This is a YouTube video titled "Managing the Evolving Challenges in Treasury with Claudio Demolli" containing a monologue or talk by Claudio Demolli recorded in June 2023. The content discusses the challenges of integrating treasury functions across regions, the evolving role of CFOs in treasury, internal controls, team mobility, and talent retention in a global corporate treasury context.
The challenge that IGD was having at the time in 2012 was it had a European treasurer and a US treasurer. The US treasurer was in theory the group treasurer, but a lot of the banking relationships were European and so a lot of the activity was actually based in Europe. So there was an issue of again integrating and uniform policies and have a global bank relationship management avoid miscommunication towards the external world as well as servicing the business which was becoming more and more global, less, less territorial in the best way. So what the CFO chose at the time was to bring an Italian guy who could understand Italian business, which at the time was more than 50% of the global business and has some very particular peculiarities being a regulated business in Italy, but had also an exposure to the us so was culturally adapted to take on a global role. I think one crucial thing is having a CFO who has gone through treasury, as is my experience with both my bosses at igt. So they do understand treasury and do understand how treasury is crucial and can add value. So they brokered that entry into projects, into information and make it easier to add value and act as a trusted partner to the organization. It is, I think it must have changed also the way that CFOs look at Treasury. I remember in my early days in this role, CFOs tended to be quite suspicious of the risk that dealing with derivatives, dealing with the markets and the volatility of those markets and maybe not the robustness of internal controls could cause to the organization. So the fact that internal controls have evolved, the treasurer's role is more understood. Mobility inside the team is key. To me, it's not always easy because people tend to develop specialized skills. Don cash management for many years, it's difficult to move them to an FX role or more to an accounting role. And I don't tend to do that very often or very abruptly. You know, always very careful to avoid people going out of the comfort zone. But definitely, you know, we've had some instances that people had opportunity to grow. And I see that the go and get it attitude, as I call it, is very important. So, you know, have them swim in the big pool for, for some time. I'm always here for support, but that works. And you know, trying to retain sometimes money is the treasure scope you have in large companies like ours have HR policies and so on. So it's really trying to keep the team Bohees and by giving people opportunity to move around and grow.
