Navigating the Treasury Maze: Career Stories and Strategies with James Marshall

Foreign.

To this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. And a special thanks to Flywire, our fantastic sponsors. If you've ever wondered whether there was a way to ease your international transaction hassles, they're the guys to talk to. If you follow the link in our show notes, you can see me talking to my mate Greg Levin, their Senior VP of Sales. I get to ask Greg about who are Flywire and how they can help you and your treasury team with your cross border payment headaches. Just follow the link to the interview in today's show Notes. And now let's get on with the show. In this week's show, joined by James Marshall, the head of treasury at Virgin Media O2. Having worked in the UK cable industry for a good portion of his career in a variety of roles across Treasury, James has got this real depth of experience and he's been with Virgin Media for many years, but it's evolved, it's changed and we're going to talk through that as well. Now Virgin Media is actually a telecommunications company founded in way back in 2007. Provides telephone, television, Internet services in the United Kingdom. Headquartered in Reading, it's owned by Virgin Media O2 and a 5050 venture between Liberty Global and Telefonica. Virgin Media owns and operates its own fiber Networks in the UK, has over 6 million customers since the acquisition of Small World Cable back in 2014, the main cable provider in the UK. Enough about the company, let's talk about James. James has been with the group for a number of years. Both James and I were talking before that. It's an interesting one because sometimes we talk to guests. They've moved up through different companies, different roles. James been with the group for a number of years and I think that is essential. And I think we say to people you don't have to always move to develop your treasury careers, but we're going to go back to the beginning of James's career. He's got this incredible career arc and everything else. Take us back if you would James, to the I know it's a few years ago now, but how you first discovered finance, then Treasury. Over to you sir.

Oh, good morning to you Mike, and thank you very much for having me. This really is a get quite the honor to be honest with you. I've enjoyed listening to your podcast and we've interviewed Some amazing people. So it's a real pleasure to.

And finally another one today. Another one today.

There you go. And another one today. That's very kind of you to say. Yeah, I know. I'm very happy to go back in time a little bit. I wish I could go back in time as well. I mean, I. For me, I started my career, went to university, went to Reading university, which is where I now work. But I had a light bulb moment at university that finance was going to be a direction I wanted to go into. I certainly was not doing a relevant degree I had at that time, but I. Looking around back then, I went through a graduate training scheme and it was. I gained so much experience through that. But that was actually with British Rail as a private. The national railway operator in the uk. It was a scheme that run for many years and actually this was right at the end of British Rail being a public asset in the UK and privatization was on the horizon. And I'll be honest with that was quite attractive to me, that you could do your training with them and actually end up with a role in the private company at the end of that. And that's exactly what happened to me. But my time in the railway industry was actually in the freight division, which was interesting. That's based out of London. It was. I've got a real interest in actually seeing what you do for where you work. So actually our trains heavily branded that. That was quite impressive to know that you were part of UK PLC actually doing something. And we were acquired by. Through privatization, acquired by an American business called Wisconsin Central. And I didn't stay very much longer after that, but actually that as a newly qualified accountant, did my Semer exams with them. I do recall the sort of first meeting in with the team from Wisconsin Central and they said to us, we need to set a Treasury team up, we need to set a tax team up, but we need volunteers. We need people who are happy to move out of their camp roles and to move into some slightly different ones. And actually the treasury team, I think they were looking for three people and actually a couple of hands went up there and I kid you not that within two weeks of their ownership there was little old me fresh out of doing my senior exams, getting stuck into hedging for fuel oil, hedging currency, for purchasing of locomotives from Canada and also having to deal with leasing. And again, this is all completely new stuff, but for every. It almost found me to a certain extent. But I believe my point there is that if you sometimes in life, you're in the right place at the right time, a question gets asked and actually if you put your hand up to volunteer, you never know where it might take you. Yeah, and actually that took me to a good place, really good practical experience at the start of my career there. I then had a, you know, a couple of stints, not long placements, I'll be honest. But I did have one in New Zealand straight after that and interestingly enough that was ended up working for business there. It was Amp in Australia. In New Zealand actually though, where I was working. But amp bought Virgin Money or they took over the assets that Norwich Union had in Virgin Money. To actually, believe it or not, in my time in New Zealand, I mean I did get to meet Sir Richard Branson and Dave J Man Guardia as well when they were setting up Virgin Money. So it's strange how things go around in life that just so happens you again, you're in the right place, you're working for a business that you're quite enjoying, you take advantage of an opportunity to meet someone and lo and behold it's Sir Richard Ray and you end up working for a Virgin company 20 years later. It's amazing really. That's. And then again I, I would.

I was gonna say you move from there, you New Zealand, then Unipoly. Who are unipoly? What do they do? Or did they do something?

Yeah, and I'll explain a little bit about that. I mean I, I can remember a real interesting interest to me was to work in. It was to work in businesses that were going through privatization, that were going through a management buyout or you know, to be relatively new. That's quite often that's been quite appealing to me and I can recall in New Zealand reading in the newspaper about btr, British Tile and Rubber was selling off some assets business in the UK with division in the UK was looking to take them on and when I came back again, it was no direct connection to the dots here, but the role came up near to where I lived. I thought, oh, that's quite interesting. And lo and behold this was with this group of companies which was naturally named Unipoly. I wasn't there very long but met some brilliant people, really good experience. This was just going through a management buyout and so everything new, new treasury team was being set up, a new management accounting function was being set up, which is where my role was at the time. And we had to roll out Hyperion and consolidation tools and I mean I remember doing our first month end. I remember doing our first, you know, annual accounts. It was all quite exciting and latterly at the end of my time there an opportunity came up to spend a little bit more time with the treasury team and I was very close to them anyway from what I work I'd done previously, especially in New Zealand, that I was quite interested by that. But then when I left there, a role came up with ntl and NTL at that point had just entered the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the two big UK cable companies and you could well say, Christ, you're barking mad to go for a job there. But how it's explained to me was that there's a clear routine and it all sounded quite interesting actually quite exciting and I had a really good time with them. I mean a completely different working environment. I mean the size of the company was massive as compared to anywhere I've been before. Big teams of people doing whole group of tasks. But this was quite a new one to me. When you're there with a much bigger organization I thought oh, I'll be here for a few years. And that was what was explained to me as well that this is a place to go just to gain some experience in working for bigger organization and, and, but then lo and behold, a few years later it's taken me all over the place and actually I think I've gained some good experience in doing this and I've thoroughly enjoyed it, to be brutally honest with you. And that's so important, isn't it, in a career to actually if you do something you can end up being quite passionate about it and enjoy it at the same time as get brilliant experience then that's all a good thing.

So talk us through. So you started with NTL 2002. Your okay, the name and header has changed and there have been mergers throughout that time. Can you give us a sort of breakdown? Because again, you and I talked about this when we had our original call, James, like why do you want me on the show? I've been with the same company 25 years and I don't know, 20 plus years. And I went, yeah, exactly. And we had previously Patrick McCarten from Caterpillar, but as I said, if you had gone there and 20 years later you're doing exactly the same job. Yeah, you're not going to be advised as a guest, but you are because you've gone from analyst to then Treasury Manager, then Assistant Treasury Ops, then Head of treasury but with these different brands and now Head of Treasury. But can you talk us through how your career evolved in that internally, if you like. So talk. Walk us through that if you.

Yes, for sure. No, happy to, but time. When I first joined Bitch industry and NTL small team, but the business there was transforming and this has been something that has been happening the whole time I've been in UK cable. The names have changed. Businesses that we've acquired have added bulk to the business where we've been investing our capital growing. The business has changed as well over the years as well. So for me, I started off as a Treasury analyst. Prime focus there was in short term cash forecasting that then became slightly longer term cash forecasting and then with people leaving and also with other opportunities presenting itself, took on more of their roles and responsibility for managing our debt book and our swaps and our other sort of financial derivatives and things of that nature. And again, this was slightly new. It's still a big company, but actually in our industry this was something that we actually had to develop our systems for running these things ourselves. We did not have a system for doing that previously. So again, this was a good, interesting opportunity with more time at Virgin. I mean, one thing that's also been a sort of an aspect of my time here is the amount of M and A work that we've been doing. The business does continually evolve. It's always acquiring new businesses. It's been growing throughout the whole of that time. So actually as we, for example, when we merge with Telewest and we acquired Virgin Mobile, that was all within the space of 12 months. But that brought about completely different aspect to my day to day job. Our team grew as a consequence of doing that. Grant some great colleagues from the businesses that we acquired and that we merged together with. But one thing that's always been very transparent in doing this is that actually that our need for sort of treasury professionals within Virgin media and now BMO2 has been ever present that we've been acquiring smaller businesses, say for example, and we then have a list of requirements, we have a detailed treasury policy and we want them to do what we do, we want them to follow our lead with things. And that's come about from us being an experienced treasury team. We know what we're doing when we're acquiring businesses and we want to get them up and running with our systems and procedures as quick as we possibly can, such that we can then gain a greater insight into how they perform. And actually then as a wider group we can then look to reap the benefits of actually having them being becoming part of the MO2 and talk us.

Through then you met, you touched on there, how you got more in. So I get a lot of calls from in the US in particular, Mike, I want to get more into debt capital markets. I want to get more of an exposure to that capital raising. So you were fresh to this. So how did you learn it? What were the things that you were. You went through the debt books, you went through all the different acquisitions. What was that like for you as a treasurer? How did you learn?

Yeah, it's a good question. And you. It makes you think actually when you get asked a question like that, and I'll be honest with you, I think that my experience has always been one of being quite practical with these things is that if I can't work something out and explain it, then I don't really know it, if that makes sense. So. But starting in UK cable, basically doing short term cash forecast means that you're very in tune with the cycles, business cycles, working capital cycles that we go through. So if you just take on the debt management, for example there, it's fair to say that now our shareholders do an awful lot of work. And it's always been the case of actually managing our debt book per se. But just if I go back in time to Virgin Media, when we're a listed company that actually we used to put a lot of effort into managing our overall positions with all of our counterparty banks, we need to put a lot of effort and time into managing those relationships. But then what this really meant to me is that the casual operations back then is that we needed to get very clear pictures on exactly what our flows would be and what our settlement cycles were, such that we could make our debt book and our profile of interest payments and derivative payments actually meet the balance of operations across the business. And this is super important because this sort of became then the sort of the lens of working capital which is now just like super important across the whole of our. The MOT business.

And then talk through. So I'm just looking. I was just reading back through here. So with each of these mergers, can you just give us a. From a treasurer's perspective or you are assistant treasurer, you're sitting there and you're on. Along comes a merger. What do you do? What was it before, during and after? What was it like going through those mergers for you in treasury terms? Because if someone is facing it themselves, how do you. Because you've preserved your role, if you like, you've elevated each time. What's the key to that success?

Yeah, I think to start with is that You've got to go through these things with very much an open mind and one that actually that this is a great opportunity to both learn, gain more experience. And to a certain extent, you are rolling the dice just to see what comes out the other side. But whatever happens, once you start rolling them their dice, actually you're always gaining experience. There's not a single deal that I've been involved with in my time in our industry where I have not gained experience and gained some new oversight into how we go about doing that. And if I go back all the way, if you excuse me, just to go back, way back when, to when we actually merged with the NTL and telephonic, sorry, and telewest way back in 2006, because there it was a merger of equals and you're getting to finally meet people from the other side. And they had great teams and we had great teams, but actually both businesses were very similar in size and scale and what they do. But then, however, from a Treasury perspective, actually how they operated their final pooling and how they operated there, you know, capital structure was quite different. One was UK centric and the other one was US centric, and we knew what the direction of travel was from that. But for me, coming from the NTL side of that transaction, which was much more US centric, then this kind of opened my eyes here to what a sort of a more UK focused business would actually look like. I gained a role after that one, but at the same time I knew I was gaining really useful experience out of just being involved in that process. So I think that actually, if you can keep yourself with an open mind as you go into these deals that actually, you don't necessarily know what the final outcome will be, but there will always be something for you as a consequence of going through this. And if you. People in life do get noticed more by rolling their sleeves up against, stuffing into something, rather than just watching from the sidelines and just waiting for something to happen, you've got to be a little bit more committed than that, I find, in treasury, to be honest.

Hang on.

And.

Yeah, but you say that, James, you. You say get stuck in, get committed. What, and they then just offer you the job? Or is some. Were you then in a competitive situation with people or how did you prove that? Hang on, I'm. I'm the most valuable here. Without going, I'm the most valuable here.

Yeah, again, I can. I'm addressing that one. The. Even if I just go back to then. But I was quite keen, I'd Been working in our team, our treasury team and I got. Become more interested in. In doing actual and doing exams and things like that. I hadn't completed them back then, but I was very much on the way to doing so. And that makes you stand out. There's still plenty of people who work in treasury who don't necessarily have the qualification that goes with that, so that kind of helps. But we did go through a competitive process and I'll be honest with you, I went about that in the same way that I'd go with any new role that you're going for. Carefully trying to present yourself, trying to show the skills that you've got are the best for the role going forwards. Back then, the skills that I wanted to demonstrate was that I'd put a lot of effort in my career to date to have a good understanding of the business through our cash flows and actually that if you wanted somebody who could have good insights to be able to bolt the two businesses together and again to make those flows make the most sense from a working capital perspective, then that was the way that I tried to position. Which is slightly different than what you might do is to say I'm just an industry expert and look at me, I know everything to do with tax collections or whatever, but I try to position myself as to look I can see through the business side of the cycle and actually can see how we can. How we need to structure some of our aspects of our credit side to our working capital structure such that it makes the most efficiency by way of cash for us as a business.

Do you become the internal expert by and by positioning yourself as that and like becoming invaluable in that way? It's positioned you well from the sounds of it.

Yeah, I didn't quite necessarily like the word invaluable. It never quite felt quite like that. But that's. That's how I suppose to be simple answer that. That's what I look to achieve with myself is to be the guy that can connect the dots between operational treasury, for example, and the wider business. And it's. Some people view this as rocket science. I've done it long enough to know. Well, it ain't rocket science. But then however, you do know how to connect the dots and that's super, super important.

Yeah, I think that. And that's the essential. That's part of the secret sauce, if you like. I think in a way, but. Okay, so let's put some meat on the bones a little bit. So you were talk us through which merger we've got to the merger with NTL Tele west or how are those what then happened next? Because there's been acquisitions and again talk us through those if you would.

Yep, yep, for sure. So the next phase in the cycle there was, I mean again we're now stepping into the Murky World of 2008 and the credit crunch so don't need to go into that too much but talk about a way if you want to, if you want to go free a time like that and if I was going to go through a time like that again then I would want to have some really good people who are good at short medium term cash forecasting. And to a certain extent that's what we had in our team back then. And it did mean that some of those dark days of 2008 when we're like looking at our forecast at least we had acknowledged that actually what we were preparing, what we were looking at, how were we then trying to manage our business through that was done with some good, some good knowledge that actually that we understood our cycles. So that got through that. Then the next big event for me and my time at Virgin Media and we had added Virgin Mobile by then was when Liberty Global acquired us in 2012, I believe. And again this was different than before because previously we'd done small scale acquisitions, we'd sold a few businesses to but actually our biggest deal up until that point was our merger with, with Telewest. So when Liberty came along and acquired us this was quite a different approach to us because they then kicked back from our team management of our debt book, management of our derivatives and all the settlements that go with that. So we then had to become to give that work back to a team that actually runs that unbelievably successfully. But it did mean that for me and my team that actually that we our focus then came back onto what is really I suppose my true passion for a certain extent, you know, to say that which is more in the sort of operational treasury joining the dots with the business because what they wanted to do with us was to, to run the debt side and the market activity but leave us to run things operationally and then so as we look to drive efficiency through the business and bolter on a few other additional businesses as well is that actually that we could run them as seamlessly as possible and actually just be, just be smart operators when it came to operational treasury and cash management and go on.

And when you were going through that you're an operational, your operational strength if you like and things like that again, for the listeners out there, they're going, that's great. You're doing your treasury operations. What was your. The crux of it? What was the center point, if you like, for you, is it right, where's the cash? Or how do we get this to there? How did you focus yourself?

Yeah, very much. And it's interesting, with that time in my life, this then really opened up the world of working capital management, reporting on our working capital and our free cash flow. And what our shareholders then wanted from us was just to be as efficient as we possibly could. Of course, that's what everybody wants, but, you know, what this meant was we're also going through a period of quite a lot of change in our operating business. But it did mean that rather than say, for example, we're just putting through a billing system upgrade and you need to let the outcome be what the outcome would be for Treasury. It actually meant that, you know, with me and my team then our focus is now much more on operational matters and we be involved in the processing to really be part of the steering of these projects, to actually just say, look, we're bringing about this new system, but actually we're not going to see any leakage whatsoever and in fact we're going to see a tightening in our working capital cycle as a consequence of that. And I think that sort of next phase in my career is just one of a bit more focus in this area and it's not just been in billing. As we've consolidated our accounts payable cycles and our accounts payable systems, that's just enabled us to be tight on that. We've now expanded sort of our financial operations into other areas of debt management, which include securitizations, factoring, vendor financing. But again, it just means that sort of me and my team that we've got more focus on the operational side of things. You really tied with the teams that run the processes that enable us to do these kind of financial engineering, but we can just ensure we just get maximum benefits from that. And this isn't meaning that we're looking to take advantage of our suppliers, far from it. We want to put systems in place that enable them to be paid very much on the due dates and sometimes before, but such that we can just do these through with the infrastructure that we put in place that just enable us to link B system to some of our other debt management systems as well. So it's just enabled us just to be a lot smarter in the way that we go about using our capital within the business.

And then the most bring us up to date with the most recent sort of merger, takeover, sort of the JV and things like that. What's that been like?

Yeah, my lockdown project was basically working on the merger joint venture between bringing together Virgin Media and O2. These two businesses came together two and a half years ago now. But this is again, this is a new structure and mergers. We've been bought out. This is the formation of a joint venture, again of two businesses that are very similar in size but managed quite separately. Got two very different shareholders in Liberty Global and also in Telefonica out in Madrid. Both run their businesses unbelievably skillfully and professionally, but to a certain extent have quite a different lens to looking at through how they go about treasury management. So with this one, this is bringing together two separate teams, but also, there's just one point here as well. These are two teams that never met each other. I mean, I kid you not. I mean, we had not met each other until about three or four months after the formation of our joint venture because of lockdown and because of all that went with that. This was really interesting, and I'm going to be talking about this for years and years, because we didn't know the size of each other. We had seen each other on team calls all day and all night plenty of times over, but we still hadn't had a chance to meet. You just didn't quite get that sort of. That sort of feeling for everybody involved until we actually got to meet with them. Yeah. But this formation of a joint venture, big scale, has brought back lots of scale and to our business in the uk, our mobile businesses, just business was, you know, huge as compared to our virtual mobile business. So what this is brought about, though, is again, much of more treasury operational skills, I'd call it that. It's the. What we've got here, the big programs that we've got are billing system integrations, bringing about two Oracle systems into one, you know, consolidating our reporting for treasury as well. These three of the big areas that we've got to work on, and these are all highly operational, which is very much what I like as well. So this means that we just get a chance to scale up. You've also got a wider team, we've got completely different characters involved, some brilliantly skillful people. It just. Everything's got to be done with a lens of trying to report on something for which you've got two very different sources of information coming through from public existing Businesses, but also with shareholders that very soon after the joint venture were both very clear with us as to how they wanted us to operate, which was, again, as efficiently as you possibly can, with laid the focus on our working capital management. So it's almost, if I go back to the time that Liberty acquired us, that this became more apparent as to a core skill that we were going to have to need, then this is something which has given me a chance to focus on and just use some of those skills that you built up over the years to develop. But I will say that actually the formation of the joint venture is a completely different transformation than anything else had gone through before. The scale of the business is quite different, but also you've got two big businesses coming together. It's how you go about doing that is a whole level of complexity that we've not been through before.

And when you just not stepping back, but just looking at it from, as you say, that lens of when the teams were getting together, was there not friction, but was there sort of trepidation, if you like, or how did you get over that? Because I know you want a personal level, you're a very friendly guy and everything else, but in a work sense, you're suddenly like, oh, okay, so we've met each other over teams. Now we're me. How did you then integrate effectively without treading on people's toes or any tips there for people?

Yeah, I would say, I'll be honest with you, that with here, especially within our teams, the two treasury teams that came together, unbelievably respectful of one another, but also deep down, I think, as much as I was keen to understand how they operated their business, they're keen to understand us. There are aspects of how we used to run treasury at Virgin Media before, which is quite different to how AT ran their treasury as well. And we were, from the get go, just mad keen to find out about what the other side did, how they ran this. This was a regulated merger. We were very much restricted on what we could find out and what we could discuss in advance of the close. Right. So actually, for me, that my. My perspective on the days immediately after the close was that we needed to understand each other's cash flows, the cash cycles, the timing of everything, as much as we could very quickly. And this is what we did. And what I mean by this is that we just need to be sure that to be, you know, quite frank about this, but we didn't have too much overlap in our cycles, that we could accommodate everything that needs to Go free from a cash management perspective, such that the capital that we had allocated to us at the start was adequate, but this was super important. Now, friction, I mean, freely, I don't believe we ever had friction within our treasury team. I mean, we knew, both myself and the team at O2, that there was going to be a degree of. There was going to come a point when synergies were going to come our way. We were ready for that to a certain extent. But I'll be briefly honest that my mindset was the same as it had been before. But up until that point, when you got to apply for a job, you've been gaining fantastic experience that almost money can't buy. Being involved with a merger of two businesses of this size is a real privilege to be working through. So that was very much my outlook. But again, you've then got to market yourselves to the team internally just to say that you think you're the right guy to be the head of treasury for the combined businesses going forwards. But we are all entirely respectful to one another. So my perspective on this is that I like to come across as being someone who's inquisitive. I like to come across as someone who will always ask questions, try and understand things, but I'm genuinely inquisitive. This isn't just big politeness, I'm genuinely inquisitive. I just genuinely want to find out how things work. And that's my practical nature as well, that there's always experience to be gained from just understanding how things work. Now we've moved on. This is now two and a half years since then, and this is a major project, bringing these businesses together. We've made great strides so far, that sort of natural inquisition as to how things work. And I think I'm going to be carrying that one forwards, to be brutally honest, because there's still plenty more to do and find out. I'm always learning.

And you're talking about the future, which is a nice segue, if you like. Do you see as the challenges I know that you and I mentioned about the professional association, that's one of the key things, but also the future treasury and things like that, that's how we move on the show each week. So what things are you thinking that people need to be thinking about?

Yeah, it's a really good point and it's actually something I've been thinking about a lot recently, that we. The talent that comes through VMO2 is amazing. We've got a brilliant graduate recruitment scheme, we get a lot of people in that way, and we've had graduates who spend time with us and both of our shareholders do the same and we get brilliant people this way. But what we'd, I think the next, the next sort of point of focus for us as a team is to actually, just to get people through and actually really encourage them and lay the groundwork for them to start doing some ACT exams. If a lot of the people that we have who come through who are graduates are very much generalist, they're brilliant accountants and they're gaining experience in commercial finance and some of them are gaining experience in procurement and tax, for example. And if we can add ourselves to that mix and actually leave them, say, after a year or two of being with us, with having a, something really tangible to show for their time in treasury, then I think that's going to be a good thing, because we want them to be, to be, to leave with not just experience of working in the commercial aspects of treasury, but actually really understanding some of the more technical aspects of treasury as well, because you never know that people then might then leave us and go and do more commercial roles, for example, but then want to come back. And that's the best thing, because you then want, you know, we want more people coming back into our team who have gained experience from other teams such that they can, you know, that they can enrich us as a team even more. That's the next phase, I think, as well. Yeah.

James, I got asked on a recent session with a number of treasurers and they were saying, look, but if we train our people up, then they might be inclined to leave. And I said, if you don't train your people up, they'll be inclined to leave. And they were like, no, you just said. I said, no, I know what I said. And I said, if you train them up, they might stay. We train them up, they might leave. You what you can, all you can do is by putting into that, I know you're passionate about it, that's again, why we're on this subject. But, and you've got that. How do you feel about it, that the more that you give to those people, the more they're likely to stay, or you, they'll be a natural time. And what are your thoughts?

I think I'll be honest with you, I'm, I, I, I couldn't agree with you more. I think if you don't offer people training and skills, then they're more likely to leave than what they are. If you're able to often get good training and Skills. People leave for a whole multitude of reasons, but actually they may well stay because they know they're more experienced to come down the track. I mean if someone was talking to me, for example, if I go to talk to our graduate scheme and I talk to 20 of them, I mean my pitch to them is a bit like what we've been talking about here is. Look, Vicky, a career, a 20 plus year old career in the UK cable industry can bring you this incredible rich experience of doing different deals of all different shapes and sizes and actually having a good story to tell us as a consequence of it, gaining brilliant experience as a result of doing it. And that's absolutely invaluable. People might leave us for a whole host of reasons, but one reason that people leave us is because they also get offered brilliant roles in our sifter company that are owned by Liberty and Telefonica. That's a perfectly legitimate avenue for them to go down. And again, the experience that they might gain with working in a more operational business is potentially gold dust for them down the line. And as well, I think that the way that we as a team treat people is that we take them to the well of information as look, here it is, this is what goes on in our treasury team and some of it is very exciting, some of it can be quite mundane and actually. But if you want the full package, you can get it here with us. We can give you experience at everything and actually the more that you say you want to do, probably the more that you'll get out of it as well as a consequence. But that is the way that we go about our business here in our.

Team and James, we approaching the end so I want to give people some takeaways as you reflect back on your rich career as it were. We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. What are the wrap ups takeaways you'll give to people for their coffee today? That they'll sit there and think I should do that or similarly. What are your thoughts?

I think, yeah, I'll be honest with you, I think a couple of things, I mean, one, you know, for me be inquisitive and actually get under the bonnet of the detail to a certain extent. And I like to think I've got quite a practical inclination like that. I don't just believe systems, I like to see the systems, if you follow me. But also I worked in treasury and from bottom up and gained lots of experience understanding some of the nuts and bolts and the basic flows of cash management and that stood me in very good stead. But actually what's taken me from being a good treasury analyst to someone who can understand the bigger picture when it comes to treasury is that I gained a lot of insight and expertise in doing my ATT exams. I didn't do them immediately after I got into Treasury, I did them a fair while in. I ended up feeling a bit of a fraud actually doing. Doing quite a serious treasury role without having ACT experience and exams behind me. So I was very pleased to get those done. Those just have been very good stead and that's what I've encouraged the rest of our team to do. But we don't necessarily always. We've got plenty of people who come to us through finance, but with all sorts of degrees and experiences behind them as well. And I think that for anybody who is got an inclination to be quite practical, to be happy to understand and work in with all sorts of information coming at them left and center in quite a hard, fast moving environment, that's very much a day to day job in Treasury. So if you want to join a team with quite a commercial outlook as well, the treasury is a good area to be and that's certainly what's been the great appeal to me over the years.

Yeah, and I love it. And again, I knew it was going to be a slightly different show. Sometimes we're talking through people making step. I think the fact is that you've demonstrated through your treasury career exactly what you just said, so I didn't know. Fantastic. So really enjoyed it. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mike. Honestly, it's just been quite the honor because I've enjoyed listening to your podcast, to be honest. You've interviewed some brilliant people and so to be part of it, I feel really honored. Thank you.

And another one, another excellent one today. Thank you, sir. And looking forward to seeing you soon.

Thank you very much. Take care, Mike.

Thanks for tuning into another great episode. You really enjoy it. Thank you very much. You make it worthwhile, us recording them with these amazing treasury professionals right the way across the world, from the US across the UK across Europe. And there's lots more exciting guests to come and lots more live events. We love delivering this content. We get asked now, is this what you do? Do you just do content? You just do. No, the reason we do the content is to get to know you guys, to give you back the tips for success, if you like. But we're here to help you hire someone. If you need to recruit, call us. Because at our heart, we are a Treasury recruitment company. That's how we pay the bills, that's how we pay for the podcast and that's what we're passionate about. We hear from you at events and things. Can we also help you find your next great role? Can we help you hire? The answer is yes, that's exactly what we do. Yes, we do our treasury salary survey@treasurysalary.com that helps us know exactly how to benchmark not only your salary, but also when you're looking to hire. We know exactly what the market is paying. Wherever you might be, whether it's the us, UK or Europe, we want to make sure that we are the best informed, that we're not just finger in the air. We always, always know. If you want to hire the best in treasury, don't hesitate to contact us. Go onto the website treasuryrecruitment.com or in the US, you can contact Joe Grabowski Europe. Contact the lovely Katie for more senior roles and roles across the uk, reach out and contact me or drop any of us an email joe@treasuryrecruitment.com Katie treasuryrecruitment.com or mike@treasure recruitment recruitment.com Let us help you make the hiring process as amazingly seamless and easy as our podcasts are to listen to. Thanks for your amazing support and looking forward to seeing you at either an event or a conference very soon. Or just give me a call. Let's help you find the next role or recruit the next treasury professional. All right, until next week. Many thanks.

SA.