How to Build a Solid Treasury Career Overseas with Roshun Tulkens

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 treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next this week's show, I'm joined by Roshan Tolkiens, the group treasurer at Mantrack Group. Now, Mantrack is an authorized Caterpillar dealer, so selling across three continents with revenues close to $2 billion, Roshan actually heads up Treasury Trade, Finance and Insurance with a team of 30 employees. We've known each other for many years. Originally from the UK, Roshan actually moved to the UAE back in 2014. He's also a fellow act, the association of treasurers in the UK became AMCT qualified back in 2012. We'll discuss that. Did his MCT in 2015 and then obviously was out in the UAE and things. So, Roshan, tell us about your career today and how you discovered the world of Treas, if you like, and finance. How did you first ever think treasury is the world for me sort of thing?

Yeah, thanks, Mike. I kind of made a conscious effort to get into Treasury. I love the finance side of things, but not necessarily the customer service side. So I decided to go for a career change. I think honestly, I probably would have gone down the accounting route because that was something that was obviously a little bit more, I would say, understood and people were more aware of that within the finance aspect. My father in law actually works in treasury and he introduced me to the act and some of the studies. I had a quick flick through, you know, the syllabus, kind of what treasury was involved in and I thought, you know what, this is for me. So I started studying the first qualifications before I'd even entered into my first treasury role. And by these qualifications and my studies, I managed to effectively start my career as an intern working for Al Garnham over in Kuwait. That was for a couple of months, just on the understanding how Treasury Department operated. So I spent days with each of the members of the treasury team, kind of shadowing their roles. And with the qualification, with this kind of firsthand exposure of Treasury, I was hooked.

So you're actually based in the UK at that time and you've gone across the Algonim in Kuwait as this sort of discover the world of Treasury. You came back and then did you then target Treasury? You just thought, actually, treasury is where it's at for me.

Once the internship at Algarnum had come to a close, I moved back to the uk. Started looking for my first role within Treasury. So by now I'd done the first couple of certificates from the act and my first role was actually at Wrexham, which was basically a can manufacturer based in Westminster in London. And this role was working within the back office, looking at a Treasury management system implementation. I thought for me this would be an ideal role because at least I can see how the system works. I get to spend time with all areas of Treasury. It's a back office, the cash management team and middle office as well as the front office. This was really where I started to get hooked on treasury, seeing how it all worked, how strategic treasury was and how forward thinking it could be and how involved you can look into various areas of finance.

With Wrexham itself, CAM manufacturer. I know the group very well that start in back office, you say, you know, gave you a good view for the business and some people not frown upon it, quite the opposite. But they say, oh, I'm not sure about back office as my first role. Normally trapped there. It's not. It's great because it gives you a really good view of the business. But what was it like? Did you actually find that you weren't pigeonholed or, you know, how did you get out of that? What were the strengths of doing that sort of role?

The back office certainly gave some fundamentals around treasury, the processes, the operations, the first real understanding around, around the controls that a Treasury department needs to have. It also gave me really good exposure to the cash management side because ultimately the back office is really a processing area of Treasury. So once the cash managers had effectively done their role, looked at the positions, we were then there to make the payments, make sure that everything ran smoothly in terms of actually settling these transactions as well as that with the treasury management system area of it, I was actually working on building something from scratch, helping that company utilize systems and making sure that the processes work for them. So it gave me really good insights into how things should work because there's a lot of companies out there that have historic processes that do it in one way because they've already always done it that way. Whereas this gave me a chance to look into how the company was reflecting on their processes and how they could build things for a better future, basically.

Good place to start.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. From Wrexham, I decided to move to Burberry and at Burberry I was working as the group treasury analyst based again in Westminster, actually just a few hundred meters down the road from Wrexham. I made a conscious choice around Burberry. It was a relatively small team. There's only three members of the team within treasury and for me this was perfect because there wasn't any chance of being siloed in the sense that there wasn't one specific job to do within Burberry. The actual position covered many areas. Again so it was predominantly a cash manager role. The main, I would say task, but linked to that. I was also performing some of the back office functions and also front office aspects as well. So this is really where I got my first insights into trading, some of the reporting and also looking at more of the subsidiaries. So it wasn't necessarily group focused and getting insights into how other countries and markets worked, some of the regulatory aspects, sweeping how a real head office function works.

A lot of people know Burberry as a sort of fashion brand as such. How was treasury structure per se? What did you find? You walked in and did you expect the rigor of treasury there or was it. Did you expect it sort of be very fashion orientated? What was the sort of treasury structure like?

I went in the treasury was actually very well structured and one thing that really came across when I first joined was how centralized the treasury was as a department. So they had a fantastic shared service center in place. They had cash repatriation through cash pool sweeping back to the center. The businesses on the ground knew exactly what their roles were and what the treasury role was. So it was a very well oiled machine and everything worked quite well. I think what really needed to change at Burberry when I joined was there's a lot of reliance on Excel spreadsheets and aspects around that. So one of the first sort of tasks around, and again another TMS was looking to see how we can use systems to help automate some of the processes and in that way ensure we had more time for the strategic elements of the job. Because you can imagine logging into banking systems, finding cash balances takes a lot of time and by the time you get these balances you've got less and less time to actually deal with that. With cutoff times typically 12, 1 o' clock in some cases, you've got a short window in order to get that data. So this is one of the real things that we looked at. And the company is so focused on digital and everything digital, there was a lot of support from the business in order to hit our objectives. And one of Burberry's focus points at the time was ensuring that there was a customer could buy any item anywhere in the world. So very focused on digital and having the shop everywhere. This is effectively how the Treasury Department wanted to operate as well. We should be able to view cash balances not just from the office, but from home or in wherever location you are. So this is something that was certainly big focus for the group.

How did you develop as a Treasury professional in there? You were talking about the tasks, if you like, in that, you know, they wanted this clarity of cash and digitalization and everything else. How did you feel yourself growing in that time? Because you were there for a few years and you sort of, you came in as you know, having had this great experience before, but you went sort of from and to, you know, how did you feel that sort of stretching you, as it were?

Yes, I think given a lot of the responsibilities I have, certainly at the start when I joined were very new to me. So I'd almost learned a lot of these from the textbook. Again, going through the studies, getting the qualifications, I'd learn how things should work in practice, but not necessarily put this into practice. And this is where I think the biggest learning came because you've got in your mind how things should operate, what the best in class process should be. But in some aspects you can't always follow that. And I think it kind of taught me that in treasury there's not always a right and wrong answer. There's many aspects in between that and being able to make that decision making and you look at a certain risk, a number of ways of how to deal with that risk. That's really where the deeper understanding of treasury comes from and where you're faced with these treasuries are very varied role. There's many aspects that we need to look at on a day to day basis. And when these are being thrown at you left, right and center in some aspects they have to learn fairly quickly and use that knowledge and you know, improve your ways of kind of dealing with these risks that come up.

And then you made a decision. It was. You'd had enough in the UK and the beautiful weather that we get, I rain then moved to the uae. How did that all come about? Because that's quite a shift. I know you'd had experience overseas before what influenced that and it was right, it was time for a move.

Another conscious decision. I think within my career, one aspect I really liked at Burberry was how it was multinational, multicultural, dealing with many different markets and ways of working. So I thought to myself, what gaps do I have? And I think working in treasury in another country isn't something that I've done for a long period of time. And I'd like to try and do that again. The role came up at Reckitt Benkiser and it was a very attractive role in the sense that there was a lot of responsibility in the role. There's a lot of things I was comfortable with, but other areas that I knew I'd be challenged in. So one of the step changes that Reckitt Benkiza had done was they had historically always had their group, treasury in Slough. And what they decided to do is effectively set up three treasury centers across the world, so in Singapore, Amsterdam and Dubai. One of the reasons for doing that was to get closer to the business and also to, I would say, bring in more controls around the business. So when I first joined, the businesses were very used to doing their own thing. In a sense. They would bank with who they wanted to hedge their FX when they wanted to, repatriated cash when they wanted to. Getting more control over the group was needed at that time. About a year before I joined Reckitt Ben Keyser Group, treasury joined, brought in the treasury policy, a lot of the fundamentals and things that the Treasury Department needed. So my role really was to set up the treasury center in Dubai.

Roshan, when you say set it up, did you walk in and it was just an empty office and a desk and recruit everyone or what was the sort of structure out there or what was there?

Yeah. So from a Treasury standpoint, it was a new role. It was a completely new role. So there was an existing finance team, there was sales team, marketing, so there was effectively area head office set up in Dubai, but no treasury presence. So it was really getting everything from scratch around data visibility and what was happening in the country. So it's quite exciting. But, you know, there was a lot of relationships to build, a lot of getting to know the business. So I spent, you know, the first, I would say three to six months on the phone talking to the finance managers, talking to the teams, talking to the banks. They're understanding regulation in the countries, understanding how the business operated, getting to understand what risks they had, what challenges they had. So I could use that as a basis of how treasury can help support and how I could use my knowledge that I'd learned to try and help them and effectively reduce the risk that they were facing. And this covered a number of areas, from FX to cash management. And also some of the operational elements. You know, some of some of the businesses had huge amounts of bank accounts, they had huge exposures on fx. Just really getting into the detail and seeing what I could do in order.

To support them and when you were on those calls, when you were doing that information gathering, because there'll be. Again, we spoke about this before the show, but again, for the people listening today, they might be in that situation, not in the Middle east, you know, they might be into a new role in the US or into a new role in Europe. Say they're going to this brand new country per se, treasuries still growing there. And there's a checklist in your mind, was it a sell and then a tell to those guys, look, this is why I can help you and stuff, or was it, look, I need to look after your fx, give it to me now so we can hedge it and everything I saw. How did you go about that process? I know we spoke about it before, but I think it's worth the listeners understanding a bit more.

For me it was finding that balance. So obviously I knew what I could bring to the organization in terms of some of the treasury knowledge and the risk that I looked at. But I think it's also very important coming in as a new department. They were never really used to dealing with treasury on the ground. They needed to understand that I was there to help is really for me understanding what they and why they did certain processes. And once I had that understanding, you know, helping them to help themselves in a certain way, it was really getting into the detail with them. For example, I would sit with a finance manager in Turkey, for example. The first thing would be that, okay, they'd explain the business and the first thing they would say to me is, the FX is so volatile in Turkey, how can we get it sorted? And the first thing is always, okay, can I get some details around, you know, what exposures you have, can you get some numbers behind it? Can I see a forecast? And then we work together and I'll come back to them say, looking at the forecast, this is the sort of proposal I have for you and we'll talk about it, we'll go through the pros and cons and effectively we'll get an answer and then something that we can use. I think what was good about Reckitt Ben Keysia as well was I always had the treasury policy to back it up. Treasury policy is approved by the board and that is the strategic direction that the board wants to go. So if there was ever a case where a territory was saying, no, I don't want to do my FX hedging, I don't want to rationalize my bank account, I don't want to send Cash back to the group. That's the point where you start bringing in some more, I would say, forceful tactics around getting. Getting to. To where you need to.

More directive. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I think it's again finding that balance, building that relationship, allowing them explain, you know, why things have been done because there's always going to be a reason why things are done, whether it's right or. And it's kind of understanding that and then building that trust and relationship because certainly with a different cultural element in every country, there's different ways of dealing with people and also understanding what makes them tick to a point, you know.

With a balance, if you like. So I spoke to Steve, I put perhaps in the show notes Steve Medhurst from Omnicom. And we were talking one day over a beer and he was explaining to me about India and how in India the culture is that you, within each district you have to have one bank out that pays the payroll, one that as a tax and it's a, it's a local requirement. It's not a nice to have, it's a must have and that is what you have to do. So they keep control over it and they're very efficient at it. And we described that on the episode and everything else. But actually that was. You have to get used to that, that you can't just say no, we're not going to do one bank across the region because it doesn't work that way. Did you find that, you know, there were some of those instances and how did you deal with those? Because those are obviously bit of a curve, as you said earlier, curveball. Again, you can go back to policy and stuff, but what did you find was the best way of then sor. Of balancing it with the guys when you couldn't do policy, as it were?

I think it comes down again to understanding why things are in place. I think as well, I always try and get, I would say a third party view to a certain extent. So you could always have a conversation. They can give you the history around why it's there. Speaking to banks, speaking to advisors, speaking to other treasury colleagues within the team to get this historic background always helps. And I've been faced with a similar issue in India where there's hundreds of bank accounts and the focus always to reduce the bank account, reduce the amount of banks to be used. And I think in some cases there is reductions which are possible, but not necessarily to the extent of policies. In a number of cases you have to have that understanding because otherwise if you're forcing Something upon a business where it's fundamentally not the right way to go. This is where, you know, relationships start to get tarnished. It's all about relationships and just trying to strike that balance between policy and what is operationally needed. Because you can go to extremes on both sides. And I think it's finding the right way of working for any business and it can stretch even further than that. I mean, we give an example of bank accounts, but there's certain processes in some countries that you just have to do in a certain way. And one of the tasks that we always look to do within treasury is to move as many payments as we can to electronic versions. You know, we don't like having manual paper transfers or checks and things like this. But in some countries it's absolutely the only way that you can do it. So having the understanding on how these things work and spending the time to understand that is vital.

So, Roshan, you've been at RB for a few years by then and enjoying the role. But then this role came up at Mantra, based in the uae, but private group, different kind of group. What was it like when you got there or what was, you know, describe the group and your treasury responsibilities as treasurer there.

So Mantrak Group, as you mentioned before, it's an authorized Caterpillar dealership selling mainly into sub Saharan Africa. So we have presence in West Africa, East Africa as well as Egypt, Iraq and Russia. We also have offshore businesses in both China and the uk. So again, it's a complex territories that are being handled by treasury here. So the head office is in the uae. From a Treasury standpoint, as you mentioned, the private company, I've always historically worked for FTSE 100 companies. So work for private company was another interesting element that I wanted to look into. And also the sector, the sector is very different to obviously retail and FMCG and where I'd been before. So it gave a few different elements that I could focus on and hopefully further my career even more with treasury at that.

How do you. What's the main difference? Is it because it's more heavy industry and things like that and it's quite different or that's the main difference and the drivers are different or is it that is different approach to things? Again, you know, with a private versus public group, what would you say that the biggest difference is in your head?

The first thing I noticed really working for a private group, the speed of change can be quicker in my experience. So I think where you're working for large corporates, you needed group treasury approval Maybe CFO approval, approval from other departments involved. I think being group treasurer for a private company, it's really a decision between myself and the CFO and we can get things done very, very quickly. And the speed of change is a little bit more nimble, I would say, around that side of things. As the company goes, it's a lot more debt heavy in the sense that we're selling huge machines, often a lot of capital intensity from the customers in terms of purchasing this and the cycle between are selling the goods, receiving the goods and getting the funds in for those goods is a lot longer. So the net working capital cycle is much, much longer at Mantrack Group.

And do you find yourself getting involved in that in treasury or is it separate?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So the net working capital aspects very heavily involved in. So from the looking at how we manage our accounts payables in terms of helping support the business from a receivable side, as well as looking at the levels of inventory we hold, all that, there's a good treasury role in that and as well in how we fund ourselves. Because where we're reliant a lot more on debt, it's important for us to have a diversified debt portfolio. So we have rcf, which is really our backup facilities. We also use export credit agencies as well. In order to finance ourselves. We get a good deal of support from Caterpillar and we have other bilateral facilities in country for both local currency and also US dollars. Everything is within the treasury remit and there's a lot of, a lot of focus on how we structure ourselves and how we fund ourselves.

Roche, we spoke before this episode and then we covered it a lot actually with your RB stuff and about how you relationship manage in the region and things like that. And I don't want to overdo that piece. I'd rather sort of maybe focus now a little bit more on what about you and you're very, very keen on sort of ACT and professional development for people and things like that. What are the passion areas you have? Where do you see treasury developing, again.

I mentioned before is so varied in terms of what you do within the role. So I'm passionate about all areas and I love to be involved in everything. I love to understand everything and this is part of the reasons why I enjoy my current role so much, because there's elements around trade, finance as well, the funding side, cash management, operations. So I love it all and I like getting involved in everything as well. So I think really from a Treasury standpoint now, I mean, we've made Some really good inroads over the last couple of years since I've joined in terms of moving more to automation, more digital, to kind of set the scene kind of. When I, when I first joined the company, we were using just over 100 banks. Wow. And this is bearing in mind in 11 countries, huge amount of banks. We're using countries like Egypt, Nigeria, 20 plus banks in one country. I think what this meant was we had a lot of mouths to feed in terms of ancillary business to the banks and that needed to change. You can also imagine the complexity around having so many banks, so many bank accounts.

Was it just did that just come from historic? You know that people when they set up a new business or acquired businesses. Oh actually yeah. Just we need a new bank account and set one up. Or was it you inherited that sort of thing and you thought you know what when to give greater clarity we need to streamline that. What was the sort of driver behind that, that business wise without I don't want to go into the details of mantra group that wouldn't be appropriate. But more just in general terms it.

Was historic and I think a lot of it, you know, especially in Nigeria and Egypt had been born around the currency crisis in both markets and access to dollars. So really a lot of companies, what they would do is open up a number of banking relationships just to improve their chances of getting dollars in. Right. And it's one, it's one strategy. The counter argument is if you have more relationships, you're less important as a client for each of those banks. It's something that I'd inherited and I think looking at some of the processes that we were doing in country, I'll give an example. In Nigeria so you have an analyst logging into 20 banking systems in the morning. Actually not even 20, probably 10 e banking systems and another 10 you had to phone the bank or get an Excel spreadsheet showing the balance. You can imagine how long that took. By mid afternoon we just got our cash position and we can't even react to it. We're always working on kind of a T plus one basis. So it was a conscious effort to explore what banks we were using. And with the mindset around we wanted to choose banks that were swift enabled, that had the capabilities to go digital with the mindset that we want to move on to a treasury management system Here we spent six months looking at what banks we wanted in each market. And in most countries we went to a two or three bank model. In Nigeria we did slightly more. We went with Five banks in that country. But it was really just rationalizing everything. We got some good savings in terms of transaction fees. We had a lot more visibility in what we needed. And the implementation of the TMS was much simpler, obviously having a reduced number of banks with that, we now had a good, I would say, basis to then move forward. And now we've implemented the tms, we're now live, we've got payments, cash management, forecasting, trade, everything going through on the TMS side, I think now it's, the way I see it now is moving more to an automated, I would say more automation within the department. So the things for me that really excite me are things like machine learning where we start learning around how our forecasts are, use it for sensitivity analysis, scenario testing, and we're actually then, as a Treasury Department, less on the processing side, but more on. Right. What do we do with this information? I think that's really where we can show a lot of value as a department and I think there'll be many departments going down that route. Decisions can only be made with data and as more data becomes available, hopefully the better we can all be in terms of looking at risk management, cash management and other things that give shareholders value.

Okay, so Roshan, in the region, you're actually quite heavily involved and got involved with the professional committees and sort of professional association. For instance, the ACT is rising there and you've been lucky enough to win some awards. Congratulations, sir. Why do you think that's important? You know, what is it about that that you think is, you know, for other people thinking, oh, I'm not going to bother, or why do you think they should?

The ACT and having the network and the qualifications has been vital in my career in a number of ways. I mean, I'm involved in the future leaders in treasury, which effectively focuses on up and coming treasury professionals under 35 and how we can help them support them in their early careers through networking, through access to key material within treasury, putting webinars in place, network and events and aspects around that. I also sit on the Advisory Panel for the Middle east, which again gives me a good insight as to what treasury activities we're doing in the region and help shape some of the landscape around where treasury needs to get to within the region. So all of these for me are great foundations in building a career. Having the qualifications first and foremost gives you that knowledge. So when you're in interviews, when you're talking to senior treasurers, you've got some understanding around what they're talking about. And also the ability to learn and focus on bits that maybe your department isn't doing or maybe other ideas for your company. You know, the networking is extremely important. I think for me, you know, when I moved to the uae, I didn't know anyone in the UAE at that time. So I've moved country, moved company, my wife moved about eight weeks after me. So in the first couple of months that network was vital and to understand the ways of working where simple things around what banks can be recommended and things like this, it's really, really important things that there should be a lot of emphasis put on that.

Yeah, ready made network, that immediately professional network. And before we move to our close today where I ask for your top tips and we put in your LinkedIn profile. Just looking back back to you, you talked about external stuff but let's look at you internally if you like and yourself. What would you say? You know, maybe your biggest challenges or. And what has been your key to success? Because we spoke about this before and I think again for listeners today, they, they listen out for war stories. You know, what, what's this guy done to this? You know, made it special, you know, what have you overcome if you like or what, what's, what would you say is your key to success?

Yes, I think for me I've always had a career plan. So I think whenever I've moved role, I've always been looking at the role afterwards. So there's always got to be for me something to aim for, something to focus on which drives me forward and particularly focusing on areas where I don't have experience because this is where putting myself out of my comfort zone and pushing myself to understand and experience new things. So I've always had that in the back of my mind and I think linking on to that. So the biggest challenge I've ever had within Treasury I think was when I joined Reckitt Ben Keyser. So moving country, moving company. I was studying for my mct. You can imagine there's a lot going on and for me I just had to focus around what was needed in the short term. You have to trust your ability. You've got to back yourself in a certain way. You have got the ability to do it and you know, just put the time in to get it done. Throughout my studies, you know, there's been a lot of hours spent studying, reading, not being able to go to the pub with my friends, you know, things like that. These are small sacrifices need to be made. It's absolutely worth it in the long term and you can look back at it and think, you know, wow, that that's kind of what, what's been accomplished. So yeah, always, always focus on, you know, expanding your own knowledge and putting yourself out the comfort zone I would say were the two things that I've tried to do at least.

Roshan, thanks for that. That's been really good to hear about your journey, some of the challenges you've overcome but also want to sort of get from you some of the nuggets of the external advice if you like. So we'll put in the show notes, your LinkedIn profile so you can, people can connect to Roshan if it's worthwhile in the network and everything else. But what, you know, to wrap up today's show. What are the key things, you know if someone's looking back at your career and say do you know, I want a similar career to Roche or things that you just think other people should be thinking about with their anything really within treasury overt you.

If anyone wants to get into Treasury I would absolutely encourage them to pursue that dream. I think it's a highly rewarding career, very forward looking and it kind of suits I would say many interests because not only could you become a specialist in a certain area of treasury such as like a cash manager, you could also become a generalist and you know, look at the whole scope around. So there's certainly some really good, some really good things within Treasury. I think the other advice I've got is making sure that I mentioned it before around putting the effort in to learn, study, ask questions, have a plan and push your comfort zone. I would say they're kind of the takeaways that I would advise people to do and surround yourself by like minded professionals. Build the network. These sort of things are really, really important when it comes to building your career.

Excellent. Roshan, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.

Than build the network. These sort of things are really, really important when it comes to building your career.

Excellent. Roshan, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Thank you for your time, much appreciated. And again we'll put Roshan's details, LinkedIn details in the show notes so connect to him and can't wait to see you. So thank you very much sir, you've been an absolute superstar as always.

Thank you very much Mike.

Thank you.