods has just went up. It is impacting your cash flow. There may be certain tax strategies that could be availed that change the nature of cash flows internationally. How does it impact you? But the other thing you referred to was uncertainty. If the new rules are clean and written down, then we can solve a problem. But I do not know what problem we are solving right now. So there are two phases to this. The first phase is this uncertain phase where we are optimizing within the existing rules as we know them. So what does that mean? It means we are making no long term decisions. We are optimizing for the short term. We are looking for certain regulatory relief that may be available that we didn't take advantage of in the past because we didn't really have to. But now we avail ourselves those. But still there is clear regulatory clarity. What the new rules are and how long are they good for? These are the two things we need to know. Doesn't matter what they are. That will allow companies to make the right investments, change their manufacturing footprint, their distribution to optimize for that new reality. Now the word I use is optimize, not reduce cost. So you must still be in a higher or more expensive, expensive operating environment, but at least there's certainty around what that expense is. Cool.

Now we've got some great takeaways from these guys we're just going to go to. So time for one more question? Yes, please and nice and loud. Thank you.

So what's your view on tokenization by banks, especially from a Treasury perspective and with all these banks relationships you have maintained across countries. So just wanted to hear your opinion there. You know, it depends on the kind of company you are. For most companies it doesn't matter because what tokenization allows you to do is move money from A to B outside of business hours. How often do I really need to do that? What is the value add? Can't I wait eight hours? Now if there's a true emergency that requires me to move money to some other jurisdiction. I don't think there's any contract that would say I have to pay out of hours. So it's not really a thing at least for non financial services company. Now of course if you're an Amazon or somebody else there may be some value but not really for most industrial corporates.

Dennis, anything.

Can I be honest?

I'm a little confused with the two answers here. Can you repeat your question again?

I'm trying to just understand you organization from a Treasury perspective. Especially when all these banks are especially the bigger ones are trying to sell tokenization and bitcoin structures and trying to able to make for our payment service available.

I agree with you. It's not a problem for us.

Less of a issue. It's a shiny toy but not, not really. Yeah, yeah. So what you will do is well when we have a drink you can descend upon these guys, get them a drink and everything else but they've got some great takeaways. We're going to first off print it over to you. You can see some of them up there.

You know, when I was thinking of my takeaways, the key thing that I found in my career is it's important to know what you like and more important to know what you don't like. If you don't like something, please don't do it because you'll never be good at it. And even if you think you're good at it in the long run, it's not sustainable. Keep adding skills, keep adding experiences. It's a marathon, not a sprint. As a senior leader, I have very little time and I have a lot more appreciation for those people who don't just bring me a problem which is important, but also bring me potential solution. The solution may not be great, it may be half baked, it may have lots of question marks, but at least the guy thought about it. So I'm willing to work with him to develop a solution. So be solution oriented even when you want to present a problem. And just from a pure career perspective in a company we may think that I have to do XYZ in order to succeed in this particular company. Who told you that? Are you sure Those are what the rules are. So make sure that before you invest time in acquiring certain skills or experiences that the company actually values that. Now what may happen is you say, you know what, I need this regardless, so I'm going to get them and leave the company. That's perfectly okay. But always make sure that any strategy that you do for your career, validate that with people who actually make decisions. And bottom line, you still need to know your stuff. You have to be good at the basics. There's no escaping that.

So as I mentioned earlier, it's. Well, when I first joined Capri, it was very much of me, kind of, I was only used to cash management and when I went there, it's full treasury operations. And so I kind of just went head first saying, hey, I don't really know how to do this, but I'll figure out if you let me take it off your plate and I'll get it back to you. And that's why I think part of the reason why I was elevated so quickly within the organization. So I would say say yes and figure it out later and then you can, you know, learn from that experience what area of treasury that you like or if you like. All of treasury relationships are currency. So it is very important. I mentioned before about networking and not just saying hello, but kind of building those relationships. I think that most people will find that you will get your next job from the people that you know. I have bankers all the time sending me over job jobs because they know that I'm a reliable and I'm a hard worker and so just again, relationships to currency. So keep building those internal and external. Don't just present your numbers. Be a storyteller. It's so important in the treasury world and I get very frustrated thinking that people understand what I'm saying. But you really have to lay out the picture for them, give them the story. So that's a huge skill that I think is important for anyone that is in the treasury world to make sure your numbers tie to the business and to the story and then be resilient. So much changes so quickly. I can attest to that in my company. Very quickly things have changed. But you see, have to be strong, still do your work, still show up and just be open to being able to change quickly.

Dennis, very similar.

Say yes before you're ready. I've been talking about this. I think the whole night is get out of your comfort zone, do stretch roles. I think that was very important and very critical for my career. The second one is treasury is a team sport. So just make sure within the treasury we work within the finance organization, cross functional activities. So I think it's important that working as a team, be the architect. What I want to say with that is just don't accept how it is today. Look how you can do things better, how can you enhance how can you simplify? How can you make it more efficient? I think that's very, very important. And the last one is being curious. Ask questions, think long term. What I said was, my comments is, think as an investor, think as your own company. How would you change things that benefit.

The company and mine so? Well, we've already touched on the first couple, you know, so building connections after this, you've got to make your 5 connections and make them as real connections. It's not just, yeah, quick, connect to me on LinkedIn. And by doing that, by having a conversation, seeing how you can build that network, maybe they're going to be your next boss, maybe they might work for you in the future. You never know. Visibility. These guys have talked about it. Say yes, but say yes to coming on the panel. Say yes to being on the podcast or get Dennis drunk last year. Or March.

It was March.

Yeah, yeah. And I've got the photos. Yeah, and that was good. And I had witnesses, see, but it worked. Look at how good that was, you see, without pushing him, say, come on, I know he's a busy guy, but it worked. But again, paying it forward, you, you know, try and help the other guys around you and you will come back in Treasury. And the other thing I would say actually about owning values is that big one, actually. They're sharing wins. This is. And tracking your achievements. They're both. That's something that come up a lot on the podcast recently. A lot of the conversations. You guys are your own worst enemies. You are great at your jobs. No one knows you don't tell your stories very well at all. Emma Haywood, however, she's worked at it's Dowlais Group treasurer. What she does every week, she sends herself an email with what her team have achieved and what she's achieved. On a Friday, she just does that, has a quick coffee and the diary reminder sends it into her outlook. And every month she summarizes it. And every quarter she summarizes it. Whenever the CFO swings by her desk and said, well, how are you getting on? What are you doing? She goes, right, we saved you this 5 million this month, or we've done this, we've done this. She's got the figures because she's able to share the wins. It's not bragging, so get out of your own way. So without further ado, the bar is open, as we know, you get to talk to these amazing panelists as well. You get to network and make your connections. So do that. Give them a massive round of applause, please.

Right.

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