How to Maintain Good Relationships in Treasury with Anh Duong

Foreign 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 and this week's show, delighted to be joined by An Duong, the Group Treasury Director at ERM. ERM are an ESG consulting group with approximately 100 business units, 5,000 people operating on a global scale. Now ERM is actually a private equity backed business and obviously ESG is in the headlines all the time at the moment, but I get on to explain that a little bit more to you. And also he pronounces name much better than I as well. But prior to ERM, Ann had roles as Head of Treasury at Imperial College, worked at bp, worked at Barclays Capital. So really interesting start to his career and everything else continued. And that's enough from me as always. Let's get you to talk about your career if you would, sir, and how you first ever got started in Treasury. Let's take us back to the dim distant past and yeah, you can fill in the gaps. Over to you, sir.

Thanks, Mike. I've always been interested in finance, but I suppose I kind of fell into treasury over the course of my career. My first job was in banking. I actually started as a graduate trainee at Barclays, then became a market maker in interest rate derivatives and European government bonds. When I was there. I then switched to the buy side and became a Treasury trader at bp. Bp. Treasury is pretty unique because treasury is run as a profit center and therefore we were expected to make money in the financial markets as well as service the needs of the corporation. So we were there to help fund the company, minimize the cost of hedging and to protect the company from financial risks. And as a consequence of all the profit center activities that we were involved in, the turnover for treasury was over a trillion dollars. My specialism within treasury itself was around hedging of fx, liquidity credit and interest rate risk, whereas my trading specialism was around quantitative and derivatives trading. I then left BP to become Head of Treasury at Imperial College. So that's big career change. There was an opportunity to transform the cash office at Imperial College. So at the time lots of universities have cash offers and they didn't really have treasury operation. So the mandate was to make it the best in class and also to help manage and fund the 1 billion pound 10 year capital plan. Imperial College, for those who don't know, is a hugely successful STEM university With a billion pounds in annual turnover revenue coming from 100 different countries.

We whizz through there about BP and I don't want you on a good flow there, but can I just talk to you just briefly there about. So BP massively commercial organization and you know, there 15 years or so and then to higher education. But what sort of led to that or what was the. It's a heck of a move if you like. So maybe just give us a bit more deep diving about BP and then why Imperial? That's a real change.

BP was incredibly exciting role and I still think about the role a lot because a lot of it is around trading in the financial markets. So as a Treasury trader I'm expected to be making money from movements in the financial markets, not necessarily to hedge the risk for the company and therefore what it meant was a huge level commitment to the day to day job and not necessarily always the long term objective of the organization. I mean it was really exciting. You wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning or you wait for a key economic data to come out such as the payroll data, the US or the employment data in the UK and you'll be trading on the back of these data. But ultimately after a long time, which is 14 years at BP, I wanted to focus more on my career on developing the business. So instead of being what you would say, a cog in an enormous wheel, I wanted to be a cog in a smaller wheel. And I think at Imperial College I was lucky enough to be given that mandate to help grow and develop treasury and also to help transform the financial performance or stability of the organization. And this is something I wouldn't have had at bp. So it was more sort of longer term objectives rather than short term objectives.

And just with that sort of ethos behind exactly as you say is quite different. I'd say virtually all treasury teams are about de risking and not taking on any risk. And as you said you were profit center focused and very different to that in that sense. But then the real shift to higher education, treasury as well. How did you, you know, it sounds like you wanted that change. I know we discussed this before the show as well. What first attract, you know, you're there up against maybe other treasury professionals. Why do they go, do you know what? I can see why Blue chip background, blue BP and everything else. Were they not worried? They thought, hang on, this guy, he's going to be at right, Profit, profit trade, trade, you know, what was it about that that you managed to convince them maybe as well I was helped.

By the fact that my line manager at Imperial College came from Shel. There was a certain amount of empathy there. He believed I had the ability to deliver the transition in terms of academic understanding. You know, I'm very academic. He was also very academic. I was also had a lot of technical qualifications as well related to my career. So I think that really helped. I absolutely appreciate, you know, the fact that he had faith in me and I really enjoyed the move. But it was a very, very different move and it was challenging. And they say you never get used to the company in the first couple of months on average. It takes like year to understand not just the way the company works, but the culture. I mean that you couldn't be more different. You know, the culture of a very profit driven organization and also very profit driven, part of the organization to an organization that was not for profit. I always kind of like to challenge myself a little bit and so that was one of the reasons I moved. I just didn't want it to just do something because I'd already done it before. I wanted something a little bit different at the same time.

When you came in, I know we discussed this before, what was the sort of state of the treasury there? I. E. Not wishing to sort of cost aspersions or anything else. What I'm saying is what was the setup for treasury like there? Was it, you know, really advanced or anything else? I know that you and I spoke about this, that you brought in this new commercial viewpoint if you like. So how did you come in again? I sometimes talk on the, the podcast about checklists with people. Did you come in with your notepad and go right, let's look at this bit on the. How do you, how do you model your bal. What are you doing? Or what was the sort of the goals that were they outlined for you, as it were?

Well, before I joined treasury was mainly a cash office. So it was principally responsible for making payments and reconciliation. You could argue that that's probably the lowest value added part of a Treasury operation. So what I wanted to do and was part of my mandate was look at the other parts of treasury that treasury should be covering. So when I came on, we looked after cash forecasting, we looked at corporate finance activities, we created an online store and payment security related to that. We also overhauled the segregation of duty treasury policy documentation and there was a lot of areas and we also touched on the area of anti money laundering and sanction compliance areas as well. So treasury was also responsible for that. And that was quite difficult to do because obviously you kind of feel like sanctions and treasury are part of opposite spaces. So we had to create a separation of duty between the two areas Within Treasury. A lot of value added things were added to treasury that hadn't existed before.

There's a team there and things like that. You're talking different scales. You know, you've gone BP to Imperial, massive revenues, BP obviously, but still different challenges in terms of education and things like that. What was, what was that like to deal with?

It was very difficult. I think it's something that you kind of learn as you do the job. People respond to differently from BP to Imperial. The ethics are very different, they're all professional, but the way of doing things is very, very different. Also with BP, because it's such a large organization, you always have a steady stream of graduates coming in. So you get your pick, a mix of graduates. And treasury is always an area that everyone kind of wants to work in. You get a very good selection. Whereas when you move to temper college, you move to a smaller treasury operation and you inherit staff, you inherit people who've been there a long time who may have different views, who've done things very, very well, but have different views on how to do things and may struggle to change. And you have those who still want to learn. So it's very much of a. You have to feel your way around the different parts of the organization and how they would react to how treasury would change. And also you have to look after your team and to understand the needs of the staff and to make sure that whatever their concerns or issues that they may have, you need to address them. Unfortunately, you know, if some things don't work, you have to make the tough decision. But ideally, 99% of time you don't want to change things unless you can't resolve them. So it's having to work around the setup that you have. It's very, very different compared to when you're a bp. I wouldn't say it's ruthless at all, but it's for commercial organization. It's going to be very different to a non profit organization.

So you were there for sort of four years or so and then the move to erm. So yeah, it is a catchphrase at the moment, you know, ESG and everything else. But you guys, this is what you do. This is exactly where you. Your sweet spot again without being a complete pitch fest for you guys. But carry on. Maybe you could explain your role as Treasury Director there at ERM and what you do and worldly View and stuff. So over to you sir.

So erm, treasury is very much like, I would say BP treasury, but smaller. Which means, invariably means that you're going to have to do a lot of the roles yourself. You can't rely on different areas to support you. So treasury erm includes managing cash management, typical treasury function. It involves debt raising, it involves working with legal on the shareholder process. So ERM is owned by its partners which are the shareholders of the company. So we actually manage the share scheme for the company. We also work with tax on areas involving taxation such as remittances and dividends and investments in new company. We also work on M and A. So since I joined an erm, I believe we've had nine acquisitions in the space of just over one and a half years. So it's like you get a lot of hats in a small organization and your advice is needed and you need to be on top of things. It is, I would say more in terms of how much of a challenge is much more challenging than any area I've worked in before.

Maybe just deep dive a bit more about ERM and what the business is. You know, you're consulting, you're doing this, what's your role as treasurer for? You know, how does it different with a consulting business versus we can BP getting all out the ground and everything else. Imperial College, you're looking after the cash over, you know, the education institution.

Tell us about ERM then from a financial perspective. ERM is very, very different. ERM is sub investment grade which is natural for a private equity owned business. We were owned by AIMCO and OMIS, so these are retirement funds in Canada. So AIMCO's Alberta retirement fund, OMIS is Ottawa retirement fund. Their two large Canadian funds have about over $100 billion under asset, under management. There are principal shareholders, so we've been owned by them since 2015 and we have 700 partners that also help direct the future direction of the company. So being private equity owned, our credit rating is such, but it kind of influences a lot of treasury actions and strategy in terms of how much leverage you can take on making sure that your credit rating is stable, making sure that your banking system is compliant with the debt documentation that you have in place. So it's very, very complex. Whereas a BP you were investment grade. Imperial College we were like two notches below the government credit rating. We could borrow money for 30 years at 2.5% if we wanted to. Whereas at erm, we're borrowing money for five years unsecured at around 7%. It's very, very different. So that's the difference from a financial perspective, but in terms of the way it's managed, it's an international organization, it has presence in six continents and you're continually working with all the different regions. And because it's a small treasury operation, we don't have a global treasury operation. We're continually relying on finance staff around the globe to do a lot of the treasury activities, although a lot of treasury function is managed centrally, so there's a lot of stakeholder engagement and management involved. You can't just come in and be like a bull in a China shop and tell people, do it this way, do it that way, do it this way. Because they've got other day jobs as well. So there's a lot of sort of, you know, making sure that you. You manage people effectively even though they're not under your management.

That was my next question. You've got these people that are arm's length in a way, and it's, you know, sell, not tell, and then maybe perhaps a more directive influencing and everything else you can through that. How have you found that sort of. In that kind of business where you're sort of trying to partner them and things like that? I know that you've put in place and change some of the, you know, improve things as well, brought in systems and everything else. What's that been like? What have you found?

For me, this is something I've learned. I don't know if it applies for everyone. It's important that you don't just come in and tell people to do things. I think respect is earned and not just granted. Just because your CV might be sparkling or you might work for a wonderful company in the past, you come in, I don't think you can just tell people to do the things that you want. Especially, you know, my experience at working at Imperial College or working at, erm. I think you have to work with people and I think after a while you'll gain respect. You need to deliver good, quality work, you need to support them when they need to be supported and to be there for them. I read a lot about management and how to do things. It sounds weird, but whenever you have a situation and you don't always know how best to resolve them to happen for the first time in your career, you actually do need to read things on how to resolve them and obviously just go down to Google. But it does help. For example, if somebody asks you, oh, can you do this for me? And say, I'm too Busy. Is that the right answer? You need to answer, you know, so it's very, very important that you kind of say things in the right way. The other thing is I try to avoid emails when there's contentious issues. I'd rather pick up a phone, I'd rather talk to people. Emails are very dangerous things, in my opinion. Sometimes things might seem very innocuous. It's easy to pick up a phone and I think working from home, you got teams and you got zoom, you got WebEx. It's very, very easy to now just to call them and see them and talk to them. You can diffuse a situation in a matter of seconds rather than going back and forth in emails.

We're deep diving in there and actually that nicely brings us into the current situation or the past. Well, there is no current situation. It's just weird world and everything else. But you joined back in 2019, then this weird pandemic came along. How have you guys got through it? How have you coped? I know we were just speaking, just literally before we kicked off this podcast about how it's changed some of the and improved the relationship. Not was a bad relationship with your CFO and now it's deepened that and things. Can you just give us a quick view of that, if you like. If that's the right way.

I appreciate that. Covid affects every company differently, and not every company, but every person differently and also every location differently. With, erm, our treasury operation is centralized. We work next to the Gherkin in the center of London. So for most of the team, the commute is considerable. For me, it's an hour and a half to get into the office. So when working from home came as a direct consequence to Covid, it actually made my work life balance a little bit better. The three hours I would spend commuting a day, I could use to spend time with my family, my young family. And also it meant that because we were working in an office that was fairly tight in terms of capacity, organizing meetings was easier. So in terms of productivity was easier. And it also had a positive influence in terms of my staff, who also shared the same experience with me with commuting, some of them really struggled to commute and so working from home worked better for them. It's not going to work well for everyone. Members of the team, some of them did struggle, especially those living in London who would walk into the office and they were the young team members who had flats in London. So in terms of operational impact, I think bp, because of the way that we were set up. We always had laptops. We could work fairly well. Initially there was concern about security and things like getting signatures, but we'd already had processes in place that overcome those problems. So from an operational perspective, it worked well and it actually worked a lot better than I thought it would do. Meeting up with banks, it wasn't really a loss. We just speak to them on zoom. We miss a couple of lunches here or there, but that's not something can be desperately upset about. The big impact is on the staff. And we found that on average my team were happier working from home, which. Which is nice. And I suppose that has a ramifications going forward because people are going to be expecting certain things that you might need to deliver if you want certain type of employees. Right.

What do you mean by that?

If you're looking to recruit young members, then some of them may not want to live in London, but then they don't want to live far out because of the commute. Right. So London is still expensive, rent is still very expensive, so they might prefer to live at home. You might lose out on junior members of staff. For more senior members of staff. Are you just going to consider people who can work in commute every day or you just can you kind of widen that net out and then you look at the job space. A lot of job spaces have a dedicated sentence is saying you work two days a week in the office or one day, you know, because now becoming selling point for a lot of companies now I can imagine, right. If you're looking to recruit, you don't want to shut down your list of good candidates because you're unwilling to change with the times. I suppose.

Yeah, it's a real flip side actually for. Well, actually one of my friends rather than one of my clients, my employment lawyers, they're based in Guildford in Surrey and I live not far from them and everything else. I was chatting to him recently, we were going through some stuff and actually we got into his recruitment policy and he said, well, Mike, it's actually backfired on them a little bit because the big thing for them was they were basically a city name. You know, employment lawyers. I won't name check them on this, but the big thing for them was saying that, hey, we're in Guildford. You don't have to travel up to the city every day. You don't have to be in London and come to Guildford and do this and you could be half an hour, you know, on the train in there and stuff like that. That, that's in the bin that's gone. That sales point, they were saying, oh yeah, come to us now. They're going, well, so what? You know, I could be a new, you know. He said there's a couple of people they know, they were looking at are based in Newcastle and they're saying, well yeah, but you don't require us to come in. Well, nobody else does anymore either. We can do virtually all of the work. We need to bar the occasional bit. So there's like, hang on, does that mean we now have to pay London prices or London salaries? Even though there was a, you know, not a massive difference in Guildford but you know, you finding that you're seeing that a lot more. And do you think that'll be a thing in the future? You're just talking about it there.

I think that's definitely the case. I think you need to be open minded about these things for Treasury. If you ask me a year and a half ago, would treasury work from home effectively? I'd probably be one of the cynics and say no, I've changed. I mean I've changed, turned around 180 degrees and firmly believe that you can run an effective treasury operation from home. I like to come in the office, always like to meet banks and lenders in person and to make sure that I can manage my team well. But I believe you've got to be flexible. I mean, is it permanent? I probably say with technology it is permanent. So I think you've got to move a little bit with the times rather than say no, definitely got to come into the office and ultimately I think it should save costs for the firm as well, give people a better work life balance.

Looking at that future thing, you said you like coming into office. I was just actually communicating with a client earlier and saying that I think my entire to watch my waistline certainly, you know, more than, more than usual but actually about everybody saying, can't wait to see you in the pub, can't wait to see you for lunch, can't wait to meet up. Because recruitment is a very much a relationship business as is treasury. And that's why, you know, combined the two of them. Treasury recruitment, which I love and meeting clients like yourself and you know, catching up with banking partners and finance partners and conferences. Why is that important, do you think that face to face? Because surely you can do all over zoom from your perspective as a treasurer and a corporate treasury professional, how would you say that sort of stacks up?

I think it's really important, I know that you can ask me a question on what sort of skills and attributes you need as a treasurer or somebody working in Treasury. You need to have fairly good relationship management. And why is it important? Because you need to get on well with your bankers, you need to get on well with your lawyers and the accountants. There's no better way of getting on with them than face to face interaction. I suppose the problem with interaction with teams and offices rather than outside in a pub. I'm not advocating drinking or anything like that.

Well, I am, I am. Don't worry, you don't have to. You're the treasurer. That's fine. I am advocating drinking. I love having drinks with my clients. And I'm not saying, you know, to excess because that has happened, but I'm saying, you know, I do like to have a beer with my clients because it's a nice way of decompressing and talking to them, them drinking responsibly. But that's what we're both advocating, so we'll do that bit of it, but. Exactly right, carry on, sir.

It's just you don't necessarily want to talk about work in a working sort of totally relationship.

It's about more than that. You know, there are some finance disciplines where it's all work, whereas actually Treasury, I think, you know, is wider as well. Economic terms as well. You know, you, you touches on so many different things about, you know, what do you think about the economy in the us how's that going to knock on in Europe and, you know, how's Brexit? It's so encompassing that that's why I found it very engaging all that time.

Also, everyone is human, right? Nobody's going to say, I'm going to devote X amount of time to company A, X amount company time to company B and company C. People are just going to say, oh, I like this guy, I get on well him, I'm going to help resolve his problem. Or he comes back at me and says, look, you've done a terrible job. I'm not going to get totally upset about it because I kind of respect him because I know him as a person. I try to do the best, best job I can for him. And I think with treasury, more so than ever, you are reliant on your vendors, your lenders and your bankers, right? And so it's important to maintain that strong relationship.

And by the time this podcast comes out, I'll have published this latest article, which again, I was in discussion with the ACT and they said, you know, where did I see the future? Exactly as we just touched on there. Before we touch look at to the future, let's look at the, you know, the present sort of thing and where it's done. I think this blended. I talked to, you know, good friend treasurer today and he. One of the things he said was, yeah, he's cut out this two hour each way commute, so four hours. He said the worst bit is he now works for an extra hour, six hours a day. Really said, yeah, I'm having to make sure I try and go out for a walk at lunchtime and try where I can because it's just bled over. And I said that that's one things that another treasurer I talked to, he said, you know, I didn't, he didn't necessarily enjoy his hour and a half commute in the evening was a bit of a schlep to get back out to Kent. We said, you know what, I did like the hour on Netflix. And that was his time where he decompressed before he saw his wife and kids and everything else. That was the time. So by the time you got home, all right, I come into home mode sort of thing. That doesn't happen so much now. And I think that's a, that's a transition for people as well.

Yeah, absolutely. I must admit that's one thing I have not been able to do, is to segregate working from home and also, you know, spending time with my family from home as effectively as I would done when I was working in the office. I suppose the difference now is that I'm around my children and I think it still is a nice sort of pleasure to have in terms of level work. I agree with your previous interviewee. I do probably say I work a little bit more, but that's also a function of the crisis that we live in today, the pandemic. But it's definitely, I'm working a little bit more. But on the flip side, I. I've found three hours I never had before, which is nice.

Just on that, we, again, we talked about the deepening of the relationship with yourself and the cfo. And you said that it's actually opened up more things for you, that you're having a much more regular face because you've had to as a treasurer. So that's more positive for treasury. And for yourself, would you say as.

Well, I'm lucky, but I spend a lot more time the cfo, senior management. There's a daily interaction that happens. So a lot of projects that may not have involved treasury, which now involves Treasury, I can often volunteer to say, look, this is our area. I don't want anyone else doing this. I believe we're in a place to do the best job we can for the firm. So that's happened, that's really helped. Obviously the challenge is for more my junior members of staff because for them they need visibility, they need human interaction. So we try our best to make sure that they do get the human interaction. Because you're missing out on meeting in the coffee area and having a coffee with random people you'd never meet at normal. You know, you don't just call a random person up in your phone on teams and say, hi, how are you doing? So I think that really helps. Some societies don't rely on banter or just general chit chat, but I do think it helps to have a general chat and just be more relaxed when you talk without having to talk about work all the time, I think. Thanks, guys.

You have a fascinating personal background as well and it's certainly affected the way that you are and your approach to, to treasury and grabbing every opportunity and everything else. Can you perhaps again, for the listeners, and this is a story we've pre touched on before. Everyone say, oh, my prime into his personal life? No, I think it's incredibly, you know, your backstory is just uplifting. So, you know, again, over to you, sir.

When I was young, I'm Vietnamese, so when I was young, my parents put me and my sister on a boat, so we were actually a refugee at the time. We were called boat person. So it's no different from the Syrian refugees you hear now. I was about 6 years old at the time, just me and my sister, who was around 13 years old. We were on a boat and we got rescued by a British merchant ship in the Gulf of Thailand and that's how we ended up coming to the uk. So when we got here, we were on our own for a few months and then my dad came over on another boat, also a refugee boat person with my sister. And then a few months later my mum came over. So we were very much refugees, I suppose. Has that had an impact on the way I view life? I like to think it's had a positive impact because it means that I don't take everything for granted. And when I have downsides, I feel like I can get over them better because I've had big downsides when I was young. You know, like you don't have your parents, you don't have food on one or both. So it kind of puts everything in perspective, right. And it's all relativity. A lot of times. And in this day and age it's quite common to compare ourselves with the Instagrammers, who's got holidays in nice far off countries and everything and think that you haven't done much with your life or you haven't achieved much. You kind of feel like, well, from the people I left behind and the background I left behind got so much more opportunities. So I'm kind of grateful for that.

You've shown exactly that development of things. I think it was really enlightening when we talked about it before the show and I was just like, wow, you know, just how you're taking it and get the most out of it and that's just incredible. And then when you're coaching people and you've got that, whether you've got that in the back of the mind or anything else, where do you see the sort of development for Treasury? What are you seeing as the future development of Treasury?

The century we lived in, we just experienced so many financial crisis, right? I mean the dot com we had a global financial crisis, the euro debt crisis. We've also had the pandemic. So treasury is continually changing because of all these crisis. It's moving more and more as a valued added operation. It's also there to protect the firm. And so it treasury is becoming increasingly important. In the past, it may not have been two decades ago, it would have been more about let's make the payments, let's reconcile the payments. But I've been fortunate to work in a bank and I've been working at BP where Treasury has always been professional. But I do see as a wider change within the industry, treasury will become more and more important, well chosen and defined career in its own right. So that's the way it's moving now in terms of, of my team and my staff. I see that again it's becoming more professional. I think people are taking a lot more seriously the treasury qualifications and no longer are we like, oh, he's got an accountancy degree, he'll make a Treasury person. I think you now need a Treasury background. Unless you're a graduate trainee, you do need certain graduate treasury qualifications and we're helped by the fact that we are supported by the actual organization and I think they do a great job of promoting treasury and promoting the education required around Treasury. I'm hoping to help them as well. So I've kind of volunteered to help them but currently because of COVID I'm not doing a lot but hoping to just sort of like engage universities on treasury as a Career option for students and undergraduates.

Yeah, I spoke on, did an ACT panel this week for the Future Leaders Group and yeah, really, really enjoyable. It was sort of, you know, really interesting questions coming from the audience, a variety of audience, but, you know, a lot of it was particularly focused on guys and girls at earlier stages of their careers and sort of just, just gradually developing. So it was, it was good to give more information and coaching there sort of thing. Just with that sort of. You're talking there about treasury coming into the limelight, if you like, but do you think that the spotlight will move away maybe from treasury now the crisis is, is passing, moving on a little bit and everything was liquidity and talk about, you know, there's. But now actually, you know, we had this back in 2008 liquidity crisis and then I asked the question then, you know, 12 years ago, you know, was the spotlight going to move away from treasury and what do people need to do to keep a focus on it and, you know, front of mind, do you see it sort of diminishing or do you think that. What do you think treasury professionals need to do? Whatever levels to keep their seats at the table? What do you think they should be doing?

Undoubtedly the spotlight will move a little bit away from treasury, but it will move to a different part of treasury. Though I think it's important to keep that spotlight shining, so to speak. Now it's all about having cash and liquidity, but in future it may be to do with funding and cash management and KYC sanctions, optimal capital structure. All these things are incredibly important for the business. So if you are treasurer or working within treasury team, you can stop that spotlight from shining somewhere else. You need to understand what treasury can do for the organization. Not everything will naturally come to treasury unless you ask for it to come to Treasury. So I think it's important to speak to senior management, to speak to people involved in making financial decisions to say, look, we believe that this area really belongs to Treasury. We believe that nobody does a better job than treasury does. Things like cash forecasting. A lot of business don't use treasury for cash forecasting. They use the accounting method for cash forecasting. You need to basically bring them to treasury and to make the change worthwhile for the business. So you need to market that change. I don't think it would, would disappear, it would just shine in a different area.

Very interesting, sir. I think there'll be some people are thinking about that and we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so that people can connect to you, if you think it's right to have in your network and their network and everything else. Looking at the future, what are the tips that you would give to people, you know, top two or three, whatever levels they might be, they're looking at your background because they've gone, hang on, this guy made the move from banking through BP through higher education through to ers. Brilliant. Amazing variety there. And some people stay in one company 20 years still, which does happen, and things like that. What tips would you maybe give, whether that's around industry or treasury or. What are the key things that you would summarize, really?

I think education is absolutely key. I think as treasury becomes more professional, then you need to develop your education in the area of finance. Treasury and corporate finance, these are all very, very important areas for Treasury. And in a way, we are fortunate. For the ACT does provide great support for treasury practitioners, not only from the start of your career, but to the highest level. And that's through further education or networking events and conventions and seminars and panel interviews. So that's very important, developing your education. I think the other thing about treasury is you need good attention to detail. I've seen a lot of new treasury people join and they've been the smartest people I've ever seen, but they're not rigorous. And the problem with treasury is you can't get the numbers wrong without creating huge amounts of problems across the organization. You've got to pay somebody correctly, you've got to pay the right person. You can do your job nine to five, job perfectly well, but you make one wrong payment, it really does impact your career negatively. So it's very important to get that right. And finally, I think unlike every career, the more you put in, the more you get out. Look at what you're doing, see where you can add value. Treasury is more about creating real opportunities and adding value for the business. In treasury, we're really lucky because the things that we do, you can actually see the tangible impact almost straight away. You can improve the liquidity of the firm, increase cash, which then reduces the borrowing needs. So that helps. You're saving money. You can minimize risk, reduce FX risk, credit risk and interest rate risk for the organization. That also protects the firm. You can enhance yield, you can reduce costs. So all these things you can do and so not necessarily wait for them to come to you. You might have to actually look at the problem and people might not think it's a problem, but you can actually do something about it. I'm a firm believer in treasury can actually pay for the cost of treasury. Just good treasury management. I think those are the three things that are important.

Brilliant. Just the ones I was going to summary. Education is key to your growth and continued success. But then also the more will you put in, the more you get out. And you know, that again, being critical to your success, I think those are the ones that really, for me stood out. So, yeah, very much. Wow, Brilliant episode. Thank you, sir, for your time today. As I say, we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so people can connect to you. Very insightful as always, sir, and look forward to, to finally having a very measured beer after this is all over and, you know, having a good old catch up. So thank you very much for your time today.

Thanks so much. M. Thank you.