How to Secure a Job in Treasury with Oliver Eiss

Hello, it's Mike Richards here from the treasury recruitment company. I hope you're enjoying the Treasury Career Corner. If you are great news, perhaps you give us a rating on itunes or wherever you consume your podcast content. This means that even more treasury professionals can benefit from finding out, or by finding out about how treasurers have achieved their career goals. The link to Rate our show will list at the bottom of our show notes. And please remember as well, the show itself is as much about you as it is about us. There are specific questions you want us to ask or there's feedback you want to give. Please drop me an email. My direct email is mikeresuryrecruitment.com inventibly enough, but anyway, that's enough from me. Let's get on with the show.

So welcome to this week's Treasury Career Podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. I really enjoy talking to treasurers across the globe and today we're going to be joined by Oliver Ice, the group treasurer of Johnson Matthey, the FTSE 100 company headquartered in the UK. They're a global leader in sustainable technologies applying the cutting edge sciences to create solutions for their customers. Well, hopefully Oliver can explain exactly what that means in a moment. Oliver himself, he has over 20 years experience gained in a variety of global and complex blue chip organizations within in treasury, so he's worked in consumer goods, life sciences, chemicals. Addition to treasury, he's also held a number of other corporate finance roles within M and A and investor relations, pensions and controlling. So he always looks around to get variety within his career. But he can explain a bit more about that. In his current role as the group treasurer of Johnson Matthie, he's managed the financial risks of the business, including the usual traditional areas, if you like, of treasury, such as cash management, liquidity, foreign exchange and interest in counterparty risk. He also works with working capital on the trade credit side as well for the group and also is involved in the group's insurance program. Outside of his role at Johnson Matthey, he's a non exec member of the Treasury Committee for Sutton Housing Group, which we can touch on as well. They're a large housing association in the uk so he gets involved in a separate way. Really that's enough talking from me. I want to get my guests talking and talking about their careers. So Oliver, if you would, as we always do with ours, we go with our guests to talk about how they got their start in treasury, how it's taken them through and how they've grown and then we also Talk about the future of treasury and how they guest see treasury developing in the future. But enough about me. Over to you sir.

Hi Mike and hello and welcome to everyone who is listening. It's a pleasure to talk to you today. How I first got into Finance or Treasury is that after university I started on the finance graduate program with Nestle and I initially started in the finance and control area and spent a bit of time in a chocolate factory, which made me very popular with my friends at the time. That then led to other roles. I moved into a pension fund investment role straight after that and that basically brought me in contact with the financial markets and how they work in the real world. And after my role in the pensions fund investment team, I was looking for a next move and I had to look at treasury because it was another role that was at the interface between the financial markets and the company. And I thought it would be really good and interesting next step. So that's how I first got into treasury and I had a initial treasury role as the Assistant Treasurer of Nestle uk, working in a business and supporting the business from a Treasury point of view and partnering with Nestle's business in the UK also.

Just go back a moment. You actually made some early part of your career, you're making moves location wise as well. So you know, you perhaps cover that because you're originally from Germany.

That's right. I originally started my career in Germany, then moved to Switzerland, worked at Nestor's head office in the Pensions team and initially also for a few months in their global treasury team and then got an assignment in the UK for a few years joining what was then a small treasury team of four. And the team was responsible for all areas of treasury apart from the relationship with the credit rating agencies which was held centrally at head office. But otherwise we had responsibility for all areas of treasury ranging from cash management, short term funding, medium term and long term funding, foreign exchange risk management, interest rate risk management, and also the whole area of banking relationships. So it was a really good training ground for me because it gave me exposure to all areas of treasury and also at the time I started studying for the AMCT and then MCT exams so I could basically learn sort of the theory behind what I was practically doing on a day to day basis. So it was a fantastic training ground and working in a sizable and complex business at the time. So it was really, really good fun.

You worked actually for the first guest on our podcast that was Sarah Jane hall from GlaxoSmithKline and she's very pro qualifications. Obviously you were doing this at Nestle. Why did you feel that sort of doing the treasury qualifications, AMCT and mct, why bother? What did it give you?

I think it gave me a really good grounding in, in what I was doing practically on a day to day basis to understand the instruments, the background to what I was doing, the broader concepts. And also it gave me a great opportunity, network with other treasury professionals who were in similar roles, understand the challenges that different companies face, how they approach it in a different way. So it just gives you a much, much broader perspective than what you could just gather in your, in your day to day role, because you're exposed to different problems, different issues and it allows you to think a bit more broadly and just get it, you know, a solid grounding in the profession which you, which you were employed in. So it was, it was a really good complementary program.

And then you did that, you got your MCT and you obviously developed your career. But then you made a move back to Switzerland or how did that come about? Or what was the situation?

Yes, that's right. So I moved from assistant treasurer to group treasurer of the Nestle UK business and then after a few years the opportunity came up to join the investor relations team, Beckett head office in Switzerland again. And I always saw my career as a corporate finance career with a specialization in treasury because that's where I had my professional qualification by then. And I thought this was a really interesting opportunity to gain some experience in an area that I saw as adjacent to Treasury. And because I saw myself as corporate finance professional, I want to get some experience in these adjacent areas to Treasury. And here I'm talking about the areas like investor relations, M and A pensions. Obviously I worked early in my career, commodities risk management I thought was an interesting area as well to cover. So that was obviously really good opportunity to progress my career. And because I previously worked as an investor on the buy side in the pension fund, I had seen the other side of the table. So it was a really good opportunity to move into more strategic role and work with senior management and the CEO and CFO of the company and creating that equity story and communicating that to the analyst and the equity investors.

But then you took that, you know, after 13 happy years. Well, I know this firsthand. You got approached by me.

Yes, that's right. It's all your fault a few years.

Ago now, but yeah, so the role had come up at klaxosmithkline, reached out to yourself, you know, how was it different or you know, how was the progression from Nestle and the culture of Nestle. You know, describe that to maybe the move to gsk. And you know, obviously you were continuing the growth of your career, but how did they differ? You know, what was it? What stood out to you sort of thing?

Yes, I mean, culturally I thought there were a lot of similarities which made the move relatively seamless. Obviously I'd spend, you know, 13 years with Nestle, sort of from boy to man. So one of the incentives for leaving was actually to get to experience a different culture and a different way of doing things and working again in a global treasury team and department where I would get exposure to large debt funding programs and also the relationship with the credit rating agency and so on. And I initially had a European remit and a European role, again supporting the European units in their treasury activities. And then I was also supporting the group treasurer on the financing side with all the debt capital market activities. But I think culturally the move was easy because there were lots of similarities. It was another big global multinational business. Obviously the industry was slightly different, moving sort of from food to pharmaceuticals. But I actually thought culturally there were a lot of similarities in the way people interacted with each other. And so I found it a really, you know, in inverted commas, easy move. I mean, I spent about eight years in total with gsk, the first six in treasury and the last couple of years in M and a slash development. And you're absolutely right, Mike. We decided in 2011 to restructure the treasury team. By that time we had also changed chief executive and we had a new CFO who joined in 2011 as well. And we felt as a Treasury leadership team that we needed to structure treasury differently to better support the strategy of the company going forward. And at that time also it was decided that insurance risk management and pension risk management would become part of the treasury by the treasury team as well. And then what we effectively did, we moved from a more regional structure where we had assistant treasurers for Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world, to a more functional structure where we created three centers of excellence. One around corporate finance, which was effectively the financing of the company, managing the share buyback program, investments, foreign exchange, interest rate, risk management, relationship with the credit rating agencies, sort of all these sort of corporate finance type of activities. Then we had a second work stream called global cash management, which in fact we did what it says on the tin, managing our cash globally, creating regional pools, either single currencies, dollars, euros or multi currency pools. And that was also done in combination with Rolling out a global SAP system and then in a third work stream, which we call Global Treasury Consultancy, we aggregated all the regional treasury activities and created a team of people who would support the various regions around the world on their treasury matters and partner with the business to help them with their funding or their risk management issues or bringing dividends back from markets, all these kind of activities.

And then you made the move within M and a sort of outside of treasury in some ways.

Yes, that's right. So I left treasury for the second time back in 2013 and moved into M and a role and it was again one of these corporate finance areas which I was always interested in. And so the opportunity came up. So it was a fantastic moment to join the team because it was just before we announced a large transaction with Novartis at the time, an extremely complex transaction as well. Many market commentators said that you can't pull it off because it's just too complicated and complex. But we did. So what we effectively did is we swapped two assets. So we bought Novartis vaccine business and we sold them our oncology business and then we created leading consumer healthcare joint venture where both companies brought their respective assets into a new joint venture. So it was a fantastic project to be involved in. And my role then was mainly to deal with the antitrust disposal of two vaccines assets, which was a linchpin transaction within the overall deal because it was a requirement to get the overall deal approved to dispose of a couple of vaccines products because there was some overlap with products that we bought from Novartis a part of the transaction.

And then, well, I came knocking again on, you know, but this was with the approval of Sarah Jane. She wasn't shouting at me, so that.

Was a good thing.

But the role obviously Johnson Matthew approached me group treasurer position, obviously FTSE 100. The number one job was that, you know, that obviously was something that appealed to you, Johnson Matthew. But what else did you think about or you know, when the role came through, what did you think? What were your thoughts?

Yes, I mean, it's absolutely what you said. It's always been an ambition of mine to become the good treasurer of a. A large and sizable global international business. And Johnson Mathe was exactly that type of business. As a company we turn our sales are about £4 billion. We have 14,000 employees in more than 30 countries. So there was this global remit. And also in terms of what the company does, you know, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to move into a new sector. Even though we have a small health Business which is in the pharmaceuticals space. So there was a business which I had previous experience with, but the other businesses were fairly new to me and it is a smaller business than the blue chip companies I've worked for before. But it is still a reasonably complex business and had an interesting commodity anchor to it as well. So it's a fabulous opportunity for me to make that step up to into the number one role.

I hope you're enjoying this week's show. I just want to interrupt briefly to invite you to be part of what we know to be the best Global treasury salary survey in the world. They're bold words, I know, but it's true. We're just approaching the 500 participant mark. So it's a survey of real value, but we still need your help. All you need to do to take part is visit. Treasurysalary.com takes about 2 minutes of your time from start to finish. And as a reward for taking part, you receive a free copy of our 200 page global treasury salary survey. It's a real practical use to you whether you're a Treasury analyst in Chicago or a global treasurer in London. We give you the numbers you need. In the simplest terms, our survey helps you as a Treasury professional understand what you should be paid. We benchmark your treasury compensation in relation to your peers, both locally and globally. So when you are next asking your boss for that long overdue pay rise and you know you deserve one, well, you have the practical facts you need, just visit treasurysalary.com and I look forward to sending you the next copy of the survey. That's enough from me. Let's get back to the show.

So Oliver, you three years as the group treasurer at Johnson Massey, what would you say has been the real highlight for you there and the time that you've done and the difference you've made to the business.

Okay, I think there were a couple of things that I would like to mention. One is that shortly after I arrived I looked at the group's capital structure given that we had just disposed of a relatively large business. And I proposed 300 million special dividend to the board. So that was quite an interesting piece of work. And I also in my current role, have a lot more interaction with the board and the executive committee and the audit committee as well on a regular basis. So I think that's definitely a highlight in my current role. And then I've also been involved in a number of value adding projects. One around working capital. We have substantially improved the way we manage working capital at JM we have reduced the average number of working capital days by nearly 10 days over the last year. So that takes about 100 million of our balance sheet, which is a relatively large number for group of our size. And I had the opportunity to work with the businesses and with my colleagues on the finance leadership teams around educating people across the business on working capital, why it's important, what they can do to improve it, and also driving some actions and accountabilities and timelines against those to improve and reduce working capital over time. So I think that's been a really great project to be involved in.

And looking at yourself, you've come from accounting trainee to Group Treasurer, FTSE 100. You know, you've achieved a lot of stuff up through GlaxoSmithKline to JM and things and potentially looking to the future. But what would you say, you know, someone starting out their career, early stages, you know, they want a career that. Oh, actually that's what I want to do. I want to, you know, replicate some of the successes that you've had. What advice would you give to those, you know, maybe more junior people or those guys joining the profession coming up in the early days. And you probably had some of them at the Johnson Matthew team as well.

Yeah, yeah. I think my advice would be, you know, move around in terms of roles, countries, companies. I think you always learn something new when you move into a new role or a different company or culture and environment. I think that would definitely be something that I would encourage people earlier on in their career to do. And then I think once you've found something that you like or you want to specialize in, then really sort of focus and try to move up and progressively take on more responsibility. And the other advice I would give is get involved in those projects that might be going on in your area or in your department and look for opportunities to learn new things and in that way develop as you go along. And particularly I think projects and project management, I think is a great skill to have. So look for these opportunities and get involved.

And when you're, obviously, you're on a podcast, you know, full disclosure, as people know, hosted by us, the treasury recruitment company. And as I said, you know, I've placed you twice in your career very successfully. Glasgow Smith Klein at Johnson Matthew. But you said about those junior guys when they're, you know, when you're recruiting, if you like, and you're looking at, obviously you're going to be maybe looking at their CV or resume and trying to look for those project management skills or look for some of those other things. What are the other things that you particularly look for as a treasurer, you know, in terms of. Is it qualification or treasury expertise or have you assessed people, you know, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, it obviously depends, you know, on the role that I'm recruiting for, but I think generally what I'm looking for is right fit in terms of company culture, but also in terms of team, you know, working, working in the team and fitting in into my team. I'm also looking at professional qualifications. I think they ensure a certain level of knowledge and standard. And for the treasury roles, obviously the, the act qualifications, I think a very good indicator that someone comes with a certain knowledge and a certain skill set. I also look for energy and drive and also desire to move around either within treasury or within the company more broadly. So if someone wants to specialize in treasury, that's absolutely fine. A lot of people move into treasury and they enjoy it and want to stay in treasury, but other people, they move into treasury and realize, actually not quite sure it's quite specialist and maybe a bit niche. I'd rather develop into a more general finance professional. And I've had people who joined my treasury team and then they moved out into the broader finance team, either into internal audit or business finance. So I think different people can take different career paths and that's absolutely fine with me.

And looking. One thing I would say for anyone that's listening to the podcast, you'll also notice we run a video podcast on a Friday. It comes with a company videos. We recently met up with eight treasurers, Oliver being one of whom we asked about their careers, but also focused on where they see the future of treasury. Without covering that in too much ground. There are a number of challenges facing treasurers. You've got Brexit. You talked earlier that hopefully treasures aren't going to be replaced by robots. And we keep talking about this. What do you. As we wrap up today's show, I just wanted to maybe look to the future. What do you see as the future challenges coming at treasurers and what do you think treasurers should be doing and treasury professionals to cope with those going forward?

Yes, I think there are probably three.

Areas I would point to. One is I think there will be continuous demand on the treasurer to get more involved with the business and help the business with their treasury issues. But also more broadly. For example, I get involved in working capital trade, credit risk management, in addition to the more traditional areas of cash management, foreign exchange risk and so on. So I think that we continue. The other area that I see continuing as well is automation and centralization. I think Treasuries will continue to look for efficiencies to process larger volumes with the same amount of people, but new technology and better technology, and then that will allow the Treasuries, particularly in global companies, to centralize more of their activities. And with technology also comes risk. I think. I mean, cyber risk and payment fraud is particularly in focus at the moment. And I think a lot of Treasuries get exposed to these types of new risks that need to be managed and thought about and mitigated. And then thirdly, I would say compliance has become more, unfortunately, a more prevalent topic. I think if someone is able to come up with a more efficient solution, how to manage KYC and bank account management and these kind of areas, I think that would be a huge improvement. And there's any sort of new technology that comes out with helping Treasuries to become more efficient in that space, that would be an enormous win. So I think those are probably the three areas I would point out.

Okay, brilliant. I mean, thank you for your time today. Yeah, it's fantastic. As I say, if you want to sort of see a bit more and find out a bit more about Oliver, you just need to look at one of the. Any of the videos we've got. We talk about the start in treasury, right the way through someone's careers as well. Other ways that people can connect to you. They can Potentially connect via LinkedIn. I know you're active on there as well.

Yes, that's right. I've got a LinkedIn profile, so you can definitely reach out to me and connect with me there.

Great stuff and thank you for your time and, you know, I know that our listeners thank you as well.

Yeah, thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure to talk to you and thanks everybody for listening.

Thanks very much.