Lessons Learned from a Successful Treasury Career with Rob Farrow

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 them about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Let's get on with the show.

This week's show, delighted to be joined by Rob Farrow, the corporate treasurer at sabic. SABIC is a global leader in chemicals headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And they made from making cars and planes more fuel efficient to helping conserve the world's water supply. Smart to do through to smartphone cases, you know, all the way top to bottom. Massive global group. They've got more than 33,000 employees worldwide, operating in over 50 countries and, you know, many global patents and the lot, you know, truly global. And I know a lot of this because I place Rob in his role and a number of the other members of the team. So love recruiting for the group and, you know, lots of things happening there as well. We'll get onto that later on in the show. But as always, known Rob for a number of years, so slightly not disingenuous, but, you know, I'm going to ask him to take us through his career, but I know all about it because we've been friends for years. But, Rob, take us back, if you would, to the very, very dim, distant past and how you first got started in finance and then discovered the world of Treasury. So, as always, over to you, sir.

Thank you, Mike. Well, yeah, you have known me for a few years, but my career goes back even longer than that. So I suppose we start back in the days of university, doing a physical geography degree and really thinking about what I was going to do for a job. Long story short, relatively short in that was I ended up at Ford Credit after a full start with the civil service. And anyone who's ever done any time in the civil service will know exactly why I left there as soon as I could. Ford Credit. I actually joined as a marketing guy and spent several years in my very early career at Ford Credit. This was Ford Credit in the uk, doing marketing, business analysis roles, bit of financial analysis and some credit. And then this is how life works, right? Used to play football and the referee, this was just an internal football team, just a thing we did once a week. The referee was the treasurer at the time, he was called the borrowing and banking manager. And you get talking and I thought, I like the sound of what you do. Ken, his name was Ken. And yeah, we got talking and he basically said, well, if you Want to come in to join me? If I have a job come up, I'll let you know. And that's how I started. So my first treasury role actually was in 1987. Yes, I am that old experience. Experience, yeah. And really that sort of hooked me onto the treasury world and it got me understanding very quickly, particularly of course in a credit company, the absolutely central role that treasury has for a business. And Full Credit was a really good example of that because UK based company initially we had all our debt was sourced either from banks or from brokers. You know the old days when you used to go to a broking house and they would introduce a company with cash to Full Credit who wanted the cash and we take their money for three months or six months, however long. That was quite a good source of funds for us at the time. But during the period at Full Credit that evolved. And this is another area of treasury which I've really enjoyed the years evolved into, okay, we're stuck with banks and we're stuck with deposits. What else can we get into? How can we diversify the funding? So we did several things over the next, I suppose five or six years. We opened a commercial paper program, we went into the bond markets, we did Euro sterling bonds through names that have long since disappeared, unfortunately, the likes of Hambro's, Barings, all these characters. And we also, and this was one of the really difficult things that came up relatively early in my career. Obviously it wasn't just down to me, but we put together the first auto loan securitization in the uk, so a lot of different things going on. Also spent some time while I was doing that in the European arm. So Full Credit Europe, which was also, and still is I believe, based out of Brentwood in the uk. So I got to see places like Sweden, Finland, Spain, Germany, all the different full credit affiliates around Europe and also starting some local commercial paper programs dealing with the banks. It's also the first time I got into risk management with interest rates because Full Credit domestically funded itself in local currency. So our risk management issues were more on the interest rate side. But again we looked at our portfolio, we said we're borrowing too short, hence we went to the bond markets and we did a lot of what we call term matching, really just matching the loan book that we had. You can imagine the average car buyer is taking us maybe three maximum five year loan, so trying to match the maturities there with the debt book. So a lot of different things relatively early in the treasury career. And as I said, that Was really interesting. I loved it then jogging along very nicely. I'd ended up at the end of those few years as the treasurer for Full Credit uk. Ken retired, I took the job from him and then, well, I guess it was a couple of years later I got tapped on the shoulder to move across to Ford, the Ford Motor Company. Completely and utterly different role. There I am as the treasurer of Full Credit in the uk. Sterling based, didn't know an FX denier to spell FX frankly. And then they put me in as the manager of foreign exchange for Ford of Europe pre Euro.

When you say they put you in as that, was that you going yeah, I'll do it or was that them saying well you know us, you know this and just throwing in the deep end?

It was, yeah. It's a good question Mike. It wasn't something I looked for. I was quite happy doing what I was doing. There's a bit of a theme here which I'll talk about later on but I was quite happy doing what I was doing. But they said look, you know, we want you to grow, that's what we'd say now and develop. So they said we want you to have a go at this and you've got a good team already. So they put me literally across the road from the Ford Credit building into the Ford Motor Company building. Now I'm suddenly responsible for $60 billion a year of trading in FX and I say pre Euro, 45 different currencies. So what I had was a really strong group of people who are working for me and working with as peers and what I learned that apart from anything else is a. You've got to be very, what's the word I'm looking for? You've got to be very used to getting help and taking advice. If you're the person who's giving you the advice, you know, put, put yourself. There's a really nice German guy who was head of the trading. I come in over his head, don't know one currency from another. He took it extremely positively. He was my trainer, didn't make any issues about it and he's gone on to be extremely successful himself. But you know that move across to doing something completely new is impossible if you don't have really good people around you. And I think looking back at the time you're young and you just yeah, okay, I can do it. But looking back, if I hadn't have had such a strong group of people around me, I would have completely failed to be honest.

So just jumping in there, you know I've heard the opposite where some people have come in that, you know, they don't know what they don't know but they, they're not willing to, they see that as a sign of weakness. If they, but then, well, I don't really know what you're doing but, but I'm the treasurer, you know, da, da, da. We're going to do this, we're going to do this. You know, one, one, there is one that sticks in my mind. I can't say who, they're proper treasurer out there but they came in and they said, right, we're going to do all this and we need to do this in this specific country. And the current treasurer said, well you can try but actually it doesn't work like that. And you know, after a three month failed project they sort of seem to realize that a little bit. So that should we decided we're not going to do that project. So it was actually, you know, I said to him, what do you think they should have done? He said, literally just come on in. Like I've heard, you know, he'd heard a couple of our podcasts and he said I loved one of them, which was with Joel, Joel Campbell a few years ago. And it was a really great one because he said, his boss said, just come in, I don't want you to do anything for three months. He was like, what you paying me? He said, no, no, don't, don't come in with, you know, big boots and try and change things. Just come in and learn, work with the people, get to know them and then start to, you know, see where you can make an impact. And it made a hell of a difference. It sounds like you had a similar.

Thing or no one said that to me. Please don't do anything for three months. But another thing happened. Of course this was exactly the time of the RM crisis.

Yeah.

So nobody had any time to really sort of think creatively about how to do things different for a few months anyway we were crashing around dealing with that. But no, I think, look, there's, in my view if you're taking a new role where you don't know anything about the job, obviously we all take new roles where we don't know a lot about the new business we're getting into. We have to learn as you get later in your career, hopefully most of the jobs you take, you know, at least something about to be dangerous. But this was a completely different role. You can't go from a sterling only funding operation and you know, cash management. But Mainly debt management to foreign exchange. It's completely different if you'd never done it before. So it's anyone who could have gone in there with the ballsy approach to say, yeah, don't tell me what to do because I'll find out. That's not going to work. So, no, I think having very strong team there and moving people to learn into it with the support of that team, I would always say that is a best practice. To your point, Mike, after six months, or however long it is, if you've got ideas to do things differently, which you do, then you can start talking about it and integrating. But I think to learn the basics, particularly a very technical area like fx, you know, these were the days before any FX platforms or anything like that. It was pick up the phone, direct lines into the dealing rooms. Really, really different world and you can't. You can't go in there. The right level of support from people, that's, you know, that's really something that I'm very strongly a believer in is, is using the expertise of people that around you, because it's very, very rare. In fact, I've never come across it that you don't have very knowledgeable and good people, at least in a lot of your team. Every team is mixed, of course, but generally speaking, there's a very solid group of people. Sometimes they actually don't get noticed if they're not squeaky wheels. But there's a lot of very good people about and if you take time to listen, then you learn a lot.

Yeah. And then moving from that role, you were then offered the role in Detroit or a nice move, you know, from Essex.

Oh, yeah.

Off you go. How did that go down with the family?

Well, that was this, again, another happenstance. So that Ford moving the business. Not the business, but the foreign exchange, the whole foreign exchange area, if you like, centralizing into Detroit. So, yes, they started to talk to me about moving across now, at that time, always lived in Essex, family was very young, wife with a very successful physiotherapy career. We thought, that's a bit daunting. And this moves on to the next step, I suppose. But Dave Rosati, who was the head of fx@ge, got wind of Ford moving their foreign exchange operation, needed somebody to do foreign exchange for GE in Europe. And again, I was tapped on the shoulder saying, you know, how about moving to ge? Because they thought you might not want to go to Detroit. And they were right. So that's how I ended up going across to GE, somebody who these days you'd find out from LinkedIn or whatever, but having contacts in the market, then they picked up on the fact that I was or my job was going to be relocated. And so I got the tap on.

The shoulder and what was GE like then? And I say this in a loaded question way because you and I both know I did a lot of recruitment for GE at the time. GE and then GE Capital know, GE Capital overtook GE's affirmative. And then suddenly, you know, later years changed. We are industrial services and everything else in industry again. But at that time, what was the state of GE and how did that then. I know that then affected your next couple of moves there because you were with GE for a number of years.

It was very different. Unfortunately, a lot of not so good stuff has happened to GE in the last few years. But at the time it was a, you know, a machine. Most of my company, all that stuff, mind you, we used to look at each other and say, sometimes, God, what's it like working for the second? Most of my. But it was no, it was a Welsh era. And in fact it was a very dynamic and very, very good company, frankly, to work for. And what they were doing was centralizing a lot of the foreign exchange and later on, cash management operations from the different business units in Europe. When I joined, I went from the Ford dealing room with a whole bunch of telephones, direct lines to banks and traders to a desk with a phone. And the job was, yeah, we've got all these guys doing their own foreign exchange out there in plastics, medical systems, Nova, Pignoni, wherever it was. We want you to bring it all into corporate. Here's a list, here's a list of names of the finance managers. Go do it. And of course that's, you know, you have to, you know, start working on that. You have to convince yourself and then the people you're talking to, why it's a good idea. And we built up that relationship and gradually brought the trading in house. So that took some time. And again, it was one of those periods I look back on and think it was pretty heavy lifting to get people on side to do it. But it is one of the biggest challenges that I've had that convinced me of the lesson I hope I've learned, which is, unless you can tell people, believe it yourself and get them to understand why you're doing something, you'll never have a prayer of doing it properly. So it was building the business case for people. Why are we taking away all this fun stuff that you're doing? Out of Bergen Op Zoom in the Netherlands and bring it into Hammersmith. So very credible reasons to do it in terms of critical mass and risk management, managing the bank relationships and the limits that we had with the banks better and so on. But it took some time. But that was, you know, again, that was a blast. We got it up and running. In fact, this is, this, I don't think you even, you know, this one, Mike. We ended up buying the, all the direct dealing phones from Ford and took them into our office in GE because they were moving to Detroit. So we got them for a song and then we had all our direct lines out to ge. But that was the sort of, I suppose the first couple of years of my, my tenure in Germany. And we did a lot, as I say, we centralized all the trading, we put a really neat tax structure together. I didn't. But working with the tax team, which GE was legendary at the time for having these really, really smart tax people and we put together some really tax efficient funding structures working with the banks and to make sure the funds flows in billions of dollars, the funds flows would work without getting hung up in the markets or blowing through limits. So yeah, a lot, a lot of fun then Euro was being talked about and we had to think about how we were preparing for the euro introduction. So I was head of that team as well. So yeah, a lot of fun there in London. And then GE decided that I'd had enough fun there after three or four years. Can you go and do the same for us in Asia, please? And this was the time when moved on a bit, family had grown up a bit and we decided, you know what, it's not a bad idea, let's go for it, let's try Asia. So we went out there, looked at actually at Hong Kong or Singapore to be based in, but Singapore was the decision and again introduced a lot of the same things for Asia. But the Asia currency crisis happened. So my phone and the desk where I was calling people suddenly became a phone I was answering a lot with all the business people in Asia saying, yeah, what the hell's going on? And suddenly treasury became the center of the universe for GE in Asia. And it was no bad thing. And I think the one thing I have learned a lot going back, as I said, to that end crisis in Ford and going then to this Asia crisis and so on into other crises we've had right through to now with COVID is that that's the time that people really sit up and proactively want to get hold of you and get your help and you become an absolutely critical cog in the risk management for a company. You always are. But sometimes people don't realize it as starkly as when you've got a crisis going on. So that was, in fact, a blast. I had a lot of support from the corporate audit staff in terms of drilling down into the exposures that we had and so on and so forth, but it was. It was fun times in Asia with the. With the crisis going on. Everybody wants to be your friend. And then same time or not? Same time, just after that. I don't know if you remember, but GE and Honeywell were meant to get together.

Yes.

And I was leading up the, you know, the integration team for Asia for that. I'd really been involved in any kind of M and A activity, but I learned a lot from that and that's come back to be extremely helpful in later life as well. So, yeah, that was good. And I suppose as a reflection on career building, it's something I just thought of while I've been talking about this era. Don't be afraid to stick your head out and say, you know, I'd like to be involved in that, even if it's not in your remit or you don't think it's in your job description if you're at the other side of that. And I've had many people working for me who have done the same thing. When you show some enthusiasm, some real sort of inquisitiveness about how things are going, I'd like to know some more about that. It really does work because, A, it's interesting for yourself, and secondly, people who are hiring internally or externally. I don't know how you feel about this, Mike, but, you know, when you've got somebody who comes to you with enthusiasm and that inquisitiveness, and you can see that they've done things outside of their own box. Yeah, it really counts for a lot.

In my book because it just shows an ethos and attitude and I don't think enough people. That's one of the things when, you know, when I've recruited for you guys, when I've recruited for, you know, other clients, you know, the people will say to me, well, what do you think? Well, I said, you know, I'll give my opinion. It won't be a technical opinion about, you know, I'm not going to sit there and assess, you know, whether they, you know, their level of cash management expertise or various other bits, because I've got treasurers who are far better than that. But what I will do is what's their ethos? You know, are they prepared to get stuck in when. When everything, you know, when, as you say, when there's an economic currency crisis, are they going to be the ones getting stuck in and going, right, I can help. What can I do? I don't know what to do but just tell me where to pick up the phone, you know, because those people you want to have on your team.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I probably spend a bit too long talking about the G stuff, but certainly Asia and that crisis, an area I did learn a great deal and say with the stuff going on with the Honeywell would never happened. Then I spent a couple of years in Norway, did a CFO job in a very small piece of the GE power empire with GE Hydro. So again, it was a job that I had no previous qualifications or experience in. Not for a lot of it anyway. Obviously the Treas part in some of the M and A, but a lot of the general financial management didn't have that experience. I had some very good people again who guided me through it. Unfortunately, the business itself was shocking. It was something that GE sort of decided to buy without really frankly doing some magnificent due diligence. It wasn't a great success as a business. Couple of years there I did learn an awful lot, but the business itself never made any money. I ended up coming out of that after two or three years back to the. The core treasury area in the us. So I became the sort of treasurer for the whole of the infrastructure business as they called it then. Water, power, oil, all that kind of stuff. Again, a lot of very interesting things there. A lot of M and A activity. Bentley, Nevada was acquired. Pan and Metric, there's a small company in Austria, Jennbacker is involved in a lot of those and a lot of also real compliance type of activities. And this is another area that is sometimes overlooked I think with treasury is the interface between treasury and the account groups, controllership. This was the time when the whole FAS 133 stuff blew up at GE and the, the mismatch of some of the borrowing and some of the risk management tools, the, the swaps and everything that were taken was causing a lot of noise in the GE P&L. So we had to do a real global scrub of all our FAS 133 documentation activities which, which landed on me. Now, am I naturally an controller or an accountant? No, I'm not. But this was very illuminating and in fact it's again, knowledge that has Come Back to since FAS 133 of course has moved on into other areas but the principles are still there. So making sure that what we're doing in risk management and funding actually works in terms of the accounting is another thing. Not to be, I suppose, underlooked in terms of Treasury. That was a good experience in that sense. Then again, what happens after a few years at ge? You think about what's next. There I was as the treasurer for the infrastructure group and wondering what to do in terms of career and again I got approached completely different sort of rolling in the Gulf and the role there was corporate treasurer for the whole business. Something I'd never done. I'd been a CFO for a small piece of, very small piece of ge. I've been treasurer for big pieces of ge, big pieces of Ford, been a specialist here and there, but never done the whole caboodle. So very appealing. So moved to Kuwait. Alganum Industries, family run business, couple of billion dollar turnover but all sorts of different business. Anything from car dealership through to steel building, manufacturing, advertising agencies and Costa Coffee. So a whole range of different businesses. As I had the whole thing.

Sorry, just to jump in there. You'd gone from GE to Algonim but also, you know, we'd had their Far east, so Singapore, through Oslo, through you know, Bracknell and Atlanta, but to Kuwait, you know, because at that time, what was it like there? What was, you know, because this was, you know, great experience of the Middle east and stuff. Can you describe that for us?

Kuwait's a quiet place. That's the, the best way I can describe it. It's very, very compact. There's a very small western expat community in Kuwait. It's not like the Emirates but it's a, it's a very, a very self contained place in terms of the, its business activity and the Alganin family. There's two branches of the Alganin family and between them they control a lot of the private business in Kuwait. What we found living there, I'm not talking about the job now, but living there is a very straightforward place to live. Not a lot to do unless you fly somewhere else, but a very tight expat community. And actually for my wife and myself, that worked very well. By this time, by the way, the kids are old enough to be off and doing their own thing so we didn't have family with us. It's a perfectly easy place to live. The job again was very different in terms of having the whole gamut and also had had responsibility for credit insurance in terms of P L. So we had, we actually offered car insurance and collections. So collections on the credit side that all came under this job. So it was a bit back to the future in terms of what I originally did at full credit with some of that. So again lesson learned is even stuff that you do donkeys years ago can come back to be useful and experience when you take on new jobs, new stuff there. Islamic finance. Never come across that before in my life. But we ended up doing a sukuk which is an Islamic based bond. It was the first one that we did there out of Al Gharnim and it was again learned a lot on how to structure these things. We did a lot of JV management in Turkey, we got a jv. We building a new plant in Saudi Arabia with our partners at Sangaban, you know, getting funding from Sidf in Saudi for that. And really dealing with a very diverse team. Obviously I've had diversity in teams before in terms of men, women, but not so much on the ethnic side to be honest. Singapore, we had a lot of locals, but not the type of mix that we came across in Kuwait because not only do you have Western, you have South Asian expats, you have obviously Asian expats, you've got locals, very diverse team. So that was very interesting and a very good management experience or leadership experience, for want of a better word, how to deal with different cultures. So you think you move to Kuwait and you're going to be dealing with an Arabic culture. You're not really, that's a piece of the pie. You're dealing with a South Asian culture, you're dealing with a Middle Eastern, Lebanese, Egyptian culture, you're dealing with a Filipino culture, all in this melting pot of the treasury team in Alganum. So very interesting to actually manage that kind of diversity.

And you did, you know, you did Kuwait for what? You were there for six years. So did that desperately. What then led to you then moving? What happened next?

Well, what happened next was the. My boss in Kuwait left before I did and he moved to Itron. So after we'd done six years in Kuwait. So it's time for a change now. There's nowhere else to go in terms of the job in Kuwait. So learned a lot, done a fair bit and we thought what's next? And again he said when you are going to leave, let me know. And I did. And he said I need a Treasury guy. So that was it. I interviewed with obviously some of the HR people and the CEO of Itron. And then they moved me across to Liberty Lake, which, for those of you who don't know, Washington State is the West Coast. Seattle is the most famous piece of that. If you go right to the other end, more or less the Idaho border there is Spokane and Liberty Lake, and anyone who follows college basketball will have heard of the zag and they are based in Spokane, Washington. So again, completely different area, completely different business, smart meters, communications. But now I would say this, Mike, if I'm thinking about all these different jobs, the issues are the same. Sometimes the naughts you add on to the end are more or less. But if you're trading fx, if you're running risk management, if you're trying to match your exposures, the issues are the same. If you're trying to borrow really efficiently, the issues are the same. The numbers may be bigger or smaller, but they're the same. So here we are in Itron, same sort of issues. It's a global company, more or less the same size as Alganim, but with a lot more complexity in terms of its footprint. M and A comes through again. We bought a company in Ireland, had a very big deal with Silver Spring, which was an acquisition of a company about a third of the size of Itron. So a lot of M and A activity. And then right towards the end of that, also the COVID nonsense hit the next crisis. So again, protecting the balance sheet, making sure that the rating agencies understood what Itron's doing, you know, keeping everybody calm, frankly, and saying, no, we're not going to run out of money, it's fine. Look, the customers are still paying, you know, introducing processes so that people can see on a daily basis how our collections are going and how our payables are going and so on. So a lot of that you wouldn't think is necessarily treasury, but, boy, it has to be. When you've got that sort of crisis going on, you have to step in and say, I need to understand this. And this is, this is what we're going to do.

Just just briefly, Rob, I don't think, I don't know whether we really explained to the listeners what Itron does because. And how that then affects treasury, just so that, you know, we give background to that.

So Itron is a. So it's a manufacturer of meters. It does that in Europe, it does that in the U.S. but mainly it's, you know, raison d' etre is smart communications and facilitating the way that your meter at home will communicate with the other meters around it. And Also with utility, so that, you know, can anything from billing to outages to leaks, whether it's gas, electricity, water, you know, a combination of sensors and communications is what Itron's all about. So when you've got a big infrastructure spend, then the company does very well, like they did in 2010, 2011, after the 2008 crisis. But at the same time, it's cutting edge technology and sometimes that doesn't work so well straight out the box. So you have to manage issues around customers sort of not paying because the stuff isn't working. You have other issues around your supply chain, which I'm sure, obviously I haven't been in the company for a while now. A lot of these things rely on chips and when I was there a couple of years ago, we had had problems with supply chain on chips. So it's a small company in that game. You're up against the General Motors and the Apples of the world. You're not necessarily the top of the pecking order with the chip manufacturers. So those are the kind of issues for a company like Itron, managing the supply chain. I know again, not my job, but working to make sure that we had the right availability of cash for the right expediting that we might have to do for certain customers or things like that. So, yeah, and a double B company. So we issued a bond with that, which was actually very successful, a double B rating. Lots of, lots of interesting things. Again, I say I don't want to take up the whole podcast telling stuff about what we did and what we didn't do.

I think it's important because it gives a practical. Send people in listening today's episode, they know that you're a treasurer, that's, you know, done infrastructure. You've done, you know, widgets, you know.

Yeah.

Although they're, you know, smart meter widgets. But you've done practical things and I think that's key because exactly as you said throughout your career, you know, you've got so many different areas you've seen it from, you know, from cars industry, you know, that makes it you that strength about yourself. I think treasury terms, because then, and you know, you as exactly as you say from Itron and Washington State. You spoke to this weird treasury recruiter. Oh, that's me. And said, look, I've got this amazing role, you know, can you then maybe fill in the blanks for me? Come on. I know the blanks, by the way listeners, but over to you.

Yeah, so yeah, I try and it goes back. I said there'd Be a bit of a theme at the start of my spiel. Perfectly happy doing what I was in Itron. It was a very good company to work for. But then you get an opportunity to be the treasurer for a 35, 40 billion billion dollar company. Massive. Completely different business, completely different footprint if you like, in terms of the risk management. You compare a cracker, which is what we make the chemicals out of, these are hundreds of millions of dollars a piece. And when you have a company with massive growth ambitions like that, that is going through frankly a very, very tight and intense change management process. Now for finance, it's challenging but really appealing at the same time. So I think, yeah, I want to give that a shot. I've got experience of doing treasury pointy headed activities. I've got experience of working in different companies in different markets. Coming into this job, what do I know about cracking chemicals to make plastics and agrinutrients? Absolutely nothing. But you know, that's, that's the thing you, you learn. I'm still, by the way, I'm still learning. The curve is still very steep here. I've been here just over a year. But you know, having that, bringing that together in terms of what you've learned yourself in different jobs and roles over the years to a completely different environment is one of the appeals of working, in my view. And you learn, you help people to learn because of your own experience. But if you're not actually picking up new stuff and taking on new things, you get very stale. And that's the name of the game for me, even at my age, is taking on new stuff and trying to marry up what you've learned with what you are going to learn. That's part of the appeal.

So one of the things we should mention here, Rob, is that you've got this global team and I think it's remiss of me if I didn't touch upon the scope of your role. And that's one of the key things. Having recruited you guys for a number of years now, it's been head spinning at times. This is probably the first big global campaign I've recruited for you guys in Saudi Arabia, through Netherlands, through to Texas, you know, and, and back again, you know, right away. And actually, you know, it's, it's, it's stretched me as a recruiter and I've learned more now for you as a treasurer. Okay, you'd had all these different global experiences, but what's it been like for you on that global aspect and running global teams? What would you sort of, you know, give as inspirational sort of words of advice to people out there listening today.

Yeah. If I may, Mike, I'm going to take that into two. Two different thoughts. Okay. Because using the Savic experience, frankly, is not normal. And when I say not normal, we had to deal with bloody Covid all the time. So if you ask me a question about how would I have dealt with the global teams and everything in Savic in a time when Covid wasn't an issue, I'd have said, get on your bike, go and meet people, sit with them, understand how their piece of the team works and ticks and gels together. And this is what I did before in other global roles. Now in Itron, most of the team was in Liberty Lake, but we had people in Austin, Texas. We had people in Paris, we had, you know, folks in Latin America, obviously in G, we had people all over the place. So that would be, in a normal world, what I'd say I would do as quickly as possible. Now, I haven't been able to do that in Savic. So what we try and do is to get people together. Virtually, of course, we have monthly global treasury town halls, which is not easy when you're. You have to get people up early in Houston and tell them to stop a bit late in Singapore. That's the way you can do it. But actually doing that so that people are hearing directly what the team is doing wherever you're sitting, that's important. But actually dealing with a global team, say in Al Garnham, I had a global team in one place that again, it helps you to understand the different drivers of different cultures and you always try and retain that knowledge and figure how, how should I respond to that? How should, how should I think through somebody else's lens on this? So, yeah, I think having a global team in Savic is clearly something that's going to continue. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to meet anybody yet. Not in person. Yeah.

And that's key as well, isn't it? This meeting people, networking, but actually looking them in the eyes and then getting to know them. And I guess it will change. And I'm, you know, very much looking forward in 2022, you know, heading, you know, across the Atlantic to meet people in the US meeting people across Europe and, and right the way around. But, you know, but I think one thing it's given us is maybe, I don't know, more, I would say for me on a personal level, more respect for travel, you know, in a way that I used to sometimes just get on a plane, you know, do 13 conferences at one stage, the year before, you know, a couple of years before COVID and actually that now it's given me a reason to think, right, this is why I do this. And these are the reasons. So, you know, be less travel, but make more of it when you're there, as it comes back, you know, what are you thinking? That, you know, is it because obviously that in person, sort of, you know, one to one is key to yourself, you know, how are you gonna make that happen?

Yeah, I mean we do it with good old Skype calls on a one to one basis and smaller teams and everything else, but as soon as we have the opportunity, whether it's myself or my team, to be able to travel, sit down, understand people's strengths, development needs much more. Clearly, as you're sitting in the same place, you can do it remotely. Of course you can, we've had to. But in my view there isn't a substitute. If you're going to build and maintain and grow really strong teams, they've got to know who you are and you've got to know who they are. And that way you build the respect and rapport and get the best out of people. There's no substitute for it. And unfortunately we obviously haven't had that opportunity for a year or two.

Yeah.

So it's a shame but you know, I'm looking forward to be able to do that again. And until then, then communication is key and you have to do it by phone. And it's, it's not ideal, but that's the way to, to obviously keep the momentum going.

And so Rob, you know, we, we've sort of discussed a lot about your career before the show, you and I sort of talked about a couple of sessions you've done recently and one of them was about reflecting on these number of years, amazing years you've had within treasury and the changes, you know, 30 years plus of treasury experience and what it was like then to now. We've talked about a fax machine and my 10 year old going, what's a fax machine, dad? And I'm like, yeah, move on. You know, just not knowing with yourself. What would you say have been the biggest shifts or changes, you know, in your time if you reflect over that time and reflect backwards, if you like, up to then to now sort of thing.

Yeah, I mean the obvious ones are things like trading foreign exchange, trading those banks of phones and talking to Martin Pilcher at NatWest on one and somebody else at HSBC. On another one and getting the bids and someone saying for the first time, choice price, you're thinking, what's that mean? And then figuring all that out into a trading platform now so you've got FX all and the banks contribute. Boom, you're done. Big differences in technology and that's obvious. I think what I've noticed and I think this is a factor of two things, Mike, one being experience as you get older, maybe you do more of this. But secondly, the crises that we've gone through, I genuinely think that treasury now has more of a voice and a seat at the table with the boards. I know it happened, I'm sure it happened in all my other companies with senior people. But if you're able to ask people who were treasurers, assistant treasurers at Ford or GE back in the day and ask them now, I think the influence and again the seat of the table that we have around capital allocation and around macro risk management has got a lot stronger. So what are we doing here in terms of capital expenditure versus M&A? How are we going to think about our next funding? Is that going to be in terms of public debt or do we want to go to the markets or the bank if we are going to decide to spend cash on this company versus paying a higher dividend, those kind of board level decisions. I think if you had some way of analyzing this, I'm sure you'd see treasury globally having more of a seat at the table at that. Remember what my first boss or my first boss was called? He was called borrowing and Banking Manager. That was the status of treasury back in the day. Now and again I can't prove this, it's just my sense that it's become much more strategic. Is it strategic enough? Maybe not, but it certainly moved a long way in that direction. I think that's one of the biggest differences. Otherwise I think unfortunately in many ways the entry now for a lot of companies into treasury, the way in this HR policies can determine that you need finance degrees or MBAs or something else. I'd never got there. I don't think myself that that's as critical as that inquisitive mind and general sort of be able to get things done. But it's a fact of life now and I think that's a bit of a shame. But that's a change. You know, I wouldn't get HR to give me any credence now saying, oh yeah, doesn't matter if yeah, he's got a geography degree, that's fine, he'll be Fine in Treasury, you know, that that's a very difficult putt now with HR policies globally. So I think that's. That's another change in terms of people wanting to get into the career, which is, again, a bit of a shame. Obviously, from my perspective, you're right.

With that greater focus, with that greater spotlight, people understanding a lot more about treasury itself, I think there comes that as well. People have sort of said to me sometimes, oh, you know, I want to get a new job, but I can only do 30% of the new job, you know, 70%, I'll learn. I said, well, that's. That's fine for you, but. But I've got people that already know 70, 80% of the job and they're like, well, yeah, well, I can still apply. So we can. But you won't get the job, you know, because. And it's not a criticism of them per se, it's more, you know, that employers. Because treasury, you know, is much more in the spotlight. People understand what treasury does, which is a good thing. It means that, you know, there's. There's greater pressure and there's.

Yeah, you know, you.

You know, treasury departments are lean and mean by their very nature. So it just means that it's a fact that you need to go choose your next moves where you can do 60, 70% and learn some and broaden yourself, as you've done very successfully throughout your career. I see. But I share your pain sort of thing.

Yeah. At least now, and this is a positive, Mike, as you were talking then, at least now we have qualifications that people can get, which are treasury based. They weren't around back in the day. So whether you're looking at the EIFP stuff, which I'm not a great fan of, but it's there in the US or the ACT training that you can do, those are very useful and very good, in my view, tools for people who want to get into the career and progress. They weren't around.

Yeah.

So I think those, Those type of qualifications now, which you don't have to do before you start, but you can do on the job. You. Certainly for people like me, I would notice those qualifications a lot more stronger than an MBA or certainly a more general finance qualification.

Agree. And I had conversations with candidates and they've asked me, should I do an MBA or should I do the cfa? And should I do this cpa? Should I do this? Should I do. I'm like, well, what depends on you.

Oh, yeah.

I said, what do you want to do? What's Going to add most value to you in your next role. And they're like, oh, oh, okay. I said, yeah, think about that rather than think about your direction, not just getting another bit of paper or CV as it were. That's okay. So as we wrap up today's show, we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so that people can look at you and say, do you know what I want to be like, Rob?

You know, and there's no one that mad.

No, exactly. Broke that mold. But aside from that, if they do look at your, your background and say, do you know what these are? What are the recommendations you make to maybe if they're earlier in their career or mid level or more senior, you know, maybe some, you know, final closing words of advice for the, the listeners today that, that you think that they should focus on or not focus on. Over to you.

I'll go back to the enthusiasm and the inquisitiveness, Mike. That takes you a very long way. And if you, if you're in a relatively junior role and you see an opportunity, it can come at you from left field, as the Americans would say. But a project that, that's going on, something that you say, yeah, I want to learn about that. Put your hand up, put yourself forward for it. It, you'll learn and you get noticed by doing that. So, so that's one thing I'd say. And the other thing, again, it harks back to what I was saying earlier in my own experiences is get the best out of people. Once you move up through the career, you'll, you'll become more and more. Probably it's more and more about managing people than actually being technically proficient. But don't ignore the, the quiet people. I think it's easy if you've got a big team, particularly that you, you've, you've got the noisy ones, the ones who do put their hands up and everything else. And sometimes you find that some of the, the real wisdom is not there. It's with people who may have been around for a few years, may have been quiet, may have been overlooked almost. And if you engage with them, you're going to find out one of two things. You're going to find out either that they've been ignored because they'd not be doing anything and you need to do something about that. That or they've actually got a fount of knowledge and no one's asked them about it. And if you engage them, you find that you get real, I would say nuggets of silver and gold and diamonds out of it. So don't, don't assume this is, this is something that I've learned myself. Don't assume that the somebody tells you oh, so and so is no good because they don't say anything or do anything. It's not necessarily true. If it is true, shame on the people who told you that because they should have done something about it themselves. And that's the only other thing I'd say for people who are later in, in the career, if you like, deal with things, don't let them fester. That's an easy thing to do, but it does nobody any favors. And I've learned that myself.

Amazing. Look, I love that one. I mean, you know, I've phrased it here is listen to the non talkers, listen out for them. And as you say, that's where the, that's, you know, where the riches are. You know, if you like that, you know, they, those people will have amazing stuff to contribute.

So yeah, if they don't, you'll find out and you know, you've got to do something else about it.

Yeah, exactly. And take action. Mr. Farrow, amazing today. Put your LinkedIn details in the show notes, as you say. Can't wait to see you again in real life. You know, we managed to catch up in between lockdowns and things like that briefly, but we'll do it again. Can't wait for the next time. But you know, again, people connect to rob on LinkedIn. You'll see all those details there. Great person to have in your network and look forward to seeing you soon, sir.

Thank you very much, Mike. It's a pleasure.

Thank you.

Cheers.

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 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 and be amazing. Just take, say 20 seconds, leave a quick review of 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.