How Treasurers Navigate International Crises with Toby Shore

Fielded a call at one stage and saying, what do you know about Dubai and what do you know about aluminium? And I actually said, not a lot about either one of them. Six months later, I'd moved my family up here and I had the job. So it was actually quite a bizarre situation. Again, never one to actually let a good crisis go to waste. About four weeks after I arrived in Dubai, the global financial crisis hit. Literally, it was four weeks. We were in Beirut and Lebanon for a conference. We got called back early by the CEO saying basically the proverbials hit the fan. And this is when Lehman's were going down. The whole world was in chaos. Yeah. So we spent like 18 months, two years, just trying to navigate our way through that. It was at that time that the existing treasurer was looking to retire. And they said, look, Toby, you know, we've been grooming you now this for two years and we want you to take over Treasury. That market almost dried up for us overnight, as did Europe. So a lot of our metal was then diverted to Asia, to the Middle east, etc. And so for us at that stage, it was about economic growth in terms of where our customers were sitting, but also the financial risk management of those as well. And from the treasury perspective, it was about cash preservation, cash conservation. That grounding really gave me the ability to do three things. One was to have a keen understanding of financial balance sheets and how resilient businesses are. And you don't always see a resilient business through the balance sheet. It's the ownership, it's the structure, it's actually understanding what the whole business is about, who they sell to, what. What their customers are like, what keeps the owners awake, what keeps the CFO awake at night. And it's really having a deep understanding of that. Second, I think certainly living in Dubai now, but I've always worked in a multicultural environment. I've worked in Asia, I've worked in Australia, I've worked in the UK and now in the Middle East. And I think that's. That actually, actually gives you an enrichment and as a treasurer, to really look to understand the different dynamics that people can bring and from different cultural backgrounds. And I think that too often in life we don't necessarily appreciate that cultural richness. And then thirdly, it's the ability that's bought me the ability to be quite resilient to myself. My bosses have always been overseas, most of the time on the other side of the world, and that autonomy. And really, it's those three aspects that have really tried to take that and actually mold that into my treasury career.