Invaluable Treasury Skills with Adam Richford

Foreign welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I talk to treasures about their treasury careers. Now this is a revisited episode with the amazing Adam Richford. Very good friend to the business. Great guy. Adam placed at Renewie used to be Shanks Waste Management Renewal are a waste management services business. You'll hear about that in the episode from his early days up to now. But actually I'm catching up with Adam three years after we first spoke. So we've been through Covid and he's also grown and developed his role. He went from originally director of treasury, now has also responsibility for investor relations and insurance. So full on the role that he talks about in our revisited episode at the end. So listen on for that at the end. Hope you enjoy it. Once again, great guy share some really great advice for you treasury professionals. Enjoy the episode.

Thanks.

In this week's show I'm delighted to be joined by Adam Richford, the group treasurer of Renewee prc. Renewee is a leading European waste management company focusing on the European and North American markets. Renewed collects waste and recycles it back into usable materials. So you've got recycled paper, metal, plastic, glass, wood, and then that comes out as energy contributing, as they say in a concrete way to a circular economy. Their mission, simply stated, is waste no more. The renewable group was actually created in 2017 following the merger of the UK Corporate Shanks Group with the Netherlands based company Van Van Ganswickel Group. They're listed on the London Stock Exchange, have more than 8,000 employees spread over nine countries, 200 sites across Europe and North America. Now for some of my shows I've given increasingly long overviews, like me chatting away of my guest careers. But I'm stopping that. I want my guests to tell their stories more than anything. So Adam, originally you started your finance career with ey, the global accounting firm, perhaps kick us off there and how you started your journey.

Yeah, thank you, Mike. So, yes, absolutely. I started my career at Ernst and Young, sort of fairly typical way into finance, doing the Chartered Accountancy qualification initially after university in a major big four company and getting a good exposure to lots of different clients and different experiences there and like many people after qualification to do something a little more interesting than auditing afterwards, and joined the consulting practice within Ernst and Young, focused on turnaround and that was really the first exposure that I had then to treasury functions. So a lot of underperformance ends up in the Treasury's lap for responsibility to manage the cash flow and other issues through difficult situations. So that was sort of the first glimpse into a Treasury function was there in the consulting environment, which I then followed on into a corporate environment with a fallen angel, Telco, which is my first line responsibility for a Treasury function, a company called Energist back in the day. And then that led into a career in treasury thereafter, which was started in GE Capital where I worked for about 10 years and then got a Coral group before now joining Renew eplc.

Okay. And with the, you know, so going through from those early times at Energist and things, that was your first real experience of Treasury. What was it that grabbed you about treasury, how come you got the role or how were you recruited into Energist? And say, right, can you come into treasury, please? And you're going, what's Treasury? Or give us that.

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I think what I particularly like about treasury from the very beginning and still do today, is that it sits high up the corporate agenda. So a lot of the strategic activities that are being considered by the company have a Treasury implication or requirement. Whether that's as it was in some of my early assignments around turnaround and underperformance, or more recently in terms of growth and corporate acquisitions and M and A and mergers, where in each case there's a Treasury activity that needs to be managed, there's an impetus to doing it is strategically important for the business to be successful in doing that. And that provides a lot of dynamic activity and a lot of excitement, a lot of interest and therefore a lot of scope to add a lot of value to the organization that you're supporting, which is also then coupled with the more routine aspects of the treasury function to manage on a day to day basis as well. But it's certainly for me, it's the dynamic elements that keep me most interested and excited by the career in Treasury.

And then you went to ge, working within their real estate business. Explain how treasury was structured there and team wise and what was the role like?

Yes, I mean, GE's a massive company. It had a large financial services business and therefore an appropriately large corporate treasury function, the majority of which was led out of the US so it might have been around 500 people in total. My role in that context was much more sitting within a business unit, helping them think about the treasury issues associated with all of their activity. And in the period that I was there, we did a lot of corporate acquisitions and acquisitions and disposals of real estate properties and portfolios, initially starting with creating a single treasury function following a couple of delisted companies that were taken private by GE. In the early 2000s, we established a Treasury function. We grew that portfolio both in the UK and Europe, and then during the financial crisis, we then diversified that into a lending product. So we bought a number of lending portfolios, particularly from distressed sellers like Bradford and Bingley and others at the time. And so it was always evolving in terms of the strategy for the real estate business. And sitting there within the treasury function was all about listening to what the business was doing, helping them understand the implications from a funding perspective, from a financing perspective, from an interest rate risk or FX perspective, to contribute to that deal team and make sure that those deals happened and were managed successfully and.

In the business, like GE, GE's massive, you know, and everything else. And someone listening might think, well, hang on, how hands on was he when he was surely just sitting back telling people what to do? And I know, for instance, it wasn't because we recruited for you at the time and stuff, but what was your ethos around treasury then and how did you get your hands on it?

Yes, I mean, I think in an M and a driven environment, as the real estate business was, it's very much understanding the idiosyncrasies of each of the individual transactions being a key part of the deal team involved heavily in the due diligence of the assets that are being acquired, to understand the cash flows of those assets, the exposures that are associated with that. And I think treasury particularly came into its form as we migrated from looking at owning buildings to lending against buildings. And a number of the portfolios that we were acquiring had fixed rates loans, and therefore embedded within them, there was a mark to market on the interest rate of the loans themselves, as well as a recoverability issue associated with the value of the property relative to the value of the loan itself. So that was one of the things that we did in those first acquisitions, was to really get under the skin of what the embedded value of the interest rate risk was and then how that influenced the recoverability loans, particularly over time. So, you know, being very much, as you say, sleeves rolled up, working very much as part of the team to look at the details of each of the transactions and make sure that we understand what we could do to manage those effectively or influence the price at which we'd be prepared to buy those assets or indeed what we would want to sell otherwise.

And team wise, I think you had a team of four in London. What were you like as a leader for those guys, or what was the team sort of structure?

Yes, we had coverage for the European Real Estate business at ge treasurer based in Paris and some guys based in the UK as well, covering the entire European area. Individually, the teams were mostly focused on a particular segment of the portfolio, so country basis was how it was structured. So the French treasurer would look after the majority of the French transactions. What we would try to do is give the teams good exposure to all of the activity in those particular country divisions, make sure they had the skills and capabilities to review those transactions and that they could discuss those with the broader team and make sure that they got their input as to what the key issues and risks were, to be able to manage those effectively and advise the business appropriately.

And then from there, GE changed quite radically and sort of exited a lot of their change from being a big financial services and GE capital and change that to actually be an industrial company now. And obviously that then impacted you guys. Talk us through how you managed that.

Yeah, So I think GE made a. Picked up a SIFI designation during the financial crisis, so it proved that it was a significant financial institution in the us. With that came a lot of regulatory requirements to report and manage the financial services business in a very careful fashion, which became quite burdensome and distracting for GE as a company. And they chose to therefore exit the financial services business, which was a very large financial services business. And so they exited the real estate business, amongst many others, and dispersed the assets to new owners and the teams, obviously to the four winds as well. So there's a lot of GE colleagues that are in many, many other financial institutions these days, because the business no longer exists in that place.

And then you made a move to Gala Coral. Some people will not know, certainly outside of the uk, they're not going to know the Gala Coral Group. Maybe explain what that was, if you would.

Yeah. So Gala Coral, a licensed betting office and online gaming and a bingo and betting shop business, which was in private equity ownership, a high leverage structure under that private equity ownership very much focused at that point in its evolution. When I joined on looking at the exits for the private equity firm, whether that would have been an IPO or as it was in the end of trade sale in terms of transaction with.

Ladbrokes, and throughout that period, you were obviously doing lots of different activity because by the end of it, had the group sold or what actually happened by the end when you finished with the role.

So when we finished there, it was agreed in terms of the transaction with Ladbrokes, subject to competition authority approval. The competition authority approval in that context was a phase two competition authority process, which was requiring some Remediation, whereby if they had too much density of licensed betting officers within a local market, they would need to sell a number of those assets to somebody else to ensure they didn't have too strong a competitive position within a micro market. So that process is expected to then take a year or so to conclude in terms of the response from competition authority in terms of that process, and then a disposal process to be managed thereafter. So that was likely to be a long period of time and hence a good opportunity at that point to move elsewhere throughout that period.

As if you weren't busy enough, you think you were studying your mct, which are these sort of the top level of treasury exams you can do within the UK association of Treasurers, and you're even a prize winner on top of the class. So you've got a family, you got all those demands, and some people say, oh, I've got to study as well, but you cope with both. Talk us through that, if you would.

Yeah, look, I think there was definitely a big commitment for the mct, but I think it's certainly been worth it in my mind. So when I read the materials that said you were going to spend 10 to 15 hours a week studying for a period of 15 months, I thought, that can't possibly be true, it can't take that much time at all. But they were absolutely right, of course, and thankfully my wife was very supportive and so was able to do that. That at a more senior point in my career. And actually doing that, having had a lot of experience at that point, was really good because it sort of helped solidify some of the things that I had seen and put a bit more theory around some of those things, and actually was well positioned in anticipation of some of the future things that I've done since then. Actually, to think more strategically about the funding of the organization and how to practically think about those funding decisions and how to manage the strategic treasury questions, which a lot are oriented around the funding and financing decisions in that context. So it was a very valuable experience. I think also the content was useful, but also the approach was really useful in working closely with a cohort of other treasurers. A lot of the material was done online and interactive, giving feedback to each other on our responses to case studies, which was really an interesting way to learn from other people's experience and exposure. But to your original question, you're obviously quite challenging to fit in in the context of a busy job and a busy family life, but thankfully, well worth it in the end. I think from my perspective at the.

Time you were finishing your mct, you weren't busy enough. I actually secured you the role at Renewing. Talk us through that new position and that move.

Yes, I think Renewee was a really interesting move for me. So this was a move from a private equity environment into a PLC environment. A very interesting challenge in that context. Shanks, as was at the time, had a very small treasury function, a very decentralized approach to Treasury, a lot of obligations obviously as a PLC in that context, and some strategic challenges to manage as well in terms of the market size of the company in total, but also the positioning within the markets, which we were subsequently able to address. In the transaction with Vaganzoinkel, you talk.

About how you restructured treasury. So talk us through the past, present and future. Where have you taken. There was at the time you would join Shanks, but then there was the coming together of the Treasuries. Take us from the Shanks Treasury. And what you did, you walked into a Treasury that perhaps needed refreshing. How did you approach that?

Yeah, so I mean, the treasury function when I joined it was fairly basic, fairly manual, spreadsheet oriented, I think it'd be fair to say, and fairly decentralized. So that was quite different to what we've now created, which is a much more centralized treasury function, which involves a high degree of automation. With the implementation of a Treasury management system, we're taking control over some of the cash responsibilities of the group. We've transformed the funding structure, we've grown the team size, we've improved the capability of the treasury function, which is really enabled us to deliver a lot of high value add opportunities over the last couple of years and make it a much more resilient treasury function than the one I inherited a number of years ago. So in that sense, we've moved the treasury function forward very significantly in that context.

Your ethos around treasury, some people have said it's all about de risking everything. What's your reason behind Treasury? What's your, you know, your message, if you like?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for me what's been particularly successful is really trying to focus on how treasury can add value. And thinking about that in a very clinical fashion in terms of what the value add opportunities are through different projects and making sure that we spend the limited time that we have on the things that have the maximum value. And to be able to do that, necessarily trying to reduce the focus of time and effort on the lower value activities and therefore to try to really improve processes where possible, to improve automation to improve homogeneity and consistency across the group, to make those things that would otherwise distract and take time and effort to deliver, to become less so, to free more time, to be able to deliver the things that very important and add a lot of value. And then I think within that context also, once we have something that we want to deliver, I think it's also a very practical approach to implementation, which is not spending a long time trying to generate something fancy that you hope will work, but trying to get on with it. And I always think of that as a sort of iterative approach where you start something and you start to implement it with the full knowledge that it can be improved over time. But the important step is getting it up and running in the first place and then making sure that the focus remains to continue to implement it, rather than waiting for a perfect solution to come along. And I think by doing that, we've enabled us to really focus on some very high value items, but also to get a number of projects up and running that would otherwise have died if we'd waited for the eventual solution to be perfect.

And you've been with the group three years and you've been through a merger and you're seen teams come together and everything else, what would you say has been the side or maybe part of that? What's been the biggest challenge for you, looking back over the time you've been there, think, whoa, that was horrible. This is how we got through it, or what was the biggest challenge?

I think we've had a number of different challenges, I think bringing Shanks and Van Ganzwinkel together, major corporate transaction companies of approximately the same size. So sort of a merger of equals in the context of that perspective is quite, quite difficult to bring different organizational cultures together across different countries in Europe as well. So that's always represented some challenges. And we're still very much in that post merger integration phase at the moment of trying to create their single way of working, the one unified way of being renewing. So that's the ongoing challenge for us that we've been working on quite extensively over the last few years. I think also there's been a number of other challenges along the way, particularly as a result of the acquisition. The leverage is also at a relatively high point at the moment, so we have to manage that carefully and communicate that carefully with our investor base and look to bring that down over time. It's following a trajectory that would be expected given the merger, but it also makes it a more sensitive period from a Treasury perspective. So we need to carry on managing that carefully over time.

What do you like as a boss? What's your ethos around team management and running those treasury guys or helping them?

Yeah, so I think helping them is probably the right description, actually. So I like to be supportive to the team and give them a lot of opportunity with a lot of space to be able to deliver projects. So giving them very clear responsibility for specific projects and trying to make sure that they have the space to be able to take ownership for those and deliver those. For example, one of the team at the moment delivering the cash management transformation project that we're working on, which is to centralize all of our cash responsibility, implement a cash pooling approach and implement the treasury management system as a payment gateway for all of our activity and forecasting. So that's a fairly significant project. But they get a good opportunity to run that on a day to day basis and keep me informed and they ask me for my input where they think it'd be valuable. And that works very well, I think, in terms of giving them the opportunities to grow and the space to grow and feedback along the way to make it successful.

Are they all based in the uk?

No, the team split between the UK and the Netherlands as well, which is sort of typical for the entire renewable business. The majority of our business is based in the Netherlands and Belgium. About 90% of the operations are there. So unsurprisingly, we have a presence in the Netherlands and Belgium as well for most of our functional activity.

So how do you manage those guys remotely? Is it a quick call on the phone every week? How do you manage those guys when they're X amount of miles away from you?

I think it's important to be present with the team on a regular basis. We've got one of our colleagues over here today, for example, from Eindhoven, but personally I'm probably in the Netherlands and Belgium most weeks to make sure that I spend time with the team, but also the broader network of people that we work with internally and externally, the banks, but also our colleagues within the renewing business. It's really important to get as close as possible from my perspective to the business, to understand what's going on, to the advisors, to the lenders, to understand their issues and concerns and to develop a strong relationship with each of them to be able to be effective for all the things that we're trying to do. So there's a lot of effort goes into maintaining those relationships. There's a fair few air miles generated, even though it's Only a short hop over to the Netherlands.

Yeah, but face to face actually helps as well. And when you're in that recruitment phase, what is it you're looking for? I mean, looking at your background, you've got this great history, you know, A levels, great degree, then, you know, qualified accountant, treasury exams. Actually, I want someone just like that. Or what's your ethos around recruitment? When you're looking at someone and you're Sifting through resumes, CVs, what are you looking for? What's the standout factor for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, diversity is really important, so a carbon copy of myself is not going to be a good team mix at all. So rarely do I look to recruit in my own mold and if I get biased towards that direction, I normally come back from it quite quickly, actually. But that said, I think there's components that are relevant. I think having appropriate qualifications for the role that you're doing, whilst it doesn't necessarily help you to do the day job, but also does show that you have a commitment to continuous education and to learning and to trying new things and to learn from those experiences, which I think is an important characteristic. So that's certainly important. And then I think there's obviously different roles within treasury that require different sorts of skills. So making sure that the people that we're hiring have the right sort of skill set for the role that we want, and sometimes that's going to be a very detail oriented, routine processing activity, and sometimes that's going to be a more expansive role where people can run out big projects and make them their own and deliver them. So very much a sort of horses for courses approach to recruitment and making sure that we get the right people for the right situation, and then making sure that the candidates fit well within the organizational context as well. So making sure that they're going to be somebody who can communicate effectively, particularly with the rest of the. The business is very important, particularly in the small teams that we have. So to understand the business, to be able to communicate treasury and to be able to understand what's going on in the business and reflect on that and how we manage the treasury function, Some of the important skills, from my perspective.

When you look to those people that are able to communicate, what's been the standout factor for you, or how have you assessed that when you've interviewed them or spoken to them, or spoken to them throughout the process, what's been the. Oh, actually, that's the person we want. How have you assessed that, as it.

Were I think an important part of the assessment is the treasury function is very capable of assessing the treasury capability requirements and in some ways whether you can communicate with somebody outside of treasury is a very important test and therefore an important part of the recruitment process from my perspective. So meeting with the broader finance team, whether that's with in the controlling team or FP and a or elsewhere, to be able to have a conversation with those team members particularly and not get lost in treasury detail as some people can, and be able to come across well to those people and therefore be people that the broader team can work with effectively on a day to day basis is one of the key things that we were able to do here.

And have you ever struggled to find those people or what's been the, you know, what have been the challenges for you?

I think one of the recruitment challenges for us is just an out of town location, whether they're in the UK or in the Netherlands. So that influences the candidate pools quite significantly. Certainly in my past when I've been recruiting in London, it's been a broader slate of candidates and therefore better able to do that. I think one of the key differentiators for renewing in that context is the purpose of the company is such a positive purpose that it's a very attractive company to work for in terms of what it does and the contribution to society that comes from that, the contribution to the environment that comes from that. And we certainly emphasize that. We've emphasized that through our funding structure and making it into a green financing as a visible way of describing that. But also it does translate through to how passionate people feel within the organization about the value of what we're doing for our customers, which is otherwise not necessarily very glamorous.

And you've been in treasury now 20 years. How have you seen it change?

It's difficult to comment. I think I've worked in lots of different treasury functions and lots of different capital structures and in different industries. So it's not been a linear path for me in that context. I haven't grown up in a Treasury function in the same way as some of the other people that you may have interviewed have. But I think certainly in the current context looking at process improvement, but the use of systems and automation within that context is a valuable part of what we're doing at the moment. But some of the skills in treasury are timeless, that they don't change in terms of looking at the capital structure and managing the cash flows carefully and projecting that as best you can and managing the relationships with the Banking group or developing relationships with the advisors, the lawyers, the corporate finance advisors, the risk management advisors, et cetera, I think are fairly timeless and unchanging. And it's perhaps just a little bit more in terms of the sophistication of how we do that and progressively making each of the treasury functions that we work in progressively more sophisticated over time and more efficient over time as well.

Yeah, I think. Well, certainly from the conversations I've had, you talk about derived value, there may be of what a treasurer does. Does. I've sometimes felt in a couple of the shows that people have said, well, we're going to be replaced by robots or everything. Technology is taking over and streamlining the jobs and we'll be streamlined out of a job where actually, as you say, it's about much more than that. And that's certainly what I found from talking to treasurers like yourself for the past 20 years, that actually you're not just guys that switch on the PC and feed in the data and out comes the results. Thanks very much. It's all about. Yes, there's a part of that, but actually it's about all the other stuff you do, all the relationship and all the other things that you actually add value on as well. And you see that there's a lot of. Go on.

I think that's right. There's also a lot of interpretation of information. It's not just the generation of information. So the systems and automation help generate some information in a better, cleaner fashion, which becomes more actionable, more intuitive to use and more reliable. But absent that, actually the treasurer skills are even more in demand, which is to try to make sense when some of the indicators are not as clear as you would like them to be. But we've been implementing some robotization in our shared service center. And I really like the description that our shared service center leader uses, which he thinks of the robots as employees, that they have sick days, that they go wrong occasionally, that they need care and maintenance in the same way that an employee does. So I don't think it's a utopian answer that automation will be able to survive without the input of experienced users, to manage and control, to configure, to make them work properly and to fix them when they go wrong as well. So I think there's still a huge role to do even when you are on a process of automation as well.

Yeah, all humans aren't redundant quite yet. No, I think we'll still be. And as we approach the end of today's show, we spoke before And I'm just gonna say to people that Adam said again that it's okay to connect with him via LinkedIn and Things, but when you're looking at Adam's LinkedIn profile, you might look at it actually that I'd like to sort of have a similar career journey or I like bits of it and things like that. If you look back over your career and someone says, actually, I want to mimic that, or I want to sort of follow a similar career path, what advice would you give someone? As a sort of the closing bit today, someone comes to you say, oh, how did you do it, Adam? Or I want to do this. What would you say to those guys?

I've been very lucky to have a lot of varied experience over my time, both in terms of the organizations that I've worked in, from large US companies to privately owned companies to publicly owned companies to highly leveraged to low leverage companies. And that adds that richness to your background and experience. So if you can achieve that, I think that's very helpful. And I think also the complement of working on your experience in the job, in addition to working on developing your experience through technical qualifications, for example, the MCT that we mentioned earlier I think is very valuable as well. But also in parallel to each of those components, it's also important to focus on the individual skills as well that are required to be effective within an organization, the typical professional development skills that enable you to be more successful in delivering the solutions that you want to. So I think working on all of those things in parallel throughout your career is a very valuable aspect and something that I continue to focus on today.

So working a breadth of companies, develop your technical qualifications and at the same time get your interpersonals going well as well, and then you get to be the treasurer of a renewal.

That's it.

As easy as that.

Fantastic. Wow.

So I hope you guys enjoyed that amazing podcast with Adam when he was the treasurer of renui. Well, actually he still is, but we are four years later. His role has obviously over this past four years, hasn't still been through a pandemic, been through all the stuff that's happened. Adam's role has evolved and that's where we're going to pick up the story from now, from 2019. Now we're in 2023. We'll go from where he was then to where he is now, where he sees it going to next as well. Adam, if you joined us once again, thank you for your time, Adam. But to pick up the store your own story, if you would hopefully you understand it. Back to you Adam. Where are we now? Or where were we when we last left you on the show? And everyone's just heard over to you sir.

Great. Thanks Mike and nice to be on the show again this morning and get a chance to catch up on what has been an amazing four years for sure. I think back in 2019 renewe was still very much focused on post merger integration, having brought the company together in 2017 and the treasury function very similarly. So we were focused on creating a centralized treasury function, building out the team, putting in place systems and you know that continued and completed during the course of the last four years and we've continued to focus on obviously funding the company with bond issuances in 2019 and 2021 and then more recently European private placement issuances and European investment bank facility and exploration of USPP and other funding instruments as well. So it's been a very active period over the last four years on the funding front but very much in a sort of steady state fashion. So so with the mantra of good orderly financing of the company rather than doing anything on a hurried or emergency basis. Obviously with the exception of having to manage through the crisis of COVID and the concerns that I had for every business around the underlying performance and from a Treasury perspective of course the covenant profile of the business and looking for leniency from the banks during that period of uncertainty which you know, we managed to achieve. But it was a fairly painful experience in that first summer of COVID where you know, we had our year end going out with a March year end. Covid's timing was pretty bad for the auditors to get comfortable in the May year. So absolutely essential that we had the support of our banking group at that point in time. But you know, as we roll forward to today, the group itself has completed its post merger integration and the performance of Renui and its balance sheet is much stronger than it's ever been. In last year the Profit increased by 83% so very strong performance Revenue is up strongly as well and even advanced further in the first half of this year. So that certainly helped as a backdrop to provide a period of calm and enabled renewal to then focus more on investing in the portfolio, both organic growth and M and A as well. So competing at a tuck in acquisition in the middle of last year to strengthen the portfolio.

We whizzed through those four years and they were certainly challenging. I just wanted to re reflect when we were on the last episode we talked to then you were talking about some of the keys to managing a team remotely and to getting the best out of them. But then that was a voluntary thing and then it was an involuntary thing through pandemic it. How did you get through that again? Because then I want to bring up today, because your role as well. But before we get to that, what was that like? So you were, as you said, you were recruiting the team, getting them sorted. Great, all the right direction. Here we go, guys in the office. And suddenly, right, no, you know, the office is locked now. How. How did you get through that? What was, what was that like for you guys as a team?

I think the. The core team transitioned very well to their working from home environment. And how have the utmost respect for my colleagues who were managing young families who had demands of their own when they were also trying to work at home. And they did that admirably, working flexibly through the early stages of the pandemic. Obviously glad that that then calmed down and settled down in due course and schooling and nurseries returned back to normal and they were able to get back to a more normal functioning. And they transitioned very well to the more hybrid model where, where many days are spent working at home and very effectively so, but also many days are spent now in the office and collaborating with colleagues and sitting next to one another and making sure that the connections are close. I think like many companies, we probably had the experience of trying to hire during the pandemic. We hired a Treasury analyst, somebody that we hired remotely, onboarded remotely, and then decided to leave. So we never met the guy. We learned very much from that experience, the importance of close connections for the team and being physically present. So when we hired a replacement treasury analyst, the team shifted gears at that point in time to deliberately spend two days a week in the office and to make sure that that onboarding, that interview process and the successful collaboration was done in person as well as remotely. And I think that really made a huge difference. And it was really almost the perfect illustration of how significant, how important it is to be in person with people and very much being part of our ethos, if you like, as a group, for a very long period of time, given that the business is in the Netherlands and Belgium principally, most of our six and a half thousand people are there. So I'm always saying to my treasury colleagues, it's very important to get on a plane, go out and visit the teams, go and see the sites, because it's through those interactions that you really get a deeper understanding of the individuals you're interacting with, the priorities and competing priorities that they have to manage and therefore where you fit within that. And also get to know what the business is, what it does and expand the network beyond the immediate contacts that you need to be able to do your day to day job, which gives you that broader perspective that's always necessary in treasury to be able to think about what's happening in the business, be able to think about how that reflects into the requirements for the funding of the organization or the operational requirements for the business. And that's certainly something that the team have adopted very well and transitioned successfully into that hybrid model.

And with yourself, you just touched on there that the evolution of treasury, you got the team, the treasury engine if you like, functionally purring well and then you sort of took on other responsibilities and evolved your role if you like.

And I know that a number of.

Of listeners will, you know, the more senior end in particular be looking right, got treasury working, Treasure Ops. That's great. That's all going. How did you then sort of take on that? Were you putting your hand up, say great, give this to me, what can I do? Or how did it all happen from there? Because again, people will be listening today going, I'd like to do that. How did Adam manage to wrestle those other interesting parts into his role?

Yeah, so I mean if we roll forward to today, I look after investor relations, I spend probably the majority of my focused on investor relations as well as leading the insurance team and the treasury team as well, as you sort of allude to. The permission comes from getting treasury running like a sewing machine and running very effectively and working closely with the colleagues. And it's not to say that I step out of the treasury function entirely. I still am very much involved in all of the strategic funding aspects and all of the key relationship management pieces with our key, the relationship banks as well. But increasingly that takes less time and therefore there's capacity generated, which is obviously the objective of focusing on trying to push work down the team to give the team development opportunities. And that creates capacity for me to then add more value by doing more valuable things. And investor relations is the perfect example of that. So I was able to start helping out the CFO or on investor relations back in 2019. Very much starting off really in a sort of bag carrying capacity. I think I'd probably describe that. So just sort of helping out where possible with preparation of year end materials, for example the investor presentations and then slowly building that up into supporting, attending conferences on the buy side with equity investors. Hearing how we describe the company to the market and that certainly getting closer to the equity story was very valuable in terms of communication with the debt investors as well, because you understand the performance of the business better as a result of that and how to talk about it. And then over time that's evolved into creating an investor relations function. So back in 2019 and prior the CFO was the investor relations function. So what we have done over a period of time is create more resilience for Renui by creating a function of that that's included improving a lot of different aspects of investor relations. But the simple output of that is that in 2020 the share price was 180pence and last year it hit 850pence. So that's the visible output of all of that process. But there's a lot of shoe leather and hard work that goes into making that happen. So one of the big critical success factors that we've been able to deliver is to increase the amount of coverage on the sell side. So the number of equity analysts that are writing about Renewee, that are talking about renewing in the market, that are generating interest in investors on the buy side to want to buy the shares, and we've increased the sell side coverage from, from three firms to nine over that period of time, which in a post MiFID 2 world where they make less money from doing equity research, that's a notable achievement and sort of illustrative of how well positioned Renewee is within the thematic of impact investing, circular economy, esg, sustainability, but also reflective of the fact that the financial performance of the business has improved as well. And therefore it's a more interesting story to sell into the. The investors on the buy side.

Well, you say that, you know, ESG is front page. Was every, you know, is everything at the moment is, you know, going like that? Obviously you guys are at the forefront of it. Did you, did you feel that you were right, let's ride this wave. Are you nervous about it sort of going off the boil or you just see it continuing sort of thing? Particularly given that sort of IR perspective sort of thing.

I'm not, not remotely concerned about it going off the boil. No, I think it's a long term secular focus on what's important, which is preservation of the planet. And anyone that thinks it's short term in nature would appear to be fairly misguided from my perspective anyway. So I'm a true believer in that context. And certainly for Renewee, I see enormous opportunities coming from the transition of consumer consciousness to be more focused on, on Climate related matters including recycling and circularity. So that's really important. But then also consumer behavior which is being driven by legislation in the broadest sense, including disclosure legislation such as TCFD and other requirements, CSRD in Europe and the likes, which is really promoting companies to really focus on how they are impacting the planet and their carbon commitments. And many have made net zero commitments and signed up to science based targets, for example. And that's all helping drive demand for secondary materials, particularly the low carbon secondary materials that renewed produces and puts back into the economy for reuse. And then also particularly at the governmental level and at the EU level, there's a lot of progressive legislation focused on trying to do things better. So fit for 55 is the, the process at the EU. And then if you translate that into national policy and particularly within the waste market, then there's been a real focus on eliminating landfill, which has happened sort of 10, 15 years ago in the Netherlands and Belgium, down to less than 1% of waste arising. And then a real focus now in terms of shifting away from incineration, which is a definition of the linear economy. So you produce, consume, destroy, we release the carbon at the end of that process and the incineration is the release of carbon, which is the description of the bad element essentially. And so what they've done is introduce taxation on incineration, which creates more space economically to be able to recycle. It makes it more advantageous to try and put materials back into reuse. And then more recently legislation in Flanders, which is half of Belgium, has introduced legislation where you can no longer put recyclable materials into incinerators. So you must have have sorting and treatment processes prior to that which enable you to remove those materials. And we're investing fairly heavily off the back of that legislation to be able to meet the requirements of that with new infrastructure that enables us to support it. So very strong drivers from consumers, corporates and from governments, which underpins investment opportunities for us. And it's a long term secular shift that's going to happen if you then also reflect it back into the asset management industry, particularly so on the buy side and also on the lending side. Corporates and asset managers are looking to use the EU taxonomy to talk about the alignment of their portfolios to sustainability. And I think that'll be another important driver over the next few years. My expectation is that renewal will fall into a fairly unique category of companies where the vast majority of the activities are aligned with climate objectives. So very simple terms, renew these purposes to put materials back into reuse. And that itself is a sustainable purpose. And therefore that puts us into a very unique universe of investment propositions that are impact investing. And that impact investing category is something that funds will be raised to be deployed against impact investing. And then if the universe is relatively small, then if renui fits into that story, it's a very helpful additional factor to growing the number of investors who are investing in renewing from an ESG and sustainability perspective. So I certainly see for Renui, that's a long term secular change. It's impacted behaviors not, as I said, corporates, consumers, legislators, banks, asset managers and all of that impacting positively for our business and for our activities.

So you know that that brings us up to date with the company, that brings us up to date with where you guys are set up for the future with yourself. Where do you see it now sort of evolving because you've got this. You were treasurer, you still are, but you're treasurer plus IR plus treasurer plus plus plus where do you see it next? Or for you as a treasurer, what are you thinking about next sort of thing?

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm still trying to build out the investor relations function for Renewee. It's still relatively nascent. We've just taken on a first member of staff. We've implemented a system to manage our interactions with investors. There's still a shareholder rotation going on. The share price is still still not a valuation that I like particularly. I would like to see it higher, particularly relative to other comparables in the markets. There's a lot of hard work required on the investor relations side and it's an important piece because if the share price is below where market transactions are operating in terms of multiples, then it's very difficult to do any transactions that require equity to grow. So it limits the growth ambitions unless we can get this shareholder rotation to happen successfully. More support from institutional investors that are focused on small and mid caps and building out that equity story further and demonstrating a longer track record of performance for renewe will be a key part of that. That is all happening, it's all underway, it's all ongoing and it should be would follow naturally over the course of the next year or two that continues that progression. So it's all set fair and set well for the future, but still a lot more work to do on the investor relations side. On the treasury side, there's always work to be done around the funding and always work to be done to maintain our reputation in the insurance markets, particularly around pdbi. So property damage and business interruption, as well as the motor cover, where we have exposures that are important to manage carefully and to invest to protect the assets for the insurance business. So lots to do at renewe. But last year we had a CFO transition. So the previous CFO left in March and the new CFO joined us in June. That was a nice opportunity to step up into some of the CFO responsibilities, including, you know, delivering the results to the city, which we do in May, so preparing all the investor materials, the roadshow activities and supporting and delivering the results with CEO on the day. So that was a nice glimpse of some of the CFO responsibilities and you know, gives a view as to where I might look to head in due course, which is to essentially continue to generate the CFO toolkit and see if that's a transition that I can make in due course.

And I think we've talked about this as an evolution for a number. We recently had Toppy Yoguranta on. I spoke to Adam about before and Toppy had made that transition from treasury to. And I think, you know, if I reflect back 20 odd years ago, treasury moved itself into this ivory tower and oh yeah, we get a pay rise because we're working in treasury and great. But then it was, oh yeah, treasury guy in the corner, corner and then it's come all the way back and I see, you know, treasury front and center, which is one of the reasons we do the podcast. But when you, you really embrace that, that is, you know, treasury is right, I can do, I, I can do the other things, but any, any final closing bits of, you know, words of advice that other treasurers should think about, about how they evolve their role like you or other things that you've done. I know you've touched on it a little bit there, but I wanted to sort of wrap up with your, or the final Adam Richford words really, rather than mine.

Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think there's a few sort of approaches that I take that I think are successful that I would encourage others to think about as well. You know, I think as a, as an approach, as a methodology, I'm always trying to look for where I can add the most value to the organization. So to focus on the highest returning, highest value things that I can do with my time. Sometimes that's treasury, sometimes that's investor relations, sometimes that's insurance. But broadly, to be successful in having the capacity to focus on those higher value items, it's important to leverage the team to push work down in the team for each of us to do that at the treasurer level, at the deputy treasurer level or the treasury manager level, and at the treasury analyst level to make sure that work is constantly being pushed down the team and that that's essentially step up opportunities, growth opportunities for each of those individuals below you. So it's good for them and it's good for you because it generates the capacity. And particularly where I think I add probably my most value is to have some capacity to try and look round corners, is sort of how I describe it. To think about what's coming down the pike, to think about what's happening in the organization to be sufficiently aware of that, both from a market perspective and from an idiosyncratic perspective for the individual company and make sure that we're positioning for those future events. So even though we're in the midst of a very high inflationary environment and no one will be thinking about putting a significant amount of capital to work in this environment, what I'm thinking about for the next treasury funding round is a couple of years down the line when the markets have calmed down a little bit more and Renew is still positioned well and wants to grow further, is about how do we make sure we've got the capacity to do that same on the investor relations side, how do we make sure that we've got the register that we need to Support us in 2 or 3 years time to complete further transactions and further growth? And that's going to be a journey that's going to take us a couple of years to get there. But the hard work is happening now to make sure that we're positioning ourselves to look around those corners in the future. So that's more again another sort of approach, if you like, that I like to take. And then, you know, really my, my leadership style, if you like, is to be very much nurturing and supportive of the team that I have. So I like working with each of the team members that I have. You know, we work very closely together. We're on the phone or talking throughout the day, every day, talking about what's going on and how we can. Similarly, each of us take the approach of adding the most value possible and helping to position the organization for the right things, I guess. One final thing that I think is really critical for all of us, particularly in the senior roles, is to try to accumulate as much outsight as you can get. So to try and accumulate information from external networks to bring best practices from elsewhere into your organization. So I have spent a lot of time trying to become networked in the investor relations universe to understand that world better, for example. And that has made me better able to support the organization. So talking to the corporate brokers, talking to other firms on the sell side, understanding the asset management universe using systems and tools, the database that we implemented this year has really supported that as well. But the way you find those people is through a lot of effort. It's through the shoe leather, it's through attending conferences, it's through talking to people, it's through following up and having specific conversations to see if there's areas of interest or things that you need to know and understand better and bringing those insights that you find in those discussions back into your organization. So that's what helps you to build from a sort of green field site to creating a best in class or fit for purpose function. And I think that served me incredibly well and certainly something I try to encourage my team to do as well as to get out there into the market to talk to people, find out what others are doing, talk to vendors, talk to advisors, listen as carefully as possible, use open questions and to try and elevate the understanding of each of us to support the organization better.

Lovely, lovely. Final words, elevate, elevate out in the market. I love that. So Adam, it's been amazing to talk to you. I won't take any more of your time because you've just been very, you were giving first time around, but that was four years ago so we nearly forgot about it. But now we're back there. So really appreciate your time, sir. And I look forward to hearing the story as it keeps moving on over the next three or four years. You know, never know, we will perhaps catch up again on the podcast. Who knows?

Well, Mike, thank you very much for having me back on again and lovely to talk with you.

Lovely, lovely to chat, sir.

Thanks.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place place to listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take say 20 seconds, leave a quick review my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.