How Treasurers Deal with a Global Crisis with Didier Louvet

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, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next this week's show, I'm delighted to be joined by Didier Lovey, the director of Global treasury at Worldwide Flight Services. Now founded in 1971. Worldwide Flight Services are. Well, Didier and I were just discussing about cargo going up into the plane, cargo coming down to it and everything else. Now I'm recording this episode so I'm going to jump straight into it in the 23rd of March. I mean, flight services moving cargo around the world has never been much more in the public spotlight than it is at the moment. We're like heading into, well, we're midway through coronavirus in different countries around the world and one of the things we both did, we were talking about before the show, you know, should we carry on with the show? You know, people are thinking much. We actually, we are carrying on because we know you guys love to listen to this and I think you'll be interesting when you get a bit later on in the show. I don't want to make it just about that. The Treasury Career Corner every week is about treasurers and their careers, how they built their careers and. And I think a lot of the things that Didier has done and some of his different roles we talked about have sort of prepared him for this special moment and dealing with this crap that's coming at us. What's also weird, you guys won't see it because I've got a face for radio. Didier is much better than I. And we're actually doing a bit on video, so you can see me drinking my. I'm going to have a beer. And he's in New York, so he's actually been much better behaved. But joking aside, as these times show, it's a bit more relaxed to show. So I want Didier, first of all, go through his career, talk about how he got up to now in treasury, and we're going to look at some of the challenges that coming in crisis situations. We're talking about bouncing around, not your typical everyday, you know, like, what are your three tips for the future? We'll still get those. But Didier, enough from me, sir. You started on the dark side, not too many Star wars references, but you were in banking, you made that. You escaped with your life. But did he overtake that? Talk us through. Go to you.

I Actually fell in love with banking and with finance in the late 80s. So remember in 1987, Black Monday, I was studying finance at French university. Followed up with an MBA in New York and started out at Citibank in Paris. On the bright side of the dark side, that is relationship management. I started out being basically the banker for all these multinational corporations who had subsidiaries in France and. And a lot of what we did for them was actually cash management, fx, a lot of moving to centralized cash management in Europe. A lot of these companies were setting up shared service centers in Belgium or in Ireland or you name it. And part of my job as relationship manager was interacting with corporate treasurers and offering all these great services from Citibank and from there. After about five years as relationship manager, I thought cash management and treasury management was actually pretty fun in terms of product, the flows, the network, the technology. And so I went to specialize a little bit in the cash management department of Citibank for another three years. And Matt was really setting up cash pooling, automated cash pooling, electronic banking, starting to see the rise of the Internet in 1995. And how is that going to impact cash management services? And did that for about three years to. Until I felt well versed in those products and solutions. And then I moved back to relationship banking and switched to ABN Amro, which was a more a European centric bank than Citibank. That's the time when Citibank merged with Travelers Group. And at the time they became more deal focused than relationship focused, more Americas focused than global. And so at the time was 1999, felt like a good time to move to European bank. So went to ABN Amro. Great network, great position in cash management at the time. That's all disappeared because ABN AMRO after 2008 was purchased by RBS.

Mulched up everywhere.

Yeah, whole restructuring. So you don't really hear about ABN Amro in European cash management anymore.

No. So that gave you a grounding in treasury banking or banking slash? Treasury actually probably the other way around. Good times to start to sort of get to know your customers in treasury and things.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I was really interacting with group treasurers, seeing their side of the deal. And as time went on, I felt from a personal standpoint that maybe I would be better in that role than on the banking side.

Okay, so you started to get a taste for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because basically every company has got one treasurer and only one treasurer.

Yeah.

Whereas bankers, you know, you get five for a dollar. A lot of bankers out there all doing the same thing, pushing their product. And even when they're called relationship bankers, they're trying to push the product. And I thought at the time, and I'm not sure it's changed much, a lot of the product was the same. You took Citibank, you took ABN Amro, you took bnp, you took Barclays, whatever. European cash management solutions were more or less the same. Service levels deferred and investments deferred, but it was a lot of the same thing, a lot of the same structures. Let's have this matrix structure with geography and relationships. So it got sort of boring on that side. I figured, you know, I don't want to be on the dark side forever. Let's go see what the other side looks like.

Your first role mate, you made the move.

Yep. So end of 2004, I left ABN AMRO. I didn't have anything on the other side. I figured, you know, I'm just going to jump ship and sell my 12 years of experience to the other side. And found that it was actually pretty tough. A, because this is France, and France, it's maybe tougher to change industries or change roles, goals than elsewhere. And B, because you go see corporates and say, I want to be a treasurer. You know, I have 12 years of banking. They're like, well, what does that have to do with Treasury? You don't know anything about Treasury. We've got these guys who've been treasurers for 12 years since they came out of school, and you have basically zero years of experience. So rude awakening. You can fight it or you can embrace it. After a while, I embraced it. I said, okay, so what is it I need to learn and where can I use what I did learn in the past 12 years to sort of make a difference? And so I started targeting mid cap companies that needed my expertise and my knowledge of the bank. So some treasurers, they're really about internal focus. Let's manage, you know, current accounts between this subsidiary and that subsidiary. And some treasurers, they are working with banks because you need more funding, you need to put in place, you know, this factoring facility you need to put in place or renegotiate these cash management structures. And so I started looking more at those type of roles. And mid cap is companies that are less than a billion in revenue. That's where they need that capacity and that knowledge. And so I found a first job, which was a temporary job 15 months in a French IT leasing company called Econicom, which is now pretty Much a European leasing company at the time they were about 500 million euro. Now I think they're around 3 billion. And they didn't really have a treasurer. And the CFO needed someone who could work on a number of projects. One of them was renegotiating the factoring agreements. Another one was renegotiating his cash management with his various banks. And then they had some other ideas like can we offer financing to other corporates? Because we do it leasing but maybe we can do other types of financing for corporates. So they wanted to try to be creative and just bring in a guy with a banking background.

Yeah. And I noticed when you had, you made a number of roles and you know, people on the podcast, you know, when they go back through and look at your LinkedIn profile, they might see this. You do what I call sort of general treasurer jobs. I mean by that is sometimes you go into treasury and you're very specialist in cash management or FX or this. But you did sort of, sort of higher level, more strategic treasurer roles, but sort of, you know, not group treasurer jobs at, you know, top companies, you know, huge, huge, you know, with big teams. You're actually much more hands on treasury because you move through two or three of those. How come that was the sort of, you know, then when you private equity and things, did you choose that or did it choose you?

I think it chose me more than I chose that. I'm a very curious guy. You know, I don't want to be boxed in. I don't want to be the super expert on a specific topic. I have interest in biology and in history and in finance and in whatever. And so I tend to be going to all these different types of things, but at a sort of higher level, more strategic level. And that was one of the difficulties moving from banking corporate treasury in mid caps is that you're in banking, your relationship manager, you're having these high level discussions with your clients and then you hand it over to the product specialist and you've got a million people who are doing stuff for you internally in the bank. You've got the legal guy who's doing this and the accounting guy who's doing that and the tax guy. And when you get to the treasury role, even if you're touching on a lot of subjects like I have, you really need to be hands on because there's no one else. So you need to get into the detail of, you know, what's the implication, the tax implication of what I'm doing here. How is this factoring Stuff going to be working from an accounting standpoint because I'm under French GAAP or IFRS or what have you. And that's part of the learning process. When you move from banking to corporate treasuries, you have to do nitty gritty. No one's there to do it for you. So you have to have that curiosity and that ability to, you know, step down from your pedestal and carry the brakes like everyone else. That was something that I actually felt good about because when you're doing that while you, A, you get more respect from the people around you, and two, you feel you're really part of the team and it's healthier than, you know, when you're in a position where every job is very segmented and everyone's, you know, passing it on to someone else and getting it off their hands. So I like that approach that was much more team focused. And because you're involved in details, you really understand what you're doing from A to Z, you know, with all the consequences. And that's one of the things I really like today in the treasury function is that I get to touch, you know, every piece of the activity.

But before you got to that, there's a very, very selective theme here. For the guys that are listening, we've got comp services, meatpacking and apparel. Obviously you choose. This is over to you, Didier, no pressure. What's the thing there? Except for it had treasury in it. So it was like, you know, the guys listening. Wow, okay. Because people say, oh, you need to, you know, pivot yourself and everything else over to you. So you come on, is it all about cash?

Yeah, cash is. I mean, cash is the same in meatpacking and IT services and apparel. And once you look at it that way and it's. It's cash, its relationships with the banks, and it's working with a bunch of different people. The meatpacking piece was special because this was a CFO role. It was a HR crisis situation where the general manager of the group had a stroke. The CFO resigned. And I was sort of doing consulting for them and they said, well, do you want to be cfo? I said, okay, I'll try it out. And it was actually not a very good cultural fit. So cfo, wrong cultural fit, different type job. And this was a CFO role that was very accounting focused.

Yeah.

Not a lot to do with banks, not a lot to do with structuring various financial solutions. So it didn't work out. I left after six months and then went back to Treasury DB apparel. December 2008. We're in the midst of the financial meltdown. I'm hired to come in because they have no group treasurer. They were a spin off. They have a cfo, but they've got no group treasurer. And they have a liquidity crisis on their hands because their forecast says they're running out of cash in two. Wow, okay, December 2008. I don't know if you remember what that looked like.

Well, but. Well, I do. Well, we'll talk about this at the end of the show because I want to bring that up because I think we talk about 9, 11, we talk about 2008 090, 1010. They were unpredictable. That GFC just was rubbish. You know, with the current situation least we're taking action is something we plan for. But I think back in 0809 we didn't know what was happening. We couldn't predict it. It was unpredictable.

2008 crisis situation. This is a private equity owned company owned by Sun Capital of Florida. And basically I come in and I dive into the whole forecasting process. A, so one, are the forecasts predicting doomsday? Correct. And B, what are the options in terms of financing with our banking partners and particularly with our factoring partner? Yeah, and of course, you know, I found loose ends on both sides. A, the forecast were not really good. This was a European company, you know, maybe 10, 12 European companies. And the forecasts were not well set up. So the guys didn't really know what to be putting in their forecast. We turned the screws on that and improved it significantly. And then B, we started talking to the banks and the factors and saying, okay, can we extend factoring terms? Can you accept these type of invoices? Can you accept those type of invoices? And, and let's definance after 90 days instead of 60 and so on and so forth. And you know, all in all that basically turned the situation around where we were no longer running out of cash. We actually had, you know, 20 or 30 million euro in cash at the end of the period. And you know, that was enough to get to the spring of 2009 when things were actually looking up for the finance recovery.

And then you made a couple of moves before then or another move before Transcom and things like that. So talk us through those.

So right after the apparel company, I get a call from a friend and he says UNESCO in Paris is looking for an interim finance manager who's got banking experience to be the deputy head of their internal bank. If you will. Or internal employee savings bank, because UNESCO has an internal savings bank in Paris for its employees. So I said well that sounds interesting thing, let's try it out.

Yeah.

And so it was about managing the accounts of all these guys. I don't remember how many accounts we had. Probably a few thousand retirees and active members. A lot of cash management, so they were making payments from their accounts. Number of retirees were living in countries all over the world. So a lot of FX and making payments to strange places, you know, like Bolivia. And then we had a big investment portfolio because all the, all these guys savings were at UNESCO, not in French banks or anywhere else, but at UNESCO. And we had to invest that. And this was right in the middle of the euro crisis. So after the 2008 financial crisis you had the euro crisis with Greece going down the tubes and everyone wondering whether the Euro would survive or not. So pretty challenging. In terms of asset management, we had no clear investment policy. So the prior guy had bought these sophisticated packaged investments. American bank, which I will not name, but with options and what have you. And thing was rated AAA before the crisis. And we were down to single B plus when I got it. And so it was a different thing, little piece of cash management, managing the flows for the individuals, little piece of FX because the individuals were moving their money from euro to dollar to other currencies. And a lot of asset management saying okay, we've got 8 or 900 million euro, how do we invest those? Do we buy bonds? Do we buy a Greek debt, you know, and make a killing? Do we buy a short term paper? And this was something relatively new for me. I mean I have the banking background, I have the I know financial markets, I understand how interest rates work, but I hadn't actually done the work. Get on the Reuters, get on the Bloomberg terminal, get on fx all and do the swaps and do the operations and all that. So that's what I did. When you just get into it, it's not that complicated there again, you know, it's a question of being curious, doing your homework and leaning on the team that's there to move forward.

So Didier, you then made a move from UNESCO to Transcom. You came into this call center group, quite a different change. But you explain and then you were Luxembourg based, is that right?

So yeah, that's correct. So a friend of mine calls up right after UNESCO, says would you be interested in group treasurer role in Luxembourg? And I said yes, exactly. And the answer was basically, well, next week, if that's possible. And so I did. This was interesting because it was broader than the roles I had previously at The Conocom and DB Apparel and UNESCO. It was a 700 million euro company. I believe we were in 20 or 25 countries. US, Philippines, Tunisia, all over Europe, 25,000 and some employees. So interesting challenge, highly levered, single shareholder, private equity group based in Stockholm. So we had to manage the relationship with the banks. Pressure on covenants, no cash management organization to speak of. So a number of different tasks, no real treasury processes. This was really a group that was, you know, building itself up, going from a fragmented collection of local companies into a single group together.

And how did you do that? Because you get, we get people, you know, on the show going, yeah, I've got all these people all over the place. How did, what was your, how did you make that happen? You know, 15 countries into one cash management pool and everything else, you know, how did you make that work?

I always start with the people, that is, you have to go out and meet the teams, the local teams all over, you know, 25 countries, 25 teams, talk to them, establish your credibility. And then you say, okay guys, we have to bring all this together through processes, through common tools, common processes, common banking partners. European cash management is one very powerful way to bring a company together by putting everyone on the same bank. So you have to find the bank that can do it all. And that's tough because they all say they can do it all. But when you end up with a Swedish bank and they have to do Italian cash management, it's not as simple as you think. But basically that's the way we did it. I connected with all the local teams, established my credibility, and when they trusted me, I was able to sit down a plan, find the right bank, you know, do the usual RFP with the usual suspects. And we managed to put in place a cash management structure relatively rapid. At the same time. I took my ex banker hat, I went to see the banks and it's always a very, very fun because I meet them and I say, I used to be a banker once, so we can speak the same language. And that's when they start getting concerned, you know, because they can't give me the usual excuses, oh, we can't do this. You know, our equity ratios are like, this doesn't work. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, okay, let's get past that and let's get some stuff done. Same thing, establish credibility with the banks. They understand that they have someone they can talk to on the other side and Then we focus on what the needs are. In that case, we needed to expand our debt, we needed to improve our covenants got down, negotiated, that's a settlement. It took, you know, maybe a year. And then we get to improve situation. And, and that's basically giving my CFO and my CEO options to expand, to buy. And the way I see my job is basically, you know, number one, I want to demonstrate control. Senior management, senior management needs to feel that there's control in place. We've got it. We've got your back on the cash, we've got your back on the bank. You know, we know what's going on, we know how strong we are. And two, you want to give them options. You want to do an acquisition, you've got this option. You want to cut back on this, you've got that option. Yeah, you know, that's really how I see my job in very simple terms, control. I think it's important when we talk about the situation we're in today, to have that control and to have those options and to look at it that way.

And we're about to jump into that. But you then made what I would consider an unusual move because a lot of guys listening today, they often. We talk about the global treasury pipeline, where people say, oh, I want to move US to Canada, that's fine, yeah. But US to UK Europe, you can't move UK Europe, you know, you can't. You can move around Europe and even post practice, I think you will be able to. And the rest of the world, so you move within your continent. But making the move across the Atlantic and everything else, could you just, you know, explain to people how you managed to achieve that move sort of thing? And it was a tough, challenging time, but you made it work. And I found this when we did our pre chat before you made it work. So unless. Or you can make a move within a big corporate stuff like that. So how did it work with you, Didier?

So it was, first of all, it was a family decision. We had young kids. The youngest at the time was 11. The oldest, I mean, was 11 at the time. And it's something we wanted to do for our kids. So that's point A. Point B is it's actually my wife got recruited in the US and so I said, okay, I'll leave my job in Luxembourg, Stockholm, and we'll go to the us. And because I had gotten a US education and I had worked for Citibank, I felt I was pretty equipped to find a job in the us. But Visa Issues are complicated. Visa issues have gotten even more complicated. So it was a struggle. We managed to get a green card. And thanks to the green card, that opens up opportunities for me.

That took a while. That took a while, didn't it? That was a challenge.

Yeah, that took about two and a half years.

To people, I think it's a plan that you can get it and you had the points to get it or whatever, but that was challenging.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't do it off the top of my head without planning for it. And one of the reasons I did it is, you know, I had the liquidity. You know, I'm a treasurer. I don't run out of liquidity. Yeah, yeah. I would not have done this if I didn't have some sort of liquidity backing me up for sometimes.

Yeah.

So that was the approach. Now, the interesting thing is, while I was getting my green card, I got contact in Europe. Another friend, it's always friends, you know, called me up and said, hey, this international company based in Paris called wfs, they're looking for a global treasurer. It's urgent. Does it make sense? So I called the guys up, I said, here's what I've done. Banking, Treasury, I'm bilingual, you know, I'm living in New York, but I'm. I can move around. Maybe we can make this work. And they were in a hurry. They had just fired the fire management, and they didn't have a treasurer. They were highly levered. So I came in, started to do my thing. What was supposed to be initially a small stint, you know, turned into a longer, longer thing. I've been there almost four years now, and I'm based both in Paris and in New York. We have. Half of our activity is in New York. We're in the US with our headquarters in New York, and the other half is in Europe with the global headquarters in Paris.

And can you explain just briefly for the listeners? You know, you give a much better two thirds going up into the air and the third coming down out of the air or whatever, you know. Why you. As a cargo company, if you can explain.

Basically, yeah. Two thirds of our activity is we rent warehouses on airport premises. We have trucks coming in with cargo. We unload them, screen the cargo, repackage the cargo, load it onto planes, or when planes come in with cargo in their belly, we unload the plane planes, unpackaged everything and put it back on trucks.

That's your job as a treasurer, to keep your cash right for that group and everything else. And we spoke about you know, so much more with treasury at the moment, particularly in these current times and things like that. Treasury itself in these challenging times and bringing it up to sort of COVID 19, the lot. You know, what are your thoughts? Where do you sort of jump in?

You.

You and I, you know, we've. I mean, we joke, you know, the people that aren't. This is an audio podcast. We don't do the video because I've got Face Radio. He's right. TDA doing fine. I'm not. You'll see the photos there. A lot of airbrushing. Joking aside, you know, where do you see not treasury adding value, but what the challenges?

Well, I think, you know, a lot of people are always saying, you know, priorities. Cash, cash, cash, cash is king. Which to some extent it's true. Where we're owned by a private equity firm, we're highly levered, so we need to pay interest, you know, and we need to generate cash because that basically what makes the value of the company. 2019 was a difficult year for cargo. Volumes were flat or down compared to prior year. The prior years were very positive. 2019 was a little bit difficult. So we were making plans to adjust and so on. And then we get to 2020 in January for us because COVID 19 shut down China.

Oh yeah.

We always have Chinese New Year, you know, it's calm and then it picks up after a week and then we've got lot of cargo coming out of China and all of a sudden we have no more cargo coming out of China. So that's a problem. Volumes down significantly compared to prior year. How long is it going to last? What's going on in Wuhan?

You know, we're recording this in March, but the tap is starting to turn on just a tiny bit, sort of, you know, it's not a gush, it's starting to release a bit. Don't you find? We start to see that your front line, you know, this was me.

Yeah. In Asia. Absolutely in Asia. Absolutely. So Asia's gone over the bump, but now we're seeing end of Jan, early Feb, Chinese problem, no more cargo coming out of China. How long is this going to last? That's really a problem. The rest of the world economy is doing great and then end of Fed China seems to be getting the thing under control and then we start to see stuff pop up in Italy. Okay, how's our activity in Italy where it'll leave a small country for us? We're not very big in Italy. You know, the risk is this much on measurable yeah, on 1% of our business. So we're gonna be okay. But let's still, you know, let's still plan for, you know, we're not gonna get a very strong year this year. And then, then, you know, we, we start seeing stuff getting worse here and there. And then you have the Trump announcement Wednesday, that was what, 10 days ago? Wednesday night I heard it. I fell from my bed. On Thursday morning, hearing that on the news, you know, like, we're going to close all flights to Europe, So no one was ready for this. There was just quarantine in northern Italy, but that was it. So that's where we see all the airlines saying, oh, what does that mean for us? You know, does that mean we need to shut down? And then from 10 days ago to today, we've just seen more and more countries shutting down. Now, in the US you still have local flights, you still have national flights flying around, but you can feel that, well, if New York is closed and California is closed, you're not going to get a lot of traffic because Kansas and Arkansas, you know, can I come.

Back with your business? You know, you say about this you're a cargo business, so predominantly, how much is that related, the passenger revenues or is, you know, is it more interlinked between that and actual cargo? Cargo.

So Cargo is about 70% of our business.

Okay.

And passenger flights are about 30% of our business. Business.

Okay. So passengers, that's gone.

Well, virtually so passenger, that's pretty much gone. And the cargo, it's in flux because China's back on now.

Yeah.

But we're not sure what the demand is going to be, you know, on the other side, which is going to be, are we going to continue to see demand from Europe and from the US for Chinese goods or not? But at least the Chinese, they can deliver.

Now, can I just go back? Because this is something I discussed I've been having two or three times and I wanted to sort of bounce on view. Didier and I have known each other for many years. In treasury, you see each other. Euro finance. He caught up for business. I think there was. I'm trying to explain it to some of the team members and some of the guys there. I said, look, guys, we're going to get heads down and survive this and stuff. But for me, in terms of gravity of event, that's probably the best way to put it. 911 was an event. You know, I was moving jobs at the time. We had young children. Everything else we survived. And I just put some notes just as you were talking before it was a terrorist attack and what happened was it caused repercussions, it was horrendous. And then we got through and rebuilt from there and not to happen like that way again. 08, 09 was horrendous for all the. Because of the unpredictability and the treasures I've talked about. You know, you'd like to predict, you'd like to have evidence, things like that, global financial crisis, subprime bankers over lending money, everything else. Because all that people said to me, 2008, oh, it's pretty bad. And then it got worse in 09 and then it was carried on. So when's he going to finish, Mike? I went, I don't know. And they said, I don't know. I've not been through this and I've not been through similar events to that. Because also we were victims of other things. And we said, well, and we brought, we've done stimulus, we brought this down and it was seemed just. You just had to ride it out. And I think sometimes as a recruitment business those times we probably didn't make any money for about three or four years because it's pretty shocking if that's the best way. This is different because it feels like far more, you know, as you say, it came from China, then we're at Jan 2020, China, March 2020, UK, April, May, moving into US. We're a global treasury recruiter. You know, the way, and this is not just this, just more reflection on it, is that we're gonna make the show. I've said, guys, there's no Q2. As I'm getting emails from people said, oh, have you got more new jobs on? Well, weirdly enough, very weirdly, about an hour and a half ago, I got an email from a client on the west coast of America, said actually that someone wants to kick off a campaign. I'm like, what? No, that happens later. But we have just. Basically, I'm assuming that Q2 is a standstill. You know, there will be no Q2, that everyone will come through this and then. Or it's a sort of planning space. What do you think, Didier? I mean, too harsh. But just what do you think? What are your thoughts?

There's a lot of moving pieces.

Yes.

I mean, our cargo business is still very much alive.

Yes.

Because you've got to move stuff around and people need to eat and people need to get pharmaceutical supplies and we're a key item in there. Of course, some goods are more essential than others and so we'll see a shift from the non essential goods to the essential goods. But this stuff is still happening and you need to be more reactive. So a lot more stuff is going through air than.

So let me qualify that. Well, there's a little bit of interference on Didier's phone, so hopefully we can get that back a little bit. So when I say standstill, what I mean is not everything stops. What I mean is it's business, you know, turning a handle. There's sort of no growth, you know, no new jobs are coming in, no new things in your business. As you say, it's sort of. There's no passenger air. So there's not that up and down. But you're back to basics, if that's the right way. Does that concur sort of thing? Do you see what I mean or.

Yeah, I mean, we're back to basics. We're being very prudent.

Yes.

But at the same time, you do have some unexpected upsides. I mean, you read the news. Walmart is hiring 150,000 people. Amazon's hiring 100,000 people. So a lot of people are going to get laid off. But you do have upside, you know, here and there. As I was saying, you know, stuff needs to move around faster because we need to be more reactive. So there might be more stuff going on. Planes that used to go on shifts.

Okay. Yeah.

The problem is the uncertainty because we've never been in this type of situation. We don't know if it takes one month to get over the bump in the hospitals or if it takes three months, if it takes just one month and maybe, you know, Italy is going to be back online in April. I don't know. Who knows? Madrid said today that they feel this week they're going to be, you know, plateauing. Yeah, I hope they are. The uncertainty of it that is worrying everyone, I think.

You know, when I heard recently that China, they said they were closing down some of the coronavirus focused hospitals because they were running out of cases, you know, because they'd gone through the worst of it and then coming out not making light of that whatsoever. It was just, it was more. It was this planning, this sort of getting through and exactly as you say there, the practice. For me, it was just the planning of it, that there was more that certainty. 0809 it was like, when does it finish? I don't know. People said, when do you think it's gonna finish? I don't know when this will finish. You know, I say that things will be a different kind of Normality, people saying, oh, it's unprecedented. New normal. Yeah, it is a new normal. I think people need to be much more aware and stuff like that. It's probably a good thing as well, but yeah, very different sort of thing. So Didier, you know, going forward, you know, and looking at the future of this and you've got a team, you've got other things happening and so what are your thoughts? You know, what are your. Sometimes, as I say, we wrap up each episode or top three things of treasure. We're not going to do that this week. You know, it's more what are your planning elements or obviously, what do you think?

A, I think we're far from the end of this crisis, so it's going to be a long march forward. But B, I'm cautiously optimistic, as they say in the markets, because, you know, the past two, three weeks is when we've managed to see that we have the right things in place A the team. You know, it takes a lot of time to build a good team and then when that, when things get really difficult, that's where you can see whether your team's up to it. Just speaking from my own experience right now, I think, you know, we've got this incredible team and I see this with a lot of people I speak to and they say my team's really just incredible right now. Everyone's stepping up to the plate. So I think that's number one. You have to have the people who are calm, they're determined, they're serious, they get to work, they're not panicking or whatever. And we get through this, you know, with a laser sharp focus and team spirit, supporting everyone because, you know, it's not easy for, for, for everyone the same way.

Sorry not to cut across you, but I want to just dive in on that focusing just for a moment because we had this two weeks ago, my guys and I, we were all talking about different things, you know, planning. We were still in the planning focus for the rest of 2020 and actually some of the guys are thinking about home improvements. Some of the things I was thinking about different things with business and we actually just came together and I said, guys, what we're facing now is not unprecedented. It is in some ways because we've done 9, 11, done 09, we've done this. But when you did that focus thing with your team, did you do it in a sit down chat with them? I did. You know, we, I said, guys, I'd had lots of thoughts. What were their thoughts? We sort of threw Everything out or how did, or did you just do it more as a relax thing? That's purely personal interest.

I mean we did it at the, at the XCOM level and it's basically okay, you know, what's happening, what are we seeing on the client side, what are we seeing on the supplier side? Where is our cash, what are our options, what's the business continuity planning in terms of production and people and safety and all that stuff. And what I like in these medium sized companies is got 20, 30, 40 guys. It's not huge management teams. So you can get everyone together and get the focus and say, okay, you know, priority number one is we want to keep our people safe. We want to make sure that the operations are safe and that they're working. Priority 1B is what's our cash situation and when do we get into serious trouble? And you know, once you've answered those questions satisfactorily and you could say, well, you know, we've got three months of cash, we can take a breather. And then you start to divide up the tasks, you know, and get ready to anticipate the next bad news that's coming your way. But, you know, that's basically how we did it. Everyone went from one realization to the next, like, this is going to be bad, this is going to be very bad. This is going to be the end of the world to. Okay, now that we've got that covered, you know, let's move on.

It's all right. There's still beer in the world, so we're okay. Sorry, I make light of this and I don't. It's just because we're reflecting on this, not we're going to get through it. That's the key thing.

So great team. We don't have perfect tools, we've got simple tools. You know, I have this thing which is, you know, the star of the moment. It's a 13 week cash forecast. Bottom up from my 22 countries. You know, you get that once a week and you know, that's basically telling us if we're going to be okay or not. It's simple but it works. We've got the priorities, as I said, you know, our workforce, safety, operations, our cash. And then we're reaching out, you know, to our partners, the banks, the clients, the suppliers, speaking to everyone, keeping everyone appraised, transparency, trust, communication. Communication. That's what we're doing right now to get through this. Because, you know, if you don't have that trust and that communication, well, you're not going to tell the guy that, oh, you won't pay him this month but you'll pay him next month. He doesn't know, he freaks out and then things go south. Whereas we're doing our best to communicate with everyone that we work with and I think it's very helpful to get through this. The government, the banks, clients, everyone's pushing in the same direction and that's what makes me pretty hopeful right now.

I'm going to take that pretty hopeful right now. We'll have those words. One of the things that we usually do at the end of every podcast setup. Connect to Didier. Give me three. What three things for your career success. Do you know what? You don't need three things for career success. Just do some of the stuff that Didier has done on that and that's not a joke. He's like, you listen. And some of the stuff that you've done there about communicating. This is a real life example of how to be a successful treasure. Etc. Amazing episode. Did he ate. You're amazing. He was unfortunately in Brooklyn, New York. I've got a. Well, you won't see it but I've got a Brooklyn glass with from my favorite brewery so feel free. We might try and get some free booze. They won't. I don't care. Because I was hoping you'd have a glass of wine in France, but it's been amazing. Really lovely to talk to you and just to recognize events, not to reckon, you know, not to sourly people, you know, self isolating UK and various other bits and I think it will, you know, spread across the US and things but we'll get through it. Get through what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's one of the things. Didier, anything else? The final words from you. I. I love those hopeful words. You, you're. You're super saucer.

Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure talking with you, Mike. And you know, you're much better looking than you.

I'm not. I'm definitely not. Definitely A lot of Botox and airbrushing would definitely help.

Try, try, try video podcasting.

No, not at all. No, I'm sticking to the audio guys, if listening. Thanks you for listening today, Didier. Thank you for being on it. A beer when we next hook up maybe later on in the year, sir, with pleasure.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Bye.

Cheers.