How to Deal with Uncertainty in Treasury with Himanshu Kher

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 built 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 him and Shuka, the group treasurer Elmax Exchange. Now some of you might not know Elmax, Elmex Exchange Group are an award winning global financial tech company, one of the fastest growing companies in the uk, solid presence in exchange and infrastructure in all the major FX markets around the world. So covering Europe, North America, Asia Pacific. Now actually what we'll do is I've known him and Shu for a number of years now. We'll get him to explain a little bit later in the show exactly what Elmex do and do the sales pitch for those guys as it were. But we were just talking before the show and I said to him as you, he's got quite a different entry into Treasury. Some people you know, fall straight into treasury graduate. Oh a Treasury role. Him and she's got had some different experiences which I want him to explore so that it gives some of the listeners now a bit of an idea that you don't have to have. Treasury analysts, Treasury Senior Treasury Analyst, treasury manager, you've got this great broader experience. If you could explain a bit more for us, take us back if you would, maybe perhaps from your days when you first qualified with a technology degree and or you know, your honours degree and from there onwards. So take us back to the dim distant past. Over to you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mike. So for me I graduated as an engineer what now seems to be many, many years ago. It was in 2000. My major was manufacturing engineering and minor was robotics. It equipped with very solid analytical skills because engineering is all about structured problem solving. And at that point because financial services was giving the best paycheck, I decided that I am going to apply my analytical skills to a career in financial services. So that's how I got into Dresden where my role was to help build trading systems. Up following that I wanted a bit more and that set the path for a career in proper investment banking where I joined the analyst program at Nomura securities in Hong Kong. I did M and A and equity capital markets in what were the Google days of banking then. So between sort of 2001, 2002, right until 2007 and learned trade really getting my hands dirty. What is financing? What is, how do you raise capital? What is M and A? What are the drivers of M and A. So everything that a graduate would yearn for, I was getting firsthand in a market that was very growing very fast, maybe I would say, a bit frothy. It was then that I got married and decided that I wanted a career, not in ma, which required a lot of travel, but something more focused, doing something like sales and trading. So spoke to my manager, they paid for my degree in London Business School, which is how I landed up in London and did a master's in finance at lbs.

Him. And just to ask, you had a number of years in Hong Kong, what was that market like in comparison to London, if you like, Because a lot of people say, oh, Asia Pacific. And I know that back in those days took an O3. There were crazy markets, weren't they? Really busy and things like that. But explain that again for the listeners if you would.

So it was, it was, as you said, crazy market. I mean, Asia was the driver of growth then. There were companies growing as if there is no tomorrow and growth needed to be funded with capital. They were issuing all forms of capital. So it was a very exciting time to be in banking in Asia. I was doing deals between Japan and India, helping Indian companies raise capital in America, helping Japanese companies acquire assets in India and vice versa. And I think nothing could beat it. It was working for a very small team, directly reporting to an MD as an analyst and that's stretching myself way above my grade. And it was a great, great learning experience.

And then. And as you say, you sort of a bit of a change of life, but you thought Hong Kong to London, quite different move.

Yeah, that move was. I wouldn't say it was accidental, it was planned. I had seen the Hong Kong market, the Japan market, and I wanted to do something in a much bigger market and on a much bigger scale then. And Nomura was very helpful in that. They said that, look, you can go move from banking to trading, provided you reskill, retool yourself. They agreed to sponsor my master's degree in LBs, which is how I came to London. The plan then was to graduate and join Nomura back, most likely in London, but it could have been back in Japan or maybe in Hong Kong as well. But my aim was London. But then, as you know, and pardon my French, shit happened. There was the financial crisis when I started school. Two of Bear Stearns or BNP funds went belly up and it was downhill under. Towards the time when I graduated, Nomura decided acquiring Lehman Brothers, despite paying for my tuition, they did not have a job for me. Back in Hong Kong. So that's when I decided to sort of stay back in London and see what I could do here.

And you made the move across. So you joined bmp. What was that like?

So, bnp, we all know it's a French bank and had it been my way, I would have preferred going back to Numura. But that said, BNP was a fantastic experience because it is one of the best equity derivative houses, or it was one of the best equity derivative houses back then. And I was right in the epicenter, working as a market maker on index options, which was sort of the thing I was planning on doing even if I were to go back to Nomura. So I was in the middle of everything. I was the junior most trader on a desk which was dominated by engineers from the French Ecole Polytechniques. They liked the fact that I had also graduated from a premier engineering school. But as I said, it was probably the wrong time to graduate out of a business school. Even worse to start on a trading desk because everything structured was exploding and banks were bleeding heavy losses. And as the rule used to be, and probably still is, if you were the last one in the bank, you were the first one out. If there was a redundancy, yeah, but.

Then you did a period of, you know, a couple of consultancies, but really change your experience and broaden it and things. So again, for those, those listening, some of the guys will think, oh, consultancy, positive, you know, not necessarily negative, but they might think, oh, is consultancy of interest a good, good way to go? So you did some roles in consultancy and broaden your treasury experience. Perhaps again, you can explain that for the listeners.

Absolutely. So that's a great question, Mike. So redundancy in BNP, if I remember correctly, happened around 2009, June, July times. And the option for me was to work as a trader in another bank with whatever limited jobs there were, or as you rightly said, broaden my skills. And I chose the latter because I did not want to be in a situation where I was, again, the last man on the desk and the first man out if they were, if profits went even further down. So it was a very, very conscious move. I spoke to a lot of headhunters saying, look, this is my repertoire of skills. I have done banking, I have a master's degree, I know how markets work. And I was seeing history being rewritten with banks sort of the balance sheets exploding. And I thought, hang on, I know how banking works, I know how bankers think. And now the whole sector is in a mess. Can I use my understanding, work for a consultancy and help solve the mess? And that's how I literally looked at the alumni register of LBS and started making cold calls to people who would listen to me and who would sort of say, hey, this guy has been there, done that, and he might be more credible in consulting than somebody who has always just been a consultant.

And so you joined Avantage, explain perhaps them and the move then to PwC. So talk us through those.

So Avantaj was a boutique consultancy firm founded by four directors who had a mixed bag of experience in consulting and banking. I spoke to Avantaj because I was able to speak with an LBS alumni there. And immediately after listening to me, after speaking with me, he said, look, this makes sense, we have projects. And one of the biggest projects that I worked on then was, I think ABN Amro was acquired by RBS and they were trying to integrate the banking book ABN Amro to rbs. And I sort of understood what challenges this could be without necessarily having the intricate understanding of banking regulation then. But I think the one thing that I was willing to do then was know what I knew and leverage it as well as learn new things. Because I was trying to make a fairly big transformation then, moving from banking markets career to consulting without necessarily having the consulting background. So I just had to sort of invest in myself, back myself up and say I can do it. Which is how I landed my first gig as a consultant at Avantage and I absolutely loved it. Again, a two man team parachuted to the client which was rbs. There was a vast array of loans moving from ABN Amro to rbs. And my role then was to identify these are the credit risk models which are applied on ABN Amro credits. If they were to move an RBS banking books, is there something we could do? Use different models, assess risk differently or better and reduce the capital charge. So that was essentially what I did. Got my hands dirty, read rules, applied them and tried to see if there was any capital savings I could do as the loan book moved. So I spent about, probably about 18 months there and towards my end, I think the partners decided to sell it to an Italian company, sell the consulting, sell Avantage to an Italian company called Reply Group. And it was then a lot of people who had worked with the firm decided, okay, avantaj has given us a good springboard and let's move to a bigger platform. So I interviewed, I did the same. There was an opportunity calling. Avantaj had a name which I could leverage and I interviewed with two Big Fours, Accenture. I had offers from all of them, and I just like the people at PwC, which is why I made the move. PwC, again, was a fantastic experience.

And why was it so good? You know, you're making these moves in consulting and again, some of the listeners, sometimes, you know, there's negative impression. You know, a consultant comes in and will tell you how to wind your own, your own watch. Which is the downside.

Yeah.

On the consulting side, you know, one of the frustrations, actually, from someone we both know is Chris Hill, who used to be many years ago in consulting. And because I placed him, I took him out of consulting and placed him at GE years ago. But one time he gave me this great example and he said, the frustration with consulting, you go in, coach a client, you help them, you deliver the project, and then they close the doors and knock you out. They're big glass doors and they say, all right, this lovely cake that this consultant sell to spake, we're going to take a slice of it and we'll do this little piece, or actually, there's a different cake I'm going to use and throw your one in the bin. Or the other bit is they said, do you know what, I'm just going to put that cake on the shelf and we'll just carry on as our, you know, we've done our consulting piece and everything else. You said, you know, that wasn't all the time, but that was the frustrations and things. So what was it like for you going into consulting and this was your second role in consulting. What was it like?

You make a very interesting point, Mike. You know, before I decided on a career in consulting for those three or four years, I was warned by some of my friends that consultants, when you ask consultants what the time is, they tell you how watches are made and take your watch away in fees. So I entered consulting with eyes open. I think the only slight difference in consulting around the time of the financial crisis were, and as you would agree, Mike, is that banks were under immense pressure. They had financial contracts on their balance sheet that were marked to model mark to myth. And nobody really knew whether they were solvent or not. So consultants big and small had, if they were able to add a unique value in terms of helping banks identify these risks and better still try and save capital, which was scarce, they were able to differentiate themselves and Avantaj was able to do that. The second thing where consultants were sort of. Their consulting was probably slightly different to how we both, you and I described it a while ago. Is that banks were under immense pressure then, right? The amount of work they had to do was a lot wrong. Mergers and acquisitions, capital saves, asset write downs, deleveraging and you call it. They did not have the budgets to hire permanent staff and again consultants did offer a fairly short term, maybe slightly expensive solution to fix the problem immediately and hopefully fix it for good. I think to that extent it was a very good time to be in management consulting especially, and again I say this rather selfishly, is that if you know how things could go wrong, clients would trust you that you had been in their shoes not too long ago and you understood their pain points and therefore you could help them solve the problem. So I thought I was able to do that reasonably well at avantouch and if I was able to do it at avantaj, I always felt why not do it on a bigger platform, which is how PwC happened. PwC probably was one of my first exposures to proper treasury risk management, corporate finance, kind of challenges that treasurers, chief risk officers usually face. Because my direct interaction would be with treasurers, chief risk officers and people who directly had an impact on the capital and liquidity of banks. It was baptism by fire. I mean you were really going studying a bank's asset base, liability base and then telling the CRO of the business that look, this is how we think your capital adequacy should be run or should be. These are the things that you need to do to either increase your resources or decrease your requirements. And that was, I think one hell of an experience, one hell of a learning.

And were they listening to you? Did they listen or were they still thinking, hang on, this is just a consultant, these tick box exercise or were they taking it on board?

No, I think they were listening. I mean, I don't want to name a bank. I have done reports for a well regarded bank in the City where I was working with a bigger consultancy and about sort of a month after our reports finished, you could see that they had decided to wind down a part of the business and let go of quite a lot of people. I'd like to think that it was largely because of the analysis that was done by the bunch of consultants helping the bank. But I think banks at that point had no choice but to listen. They had a problem to solve, the regulator was breathing down their necks and one way or the other a solution had to be designed.

So you did that unique time a little bit, as you say, there was a lot of focus on capital adequacy and everything else and you made a Move to Boston Consulting but then moved into sort of more mainstream treasury actually as an employer. Talk through your transitions there, if you would.

Sure. So again I'd say PwC, Boston Consulting Group is again an absolutely fantastic firm. I moved to them for the whole reason of getting an even more global experience than what I was getting at PwC. But I underestimated the amount of travel that was required when you joined bcg. Of the probably close to a year that I stayed with the firm with BCG I was doing London New York weekly for I think about maybe 16 weeks in a row. And this was at a time when my wife and I were expecting our first baby. I was again doing pretty much identical work that I did at PwC with BCG, although now I was talking to my reports, my work, my advice was being heard by C suite rather than sort of middle management, if I may say so whilst I was at PwC. That was a very big step up. But along with the step up, the travel was not necessarily something that I enjoyed and that was the only reason I started. I knew that I had done enough consultancy work advising chief risk officers and treasurers. I wanted to be right in the center of it. So when the opportunity to join Barclays as a Treasury Director came up, I took it with open hands. But unfortunately that was short lived as well because my work at Barclays was great but they had not deleveraged at the rate most American banks did. I was unfortunately a part of their cost cutting measure after about 18, 19 months. But I think, I mean when I look back on my experience post the financial crisis, I think a few things stand out was that I knew what the problems and the challenges in the banking sector were. I think my few years in consulting taught me a very structured approach to problem solving, how to look at a problem, how to do data driven analysis and how to present it C Suite. And I think that is very, very important long term for the role of a treasurer, who's. Who partners with the board and with the C suite of any firm that he or she works with. So coming back to my move after my redundancy at Barclays, my option was I just wanted to sort of sit back and think what I wanted to do. And I'd say I was probably lucky to have gotten the role at IG first as an interim, as you know, it, I mean o Chris Hill. Chris did speak with you about it as well. After I did that role for a few months, Chris, IG then decided to make me a permanent treasurer and I absolutely Took the challenge up with wide open arms and I not even once regret it.

Can you just explain again? Got a lot of US audience and global audience. They probably won't know IG Group, they're a UK plc but maybe you could explain for the listeners what IG do.

Sure. So IG Group is one of the world's largest retail derivative providers. It provides contract for differences on a whole bunch of underlying assets including fx, commodities, cryptocurrencies and equities and on margin. So you can put $5 or 5 pounds in deposit and potentially get an exposure on 100 pounds worth of the underlying asset. They are a fintech but they have been in the trading business for more than 40 years and it's a FTSE 250 company. Highly profitable, highly cash generative.

And you went in there really it was a startup position. There had been treasury people before but you were brought in to make changes, weren't you?

Yes. So they had a one man treasury prior to I joined and the treasurer decided to leave. I think the challenge in financial services Treasuries, I wouldn't say challenges. The difference in financial services Treasuries versus a corporate treasury is that there are a lot of regulatory constraints. Often firms such as IG and even ELMAX are regulated like a bank and therefore they have to manage their scarce resources, which is capital and liquidity like banks do. And that was where I was able to leverage my expertise in banking and consulting and try to solve problems for ig, which was an investment firm. But basically when I landed at ig, the former treasurer had left. There were lots of things that I needed to accomplish in a fairly short time. They were largely regulatory driven but then it was also trying to help in automating some fairly manual processes. So I broke the challenge up and sort of looked at the regulatory aspects. First I helped build a Treasury team up. So I started as a one man team and then when I left it was me plus two people and a shared services center in Poland where some of our cash process, some of IG's cash processes were offshored. And I'm very proud of that achievement.

And you did that role for a number of years. You improved a lot of things before your most recent role. So again, talk through if you would, the move from IG to elmax, how come that happened and what's elmax?

So I had spent. So Chris Hill, who is now the CEO of Hargreaves Lansdowne, a Foot 300 company, was instrumental in my joining IG. He was an inspirational leader. Not he was, he is an inspirational leader. But towards when I had sort of complete stayed at IG for about 8, 10 months, he got a fantastic opportunity to lead the finance organization at hargreaves, which he took up. And following that I had a period where I was reporting to interim finance, interim finance directors. So that was in itself quite challenging. I think you for. For a good treasurer to be effective, he has to have a supportive chief financial officer. And I think that is a key for long term success for any group treasurer. So that said, I spent three and a half years, close to four years at ig. I had accomplished pretty much everything that I could accomplish at a firm as big, as small as ig, whichever way you look at it. And around sort of mid last year I felt that I would not be able to move any further there and which is when I decided that it was time to sort of move on. End of September I decided leaving the firm whilst I was still having conversations with elmax and eventually elmax after speaking with them for a few months, especially the CEO, the Chief Operating Officer, I just felt they were going to, they were revolutionizing the way institutional effects was done and I wanted to be a part of the challenge. Another interesting thing at elmax was that, dare I say it is one of the early institutional exchanges for cryptocurrencies, things like bitcoins, which is an asset a lot of people are very actively taking interest in. So those aspects of elmax's model appeal to me. Add to that fact that it is small and growing at a phenomenal pace. It is using technology, bleeding edge technology to solve problems in a sector that is dominated by FX is also a great place to be in and it is growing phenomenally fast. There was nothing not to like in elmax. Great CEO, great management team and a very big addressable market. So I absolutely jumped at the opportunity.

And the treasury team, the structure is obviously you got a team there, I think of six people. How do you sort of split it up and how would you. You've seen corporates, you've seen this side of the financial services. How do you structure yourself slightly differently? What's your focus?

I think the focus here is, in my view the treasury challenge. Whether you are working for a corporate or a big bank or a smaller fintech startup like elmax does not change. I mean there is the balance sheet that a treasurer has to look at and try to drive extract as much value from it as possible. As we all know that cash flow is sanity, revenue is Vanity and profit. I don't know what it is, but focus on cash flow is a must and that's what I'm trying to do here. We do a lot of hedging of FX exposures, so it's a hybrid team. It does cash management, it does FX exposure management and it also does the classic balance sheet cash flow management that every treasury does. I'm trying to structure the team around these three pillars, but it's fairly early days. I've been in the firm for about, I'd say maybe eight months or so and hopefully I'll be able to add value in the times to come.

Yeah, keep going. You know when you talk about the times to come and the future of treasury, where are you seeing the sort of challenges coming at you as a treasurer? You've been there coming on a year or so, not quite a year yet, but what are you seeing coming down the line? What's the. I spoke on a previous show with Severin from Honeywell and I talked to her that the CFO sometimes in the nicest way pushes the treasurer at the forefront of technology and the forefront, forefront of new initiatives. Because you as the treasurer, you're looking to the future rather than perhaps some of the controller staff are looking at day to day and what happened in the past. You as a treasurer, what are you seeing coming at you? What's the new things that you need to get on board with?

So I think it's absolutely spot on. I think the impact of technology on how processes in finance in general are done is one thing that I am investigating. Classic old school treasury where, take for example reconciliations which would be performed in Excel by people is very soon going to be done by intelligent programs. It is already happening. Then there are new Fintechs which are trying to address the cash management market. I mean, if you have excess cash, how do you invest it? These new technologies are making those markets available to treasurers like me that were previously accessible only to probably big bank treasurers. So I think technology systems implementation is one thing that I am very, very actively looking at, trying to automate processes, free up the time of people so that they can do more forward looking thing, more value added stuff. So that's one theme I think. Also financial services firms are all in the uk, regulated in the uk, based in the uk, are also grappling with a very big unknown right now, which is Brexit. Our firm, being fairly global, offers services in Europe as well. And if and when a Brexit happens, and depending upon the kind of Brexit, that happens, which obviously nobody knows yet. We have to have a plan to continue operations and continue offering services to our clients so that the client experience does not disrupt. So that is another important challenge. As a firm, we are growing in Asia. What are the innovative ways of trying to make the client experience in Asia as seamless as possible, as frictionless as possible? And this is usually by finding innovative solutions around getting. So basically around the flow of money. I'm looking at those two. But then you always have finite resources, and you also need to have a framework of deploying your finite resources into what is the best bang for the buck. And I'm privileged that many of those kinds of things also are done by up treasury here at Elmax, him and.

Chu, you just mentioned there about Brexit. And we're, you know, we're based in the uk, but we cover on a global scale, across Europe and across the US in particular. And a lot of our recruitment things, when I've been talking to people increasingly, one of the things, the pieces of feedback that I've received, a lot of people have been saying to me is saying, mike, Brexit, we're not worried about it. I was like, all right. They said, no, no, we're planning for it, but we've got issues in this country, that country, that country, which are, you know, much more volatile and much more things everyone was talking about. It's an orderly exit. There are issues and things like that. And this first time, I've got to say that a couple of people I've spoken to say, oh, let's not even talk about it. So, all right. Really? Yeah, it's a problem, you know, it's something, but it's a planned problem. There's a time scale and everything else. They said we've got issues in countries where they, you know, devalue their currency 30% overnight. That's an issue for us. How do you deal with that, you know, sort of that uncertainty or, you know, is it less so for you guys?

So I think for us, the uncertainty around Brexit is huge because, as you know, a financial services firm can only offer its services, products and services in a country where it has the license to do so. And if a hard Brexit happens, firms that passport into Europe current basis, their UK license will not be able to do so. So it is a fairly big problem for firms if, let's say, a quarter of your revenue is dependent on clients from continental Europe. I think that said, we are still small but growing fast. We are not yet operating in countries where we have a risk to 30% devaluation. I mean probably that kind of risk for us, for Elmax in particular, is a devaluation of a sudden devaluation or a sudden gap in sterling. We offer leveraged products to clients, sterling gaps between 31 October and 1 November. What would happen to the Eurodollar market? We would have hedges that we would have to make good on, but we would have clients who could potentially default. So that is one risk that we have to keep thinking about. Unlike let's say a non financial services company which might have a big revenue stream coming out of China. And the trade wars is causing a lot of volatility in the dollar RMB exchange rate that is affecting their bottom lines. I think that is is yet not a big risk for us, but volatility in other currencies. So Brexit for us, I think it's.

A big challenge and with yourself and moving away from that. But more we talk there and you've got this team of six. Easiest way. What are you like as a boss? What's your ethos around leadership? It's good that you've had again, people have said to me sometimes that it helps if you've been in a sort of consultancy role, you manage teams and it gives you sort of a number of different aspects to your managerial leadership style maybe. But you know, just looking back at yourself, what are you like as a boss?

I would like to think that I am, put it simply, a reasonable boss. I would like to also believe that people who work with me feel that I am supportive and I help them achieve their, their ambitions. At the same time, I hope that I am strategic as well, because I think a very important aspect of running a Treasury team is trying to look into the future and assess what risks you are there are going to be in the future to manage and plan for them today. So it's a lot about basically having a strategy, conveying that strategy to the people that work with you for you and improving outcomes for everyone.

And again, what do you see as the challenges coming for you and the team, you know, as you grow and as you change, you know, putting aside Brexit, you know, again, are you sort of pro study and things like that or are you not so bothered with that stuff? Or what's the sort of, you know, how do you bring those guys along the journey with you?

So I'd be lying if I say that I'm not pro study. I do think that treasury qualifications Give treasury professionals a framework to solve problems, a framework to look at things. And in my view, in order to make treasury scalable, in order to again focus on structured problem solving, qualifications such as act, the CTP in my view are very important. I think for a company like ours, the biggest challenge is always to scale processes, scale treasury and financial processes in general, along with growth. For a company that is doubling its EBITDA every 12 months, it means that you have to be having a standard operating process of if you open a new entity, you're not going to get more staff in treasury, but you'll have to make that entity work. Take all your processes that are fit for purpose in one entity, transport it to the other entity and make it work seamlessly and that that happens on a continuous basis every time we develop a new product. How do we think about treasury processes backing that product? That's also a constant challenge. Personally I think if treasury professionals have a certification and additionally I would say they are good at technology, maybe a little bit of coding in things like Python or R, they are able to make data driven decisions as well rather than relying on data that is embedded in spreadsheets. I'm absolutely against doing spreadsheet based analysis. It may work in some treasury, but I absolutely hate it. So I often tell my team to do ACT to get some qualifications so that they know what is the essence of treasury, the bigger purpose of treasury in the firm rather than just do their processes. And also that if they can learn a bit of coding, I mean I know how to code. So if they can learn a bit of coding, it often again forces you to think that is this spreadsheet process, right? Can I automate it? Can I do it more easily? And it frees up the time I do, in my humble opinion, I don't think reconciliations should in cash reconciliations for example, should involve human element. It should have any human interaction. They can be automated. Either we buy a program that does the wrecks automatically or we build one. The textbooks here have already been written. So that is the one thing that I keep constantly challenging my team try to focus on the bigger problem and try to solve it by automation.

Let's move back into you as an individual and you know we spoke about before the show that what we do, we'll put your LinkedIn profile on the show notes so that people can connect to you if it's useful and things like that. But as we look at it and you look back, you've got this diverse background. You know, as I said to you right back at the beginning, some people, Treasury, treasury, treasury, you've done all these different aspects of things. What the pieces of advice as we close off today that if someone looks back and said do you know what? I'd like a background just like him and Shu and they say yeah, that's something that I want to be like and follow what the key pieces of advice you or key takeaways you might give those guys and the people listening today.

So I think I probably have maybe four or five takeaways. One, as I had mentioned already before, is get a Treasury qualification. If you think that you have to have for a long term career in Treasury, I think it just demonstrates to others your commitment to the profession. Besides giving you a framework set of tools and techniques to approach problems. I think that is important. I think also that treasury professionals should be very inquisitive. No disrespect to accountants, but accounting is a set of rules and I have often seen treasurers, people in treasury often have an accounting degree. They just happen to land up a Treasury gig and sort of treat it as an accounting as an extension of accounting. In my view that approach is not correct. So you have to be inquisitive, try to tinker with things and sort of know the why. Why is that happening rather than having a process centric view on it. You also have to be passionate about working in Treasury. I mean treasury in my view is one of the best places to be if you're working in the finance organization of a firm. Mainly because you manage a lot of external, important external relationships with banks, with hedging counterparties, with providers of capital, pretty much everything that goes on in the business. You have to have an economic view on it. I mean accrual accounting and what accountants do is a rules based approach to looking at business. Whereas cash is king and treasurers have to focus on how does it generate cash, does it impact cash, does it impact capital? In my view that is, that is great. I think you have to be very pragmatic as well. Sometimes just because one person has followed a certain pattern does not mean somebody else's pattern or path to treasury success has to be identical. So when you said earlier that most people follow a path to becoming a group treasurer, they start with accountancy and probably become a Treasury analyst, senior treasury analyst and rise up the career ladder. I don't think think that necessarily has to be the case. The key is to get as wide an experience as possible and be pragmatic about how it leads to your goal. If your Goal is to become the group treasurer. I've had headhunters tell me, and this was in my early days of trying to sort of move from banking to consulting. Oh, you'll have to take a massive pay cut. Oh, you will have to start right from the bottom. But I did not listen to them. No disrespect to you, Mike. I mean, Mike on the. Fantastic. I think that's where you have to be pragmatic. And I think the last thing I'd say is be driven if you're hungry, if you are driven. And when I say driven, I don't mean it negatively. I don't mean that. Don't put your ego in the drive. Be driven is just about being hungry to do more, being hungry to invest in yourself and sort of work towards your career goals by making investments, by networking, by getting the degrees. I think these are the recipes of success. So I'd say being inquisitive, getting a qualification, being passionate about a career in treasury, being pragmatic and being driven, less so by our ego.

Awesome. And usually I do the checklist and you've just done it for me, which is quite nice. So, yeah, I think all of those stand on their own merits and I think we'll put a list of those in the show notes. Well, great end to the show. Thank you very much. Him and Shu. And as I said before, if you want to connect with him and Shoe, we'll put his LinkedIn profile in there. If it's good to have both of you in the network work, then you guys can, you know, connect. If it's not, don't worry. Thank you for your time today and I'm sure there's people who get some really good value there and you might get some good inquiries, but once again, thanks for your time.

Thank you for your time and the opportunity, Mike.

Thank you, sir.