Mike Richards’ review of the year 2022 and look ahead to 2023

Foreign. Welcome to this week's treasury career Corner. With a little bit of a difference. It's just me today. This episode will be coming up between Christmas and New Year. What I wanted to do was maybe look back through what year 2022 was and what does 2023 have in store? So I went through, looked at a lot of the stuff that's happened. We've had some amazing podcast guests throughout the year, which you guys should go back and listen to. We've got some amazing people coming up. We've got Patrick McCarten from Caterpillar, a series of other amazing guests. We've got the lovely Topi Jokuranta. We're revisiting his podcast and having an update with him because he's now made the step to cfo, if you like. And I love those guys because they give very much of their time as they did before, and they're kind enough to give me their time again once again. And it's great to see where the journey has taken them. So when I started beginning of 2022, it'd been three years doing the podcast. Now it's four years. So actually, natural cycle of things. Some of those guys are springboarding into CFO roles. So do listen to some of the upcoming episodes. It'd be really good each and every week. We love doing it, but let's have a look back. So beginning of 2022, we were finally coming out of COVID everyone back into the office. But working from home, working remotely, was a thing. It was the thing. It's been a weird time for us. I've actually said to my team, for them, if they want to work remotely, I'm absolutely fine with that. They can work as many days they want in or out of the office they've actually elected, or they choose a lot of the time to work in the office because they like the social aspect. I do as well, but there's a lot of work to do. So I do the podcast, obviously, remotely, sit and talk to you guys. And today I'm just. It's quite strange just talking to myself, talking to you out there in the ether. I hope you find some of these words useful. But yeah. So beginning of 2022, everything was starting to get back on a level playing field, a bit more relaxed, starting to get back to normal. Then long came global events such as Ukraine, terror events, volatility, and then more recently, as we come to the end of the year, impending recession. They're saying that we're in an economic recession because it's Two in a row, whatever. But in actual fact, when I've talked to people, it seems that there's this sort of plateau, if you like, of economic growth. We've been through this before. I've been through 20 odd years, 25 years of treasury recruitment. So there was dot com bubble bursting back in the day, global financial crisis around Lehman subprime mortgages. That was just as we originally started to look at going to the US markets. So at that time we looked at what we were going to do in the US and we then walked away. So no, do you know what, we'll wait a short while. So we then re entered back in 2011, I think it was in 2010, so not that long after. But it was really interesting to go into that market. We've been operating there for 12 years. It's still a bit weird. We still sometimes feel like you were a startup company in the us. We said you just do treasury, right? Yeah. How long you done it? 25 years. How long you been here in the US? 12 years. Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, we can use you. Yeah, that's what we do. So feel free to share our name around. Look at the other bits. It's an interesting one. What is happening with the market is that if a recession does come along, which it is doing it, treasury by its very nature isn't recession proof. It's recession resistant, if you like. Sometimes I've worked in other businesses. One of the first businesses I worked in many years ago, financial recruitment, was Robert Walters. And what I noticed, or we noticed a lot of the other desks, when it was boom time, they realized, oh my goodness, they've suddenly got 10, 15 jobs, all came from one client and they're expanding their treasury, their finance team. That didn't happen in treasury, it doesn't happen in Treasury. What we see is that it's boom time. When a client says we'd like two people, not one, I'm like, wow, oh my goodness. And the flip side is, as it goes down, what you tend to see becomes recruit to replace. So there's a lot of times where, if you like, clients say their treasury manager leaves, fine. They try and cover it themselves, they spread the workload, that's fine. But maybe it's a small team of anywhere between 6 to 12 people. You delegate it out, then another person leaves, say an assistant treasurer. They're then going, oh, hang on, we're in overworked stage now. We can't actually make progress, so we must recruit. And then a lot of the time I Find that we get the instruction said, oh actually we're going to look to let's get a Treasury manager in. They start to interview people and they say well actually no, we do need an assistant treasurer. We need that level of expertise. So I think treasury by its very nature will actually get through this. And it's a skill set if you like being a headhunter for this many years. You know treasury weathers the storm if you like, it's resistant to it because you guys are at the heart of it. You're navigating right in the middle or you treasury professionals out there. This is what you do day in day long and the work still needs to get done. It's essential the nature of what you do so you help in ensure that stability if you like, throughout those times. I also read a really good article. We'll put a link to it in the show Notes about from Treasury Today about Treasury battening down for the tough times ahead. They were talking about operational resiliency. I'm looking at some of the notes here. Really interesting actually, that they're not seeing as a transformational year, but it's getting through if you like. And a lot of treasurers are preparing for it. And my very good friend, Mr. Anthony Buchanan, Buchanan treasurer for European International for Asahi, he said it's a challenging time. They're looking at things like clean energy and esg. He was actually on stage with me just a couple of weeks ago with a Treasury Career Corner live event in London. Amazing event. Over 100 people turned up. It was incredible. At Herbert Smith Freehills offices. We're going to run a couple more, you know, we'll run one in April. We will video them as well so you can see them on YouTube and things. One in April, middle of April and also one in November. That's to fit around a number of other conferences. I'll come back to the conferences in a minute. But basically amazing. I had Kemi Balarin amazing from gxo, Emily Helps from Alexander man, or AMS as they're called now. And so amazing treasury professionals and they shared some of their stories. But we'll put the link to the article there in the show notes because love talking to Anthony and he's got some really good views and you guys should connect to him as well. What other things happened? The podcast. This podcast grew and grew some more from about 40,000 downloads I think last time we've gone up to a hundred thousand downloads. We go for four years now, which is incredible. But it's going up if you like, in terms of numbers. So took three years to get to 40,000, then this past year about 60,000. So we're up at over a hundred thousand downloads, 240 plus episodes. Amazing guests. We've also recently recorded some feature podcasts. We did some with corporate treasury. 101amazing guys there. We also did it with team. So I spoke to Craig, I spoke about the UK market, I spoke to Katie about Europe. Then Katie got her own back, got to interview me about what the US was like. And then I was going to do this podcast as well to bring people up today. So also on the podcast we started more reruns. It's been going for three years, so it was a chance. Amy, our lovely podcast and advisor, if you like, she told me some go back and talk to some of those guys. It's three years and crumbs. She was right. You know, what you treasury professionals have been through in that time, goodness only knows. But you're through and that's the thing. And you really proved your worth in terms of the market. Treasury recruitment market, what's it's actually done. The UK sprang to life as soon as the year kicked off. Then it did slow down a little bit. I think it was the uncertainty of some of the global events. There was Ukraine coming along, there was inflation. But we were doing some amazing work throughout the year. We recruited a lot of people for Anglo Water. We did a number of group treasurer roles, Emily being one of ones@ams. We also had a number of European assignments. So Katie was very busy, particularly across Netherlands, Belgium, more recently Luxembourg, busy for her. We've recruited for Porsche, Porsche floated on Dax Stock Exchange. We recruiting a number of new people for them. The Wolfgang and the team has been amazing, helping those guys recruit new staff and the US market crumbs, that's definitely taken over. So we've recruited Texas, recruited on the east coast as well, and up on the west coast, Streamland Media, we've done stuff with those guys. We've also done a number of remote roles. We were recruited for Magni, really interesting client, great guys. And then so the rest of 2002, trying to think of the other things we didn't. We did our salary survey. So at the end of Q2, we did a snapshot then and we got I think about 5, 600 people. Great snapshot, good insights and everything else. But my dream is to actually get our salary survey up, over a thousand people. And I'm thrilled to be able to share. I should have got Craig, who works for me, Craig Perk is amazing. He dedicated himself to it, really got to work on it and took it. I think we were re revising from 160 people that we were reaching out to at that stage and he's taken it up already. Well it took it straight up to about 9:30. It's amazing. And in the next week or so I think we're to get over the thousand. So if you do want to go on there, go to treasurysalary.com the only place to get independent real advice. I know one of my rivals recently published some BS survey. Oh, a treasurer gets paid between 100 and 350,000. Really? Why? Just a waste. And that's always wound me up ever since the first days I had to do it with my ex companies. They were all tell us the range, what do you think of it? Finger in the air doesn't work. It's not true. I want to give you treasury professionals valid, verified, real data and that's what you deserve. And I love doing the salary study, it's a lot of work but do please take part treasurysalary.com other things. So that's going to go up. Our team grew. We had Holly and Sophie. So if you're looking for a role junior levels, connect with Sophie, she's definitely the one to connect with. She will help you with your CV resume, connect with Holly, she's helping me with a lot of the international assignments. If you're looking internationally across Europe, connect with Katie, more senior level roles, connect with myself and Craig in the UK and we're expanding our US business as well. So Joe Grabowski joined us and we've expanded our reach across the US and we're very busy. Pleased to say we've got a number of roles out there. Currently recruiting a Treasury manager position, they've got a couple of others. We're just going through global treasurer role actually. So that should be one coming to you. Coming out to the market in 2023 conferences. So what happened? Year started off a lot of virtual ones. Yeah, I don't like virtual ones. I'd rather be pressing the flash of seeing guys and sharing a beer roll three or seven. But aside from that, we did some virtual ones in Chicago with New York, talked to strategic treasurer Craig Jeffrey, the team over there, great guys, saw them in the flesh at AFP later on in the year. But we talked a lot about the salary survey and then as we started to move into June and the middle of the year and onwards, we started to get out and see people did the euro finance leaders, 1 Penny Hill park, great Euro Finance in Vienna. Met you wonderful people. We did our LinkedIn booth if you like. So I had a photographer there over the course of two to three days, when that's two days, he took 5,000 photos. He took photos of 300 treasury professionals to give you some amazing professional photos and everyone just loved it. So we're going to potentially look at doing that again in Barcelona end of this, end of 2023. We'll be there. We did AFP in Philadelphia. That was fantastic. And then when Straight Ups in New York, made a number of clients there, then came back, went to the Irish Association Treasurers in Dublin. Great event. Really enjoyed that meeting. Rob Carney and Donna and Kian, great panelists with me. I really appreciate their time. So did that on the Wednesday, Thursday came back Treasury Career Corner live in London. I spoke about it earlier. Thank you to Anthony, Kemi, Emily and my entire team. They really pulled out of the bag a hundred plus people. Kristen Herbert Smith, Free Hills. Thanks very much. We're going to do it twice more next year. Really enjoyed it. Yeah. Where are we now? Luxembourg looms. Be heading across and by the time this comes out, the weird one will be I'll have actually been backstage of this morning, the ITV show in the uk. Yeah, it was a lovely surprise for my wife. So we've really enjoyed that. So you'll see loads of social stuff about that. So we'll go down there. So looks back, let's look at now, the future 2023. Someone actually asked me, oh, you're gonna come and do lots of traveling again. And I'm gonna have a bit of a quarter off, not go so much traveling but then heading say wise Chicago, then aiming to do New York in September and then great, I'll get my surfboard. Do actually have a surfboard. 9 foot 6 Malibu board, lovely single string, custom point. Yeah. Anyone that knows surf? Yeah, amazing. So hopefully AFP San Diego, amazing place. Looking forward to that end of the year Europe wise. Oh God. Right, Euro Finance here we come. Barcelona. So we look forward to seeing a lot of you there. We got our own events to say treasure Career Corner live in London, April and November. Now if you'd like to be a guest, one of the panelists, I'd love to see you there. Great event. If you'd like to be in the audience. Great event. Come along here from two or three Incredible Treasures about their treasury career stories. It was really great from the guys and they were saying about things to do, education, you Will be able to see this on YouTube by the time this comes out. We'll again put the link in the show notes. You can actually see that. It's really great. Sam who edits the sounds every week and also does all the video now as well. Great guy there. And also thanks to the team. So amazing. Carly puts up with me all the time, bless her. She deserves the amend. All the size of a dustbin lid. But anyway, so thank you to Carly and then Holly and Sophie. Amazing coming on board this past year. Craig doing a great job. Katie, it's gracious. She's been up with me for more years than anyone cares mentioned. So that's been great. And some of my business coaches as well, Brian and Bev, thanks to those. I think that's about it really. The only other thing I'm gonna say, Mrs. R, thank you very much, Catherine, for putting up with this. But hopefully this morning we'll enjoy it and we can see that on social and that's it really. The support of you guys out there. Love you as candidates, Love even more as clients because then we can place more of these candidates into these beautiful roles and right the way across. And as you, we've got lots more coming up. 2023 promises be a good year. Great year actually. Despite recession, we're going to keep going, we're going to keep developing the salary survey, Treasury, Career Corner Live, the podcast. We want to provide value for you guys. So really enjoyed it and we're going to continue the journey with you guys and look forward to onwards and upwards. All right, see you all soon. 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 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 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.