Patrick Peters Bühler, Treasury Career Corner Podcast with Mike Richards

This week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to Treasures about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show I'm joined by Patrick Peters Buhler, the global group treasurer and senior Vice president of Savvy Games Group. Savvy Games is a games and esports company formed with a mission to drive the long term growth and development of esports and broader games industry worldwide is one of the most exciting buoyant sectors globally with games that across the world dedicated to growing it. The group exists to lead global games investment and growth by empowering people. Now we're going to come on to Savvy later because I've helped Patrick this year and we've got some great people with him as well. We're going to go beginning of Patrick's career, bring it up to now and then talk about the future of treasury as well. So Patrick, over to you sir. How did you first get started in finance and Treasury? Over to you.

Good. It's very, very happy to be invited today, Mike and I'm pleased with the collaboration that we had this year together finding some excellent candidates for our London office. I started in treasury basically, I would say 25 years ago. I had a very short career in academics. I taught in New York and then after that I taught in Lima, Peru. In Lima I recognized that making money from academics in Latin America is not a good thing. It barely paid for the gas. So I moved over to corporates and I moved over to several companies. First a company, Dutch company that went belly up and where I actually came through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Seteco, which was selling refrigerators on credit in Peru and Venezuela. After that I moved within the same country. In Peru I moved to a company called DSM which was a Dutch chemicals, pharmaceuticals and life science company. And the interesting thing there is that I had a 10 year career with them in Peru, Colombia, Mexico, United States. In the United States I was the corporate treasurer for long for about four years. Very interesting. We, we sold at that moment the polyethylenes and polypropylenes business to Savic and we purchased Roche Vitamins in this year. So for Treasures it was very exciting moment in life, I would say. A lot of things happening on the corporate finance side, a lot of things happening also with technology and it was very nice to do several RFPs in the early years that I was corporate treasurer in Georgia, USA I would say after that it was very interesting that Georgina Wellman from Euro Finance called me probably around 2006 and he said hey, we need a tutorial of our treasury courses and we know you speak Spanish and Portuguese. Why can you do please the treasury courses for your finance in Miami and and sometimes in Mexico and Argentina. And I said love to travel, love to do that. So I actually ended up teaching treasures for 15 years with your finance. Only kicked me out in the periods that I worked for banks. But during my career the 15 years that I worked in several positions first with DSM and after that with Avon and AstraZeneca then and two other companies in Miami I always taught in parallel with euro finance for 15 years. So that was very nice. Was three times a year I gave courses and it gave me the opportunity to not only get to know about 600 treasures in 15 years but also to master very much the conceptual parts of treasury. The fundamentals, the technology, the process, the people, the governance of treasury and theorizing what I did in practice.

Do you think that so just jumping. Do you think that treasurers and Treasure professionals study enough do they give themselves enough time to learn things? Because it seems it's not sales fest course like this. It's more just. I think that I've heard a lot of treasures don't give themselves that they. They're asked to suddenly thrown in at the deep end but they don't have much training on it and things but sounds you really got FaceTime with them.

Yeah, it's actually very strange treasury how under invested it is in education and treasury because really there is no there is a full university agree in accounting there is a full full university degree and even an MBA in something that ends up being corporate finance. And if you look at the legal profession there is actually a legal profession of 4 years but I don't see a lot of universities that are actually teaching treasury and it's. It sometimes becomes a. A side business of accountants. Then it becomes a side business of something hanging under the CFO and sometimes it's up to VP level. But let's realize that treasury what they really need and they really have to be an octopus because first of all I would like to make an argument that treasury and tax go very together. Unless you're a domestic company in the U.S. unless you're a domestic company in Europe, you will always have cross border payments and everything that is cross border payments will touch upon taxation either withholding tax, double taxation, treaty transfer price treaties. So a tax professional has to understand the legal side, but it also has to understand the tax or the fiscal side of, of each transaction. And then I would say treasury is probably the area of all the finance areas where technology is taking over. And you have to be very comfortable to speak with your IT colleagues, to speak with technology professionals, to speak with and to understand the processes that lead to technology implementation. Otherwise you're lost. So from a point of view of, of course you need to understand finance and you need to understand the accounting and you need to understand the accounting and the balance sheet effects, but you also have to understand the fiscal and the legal laws. You have to be a person that is understanding the bits and the bytes and the technology part. So I would really say that treasury is an octopus. And the strange thing is there are no real bachelor or undergrad educations for it. I've seen some master degrees in treasury, but I would say the. The professional education that is given by many organizations outside and by practitioners to practitioners is very important. And this is really a job that often you have to be focused on for many years to really understand it. So yes, I would say getting together as professionals, doing midlife career treasury courses or education is essential.

Yeah. And then so coming back. So you did these roles and I think it was interesting because you did them internationally. You were DSM and you, as you touched on there, you were in the US but then you moved across and you were in Chile and then Mexico. A real international flavor. So talk us through those moves.

I had a privilege, of course, when I was a young man, some time ago, I'm still a young man, but when I was a young man, when I realized young men around 26 or so, I knew Latin America was the place to be.

Yeah.

And in 1996, Latin America was the place to be. It was booming, it was exciting, it was growing. It was coming out of its perpetual debt crisis into something that become a very nice regional block. Ten years ago, we saw the same with China. And I think the people were growing up professionally. In the 2000s, they would, they have probably moved to China. I would say the last 10 years we have seen the same for the Middle east, where the Middle east is growing. And I would say the next 10 years, I would advise my son, who is now 20, something to move to Africa. I think Africa is probably the next 10 years of where the excitement, where the growth, where the business, where best practices, where financial professionals will thrive. So in the 1996, 1997, when I moved to Peru, and afterwards too, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, I Noticed that a lot of things could be done. And of course in 1996 the Internet barely existed. I was making my first payments on, on. On something that was called Pay link before WorldLink even existed in Citibank on two floppy disks that you had to put in, one with the data and one with the program and then you had to bring one of the floppies to the bank physically because there was actually no connection on bimodem that at that moment trustee was very, very much a cycle of a month. And basically when the bank statement came in the end of the month you would actually do the cash pulling and if you needed information you had to call the bank. We have moved beyond that. I think the reason why most of the banks are closing their branches now. So from that period where you had very manual interfaces from banking it has become completely centralized, it has become completely standardized. We're talking about count 53 now we're talking about MT940s now we're talking about one connection. And I would say there has been great advantages in the treasury management systems. When I first implemented the treasury management system at that moment it was Integrity. I implemented Sage, I implemented Ion products and I implement now Kariba. I would say all of them have advanced greatly and there's a lot of centralization taking place, standardization and actually the implementation of treasury management system is much easier now than it was 10 years ago. It's like a car from the 1970s that barely made it from gas station to cars where basically you have to go once every 20,000km for maintenance. At the moment there's very low maintenance and very little customization and localization needed on the technology side. So I think we have made great advances and therefore because implementation is always much more expensive than the software itself, that is all a matter of marginal cost. I would say at the moment we see implement of treasury management systems also become affordable for mid sized companies who don't want to spend everything on technology but they can, they need some but not all. Yes, so that is good.

And Patrick, we were talking there, you made that move. You've been a number of roles, the CFO within corporates. You then transition into banking and then you've done both. So if we talk about bank of America and Miami, how come you then moved into banking? What happened?

I had two stingers in banking. Both I enjoyed very much in both. I actually worked as a Treasury advisor within the bank. First in bank of America in Mexico and in Miami and then afterwards I worked for Citibank in London and In Dubai as Treasury advisor and treasury advisor was a very interesting position because I could talk to both worlds. The bankers who are often, with all respect, they are very much focused on the bank solutions, sometimes had to learn about what the clients were undergoing. That banking is actually not the main priorities for most treasurers. Actually the main priorities is issues like cash flow, liquidity, that kind of things. Internal processes and bank relationship is probably 10% of a treasurer's work. And bringing that through to the bankers in both banks where I work with very much pleasure was very important because they started to understand the order to cash and the purchase to pay processes. They understand the daily routine of the treasures in companies. The reason why treasurers could never attend bankers in the morning because they are actually busy with all of cash and making sure you have the liquidity. So bankers always call on your treasures in the afternoon because in the morning we're actually working. I would say also that the treasury professional in the, in the companies where I worked with while I was a Treasury advisor with Citibank, that was actually very nice because I could explain them and talk to them in the way that treasury people are talking rather than how bankers are, are talking. And that is very important to have two parts. So I very much enjoyed being between treasurers and banks. Being on both sides has helped me greatly to understand both processes on both sides. Banks, of course, they have very large software investments. They have done that for us, they have done that for treasures to make sure that the systems work well and that the infrared interfaces are standardized on a global level. And it's very important for treasurers to, to have a very good understanding of what the priorities are of banks, what the costs are banks, what the cost structures are of banks. So then it's much easier for treasurers to negotiate with banks. The good solutions banks are like, like any software or fintechs, they have a very low marginal cost for adding volume. For them, it's very important to get volume through the system through their software. And if you understand that you can get much better prices with the banks on the bank side, I would say some things are irrational on the treasurer side. I see a lot of RFPs where people say, oh, we need 24. 7 customer service and we need global coverage. The difference between 9 to 5 customer service and 24. 7 customer service is actually 4 times more expensive for banks. So you have to realize that what you ask for as a treasurer in an RFP is what you pay for. And if you make sure that you ask for things that you really need to deliver a pizza, you don't need a Ferrari, you need a Volkswagen. If you ask for a Ferrari, you will pay for a Ferrari.

Yeah, yeah.

Very important on customer service towards banks, on, on exceptions on products that go out of the standards, that increase the cost for a bank, that go beyond the marginal cost for banks that you will pay for it eventually as a customer. And it's very important that, to understand that for banks volumes are very important. Doing that and what I've done in my current job and in my previous RFP side I've done, I've always tried to reduce the number of banks that I work with not because they're not good bank, but for me it's much more efficient to have two or three large cash management banks than having 40 different banks in 40 different locations. It will cost you liquidity, it will cost you idle liquidity everywhere. It will cost you in multiple processes. And the idea of working with banks is very much focusing on standardization. And the good thing is there's 37,000 banks in the world. There's 200 good cash management banks that are the ones that you want to work with.

You then moved from that banking stint, then you then went into a CFO role so you'd be able, you kept, you had your treasury in your back pocket per se sort of thing. And what was that like coming back in as a CFO from having been in banking for a period of time?

Poor treasure handle worked for me as a treasure in, in Miami and unfortunately I, I knew almost as much as he did. So that was bad for him because I never, I had to learn letting go of treasury go to the professional who was there in place. And I dedicated a lot of time to things like fiscal accounting and FPA which were the other three areas. And it who are reporting to me. And that was very good and that was very positive. But I always understood what was happening with treasury at that moment I was working with a bank I didn't know. So I very much depended on my treasurer to do the implementation of the RFP that we did at that moment. But we had a very interesting process going on in the coffee company that I worked for in Miami by setting up a regional financial center in Panama with all the consequences of legal, with all the consequences of fiscal considerations that were there timing. And together with my treasurer we were actually working on, on making a very efficient cash pooling for a coffee company and later also for the packaging company that I work for in between Miami and Colombia. So it, it is a good play to be the CFO back to be honest now after having been CFO two times, then a Treasury advisor I'm back at being a global treasurer and it's also fun.

You then moved to Citi which then brought you to the Middle East. So talk us through that and how that transitioned because been CFO and people see this on your profile and then talk us through how you then headed to the Middle East.

The Middle east was very interesting. I worked in London during the COVID years. Unfortunately I never really got to appreciate London because we were locked in and all the undergrounds they were stopped because of COVID and we had to wear masks and use Amazon and Amazon flourished and. And that was my London years. But after that it was very clear that the Middle east was growing and there was a lot of opportunity in the Middle east and it was clear that the companies in the Middle east basically I checked with a colleague of mine of Citibank at that moment with Kelvin we were looking at. There's basically 6,000 multinationals that I would say that are. That you can consider Fortune 500 multinational. The 6,000 multinationals that would apply for base erosion and profit shifting. Pillar two which is more than 750 million euro per year and these 6,000 multinationals I would say there's about 20% of multinationals that I would consider best practices in treasury and 80% are still working on the fundamentals in the Middle east that is worse that percentage. I would say there's 10% of the multinationals here that really have quality in treasury and there's a large group who wants to improve that wants to improve towards best practices to best in class solutions. But as a percentage it's much smaller than for example London, Netherlands or Ireland where you see very good treasury treasury taking place. So there's a lot of opportunity and for the bank that sent me here it was an opportunity to invest in the clients in helping them with setting up best practices. And I see that now also that doing the work in my current role we're setting up a first ever cash pool, physical pool and probably also a notional pool in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We're setting up a large treasury center globally for our organization and we should be going towards one treasury management system globally and that's greatly help us that.

We'Ve got in there. Tell us who you with now and and things. I know this obviously I. I work.

Currently for a very interesting company fast growing savvy Games and it's a beautiful company. It's very much Investing globally in the game business. It's, it is very interesting because gaming is much larger than the whole Hollywood and the whole music scene together. And we are making games for. This is one of the games that we're making with Monopoly go. And that is one of the interesting sectors that are emerging. And the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is very much supporting the investment in new technology and that is the one that I'm working for and setting up efficiencies, basically setting up, making sure that the money that we have is visible, that it can be cash pulled and that it can be cash flow forecasted and that we get good return, that we don't have idle cash or trapped cash anywhere. Yeah, I would say in the Middle east in general there's a lot of companies that are heading towards best practices. They're a little bit behind the Scandinavian and the Benelux and the UK companies, but they're finding that cash pooling in the Middle east, cash pooling in the KSA in the Middle east in general is very much possible. And we see all kinds of movements taking place like the cash pulling that you take see plays in ADGM that you see take place in Kaft in Saudi Arabia that are opportunities to bring all your money together, not from one country. But remember the GCC countries, the Gulf Corporation countries, they're all packed to the dollar, they're all relatively stable. And if you are an exporting company from for example Egypt or you're an exporting company from Turkey and you have large exports globally, why would you always bring your money back into the UK or into New York or in Singapore where you might not even have a presence. Why don't you bring these export earning liquidities not back into the region and from there you can easily repay them. You can pay your vendors, you can pay your payroll keeping it in the hard currencies rather than going into Egyptian pounds or Turkish liras which are always subject to central bank regulation and sometimes conversion into local currency. So it's very good for regional multinationals to work in the region without the cost of for example, a London cash pulling.

Yeah. Now I know when you got there you said, you said before the show and I know this because this is where we've helped you. This greenfield site. There was nothing there before they wanted you set up treasury but you, there was a, we'll put it in the show notes, there's a slide which shows how an ideal treasury should be structured. Do you want to share that screen? And we go through.

Yes, I can share that screen. I use this, I created this screen I would say 20 years ago for when I was teaching my Euro finance students. This is really the end stage. What I would say for an optimized treasury, you have one global liquidity master account. You create your in house bank. The in house bank I think is the best thing, what the Americans say, the best thing since sliced breads and canned beer. This is one of the great inventions of Treasury. And the in house bank should be located in a place where money is welcome. And then you can basically do four things with it. You can fund, you can do the internal funding through the in house bank, internal funding through internal loans and also the foreign exchange can be handled directly in the in house bank. That basically means that if your German company has to make a payment in Australian dollars that the FX component of that will be disintermed. You no longer need an external bank for doing that. You take the FX risk as the announced bank and you will make sure that the German entity, your opco, your operational company, has a German euro as their functional currency. The payment to the Australian dollars to the vendor is paid in an Australian dollar and the euro, Australian dollar, FX risk and the international transaction is internalized and disintermediated by the announced bank. That basically means you save the international wire which can often cost up to $20 or so. You make it an ach in in Australia and you make it a cashless settlement between the in house bank and the operating company. The second thing that I would say is that where we're heading to, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, everybody was talking about Bobo and Robo or payments on behalf or for payments in name of. What we're really seeing now is that the good cash management banks are developing virtual accounts. And virtual accounts is wonderful because if you have a virtual account where the money stays in the accounts but the liquidity behind it stays in the real account, in the external account that exists, you no longer have to do the mirror accounting in the in house bank. That was always creating a daily transaction of a sweep of a physical sweep or notional sweep and that was causing a lot of accounting entries. And we don't want to get the accountants involved.

No, but I think the key thing, as you've said there is and I think of the people. If again if you're listening, go to our show notes, you'll be able to see this slide. It's great. And all the goals that you put along there were 70% saving, 30% saving. Actually all those savings because of the volumes they add up pretty quick, don't they?

Oh, oh definitely. I think the, the, the most saving and, and that is why I normally don't push my banks too much. I need my banks for good customer service and I need them for technology. They also have to make a buck. That is not a problem where I make my big savings. The big savings that I make as a company is getting rid of my idle cash, the cash that is left over in accounts globally and I put them all together and then I can invest them. I can probably reduce my cash by 70% if I have them all centralized.

Yeah.

The only way of doing that is using a good cash management bank. Use a good location like London, like New York, like Amsterdam, like adgm, King Abdullah Financial District and Singapore for your cash management. Have a good bank that creates standardization in visibility and a good treasury management system. If you set it up, you can save 70% on your cost of liquidity, you can reduce your balance sheet and all the idle cash will disappear. And that is something. And I would say there's two good tendencies that are happening. First of all, the compact, the complex countries are becoming less complex. There's a lot of con countries in the world that basically see that being difficult towards their companies are hurting themselves. Of course there will always be the Naira of the world and there will always be the Bolivars of this world. But I would say in general you can do a lot of cash management in the GCC in the SEPA area, but I would say broader between the 140 countries that are moving towards PEPs pillar 2. I would say you see a standardization of acceptance of transfer pricing of liquidity, movement of intercompany loans of intercompany and in house banking. And I would say that the future for treasury is much brighter for the next 10 years with a lot more opportunities. And that means that companies can probably do with a shorter balance sheet.

And then I know that we brought your story up to date. If you like you're there, you're at savvy. And it was just one of the points you made earlier about being the translator. What I mean by that of translating between the technology guys and treasury and finance that a lot with treasurers that actually that by taking that role as because IT guys come in, oh it's going to do this actually do we need that or you actually being that middleman. Is that something you see the treasurers doing a lot of for now, in the future?

Yeah, you have a nice expression in, in the English language which doesn't exist in other languages. They're hurting the cats. No, you have to make sure that everybody's on the same page and everybody stays in the same direction. And I would say if some mistakes that I made in my life is that I did an RFP at that moment with Lazell bank in, in, in Chicago and we implemented everything. I noticed that I had all my, my, my treasury people ready and we were implementing and I noticed that I didn't have enough support from both my legal department and from my IT department. And I did my RFP basically without the support troops involved. And when I started implementing I noticed that the general managers from all the operating entities we had 22 operating entities in, in the US the 20 through two general managed. They were very afraid. Hey, what is happening with my cash? My cash is disappearing and it's suddenly a credit given for by the in house bank to me. And I had to make sure that all the general managers, that all the CFOs that all the treasurers locally understood that doing an in house bank basically meant that they still had access to liquidity and they still had access to cash, but that their cash was managed and invested in a professional way. Yeah, but I had to make sure and I will never do that again in when you do an implementation of an rfp, when you prepare an rfp, make sure you have to support troops with you. That means legal support, that means, means IT support. And if you can, if you don't have the internal resources, they're very good consultancies, specific treasury consultancies or in the big four that can help you walking the walk because they have done it in the past. It's very difficult to do it from scratch yourself. It's a lot of detail and you need a good team to implement it. Is it worth it? Yes. You can save 70% of your liquidity cost and with interest rates 5% or 4% it still makes a lot of sense.

And then other things for the future treasury. What is, what are you thinking about? What are you keeping an eye on? If you like, what's not keeping you up at night but what are you aware of if you like.

I, I, I would say what, what, what I will do in the future, I will do the same. What I do now, I basically enjoy what I do. Treasury people are nice people. The people surrounding the treasury people are nice people. So it is a very pleasant place to be. I would say that the future is clearly for me in the Middle east and Africa. I do see that there's a Lot of opportunity there for treasury and I would say that best practices and implementing best in class treasury that is something that there's a lot of opportunity not only for me but I would say for treasurers in general to, to continue doing that. The treasury of the future is going to be very different. It will be data driven, it will be technology driven, it will be much more efficient than we had in the past. And I would say the number of exceptions because of trap cash and be the number of exceptions because of stability of currencies will be much less. I, I do expect that you will see much more cash concentration in the future and that is where we're all heading to efficiency of the balance sheet and if and visibility on on your cash flow.

We're not too far from the end of the show but still got some time. You touched on Middle east being a big area but any other areas you think that treasurers need to be thinking about. You've it's great that you've had all this different experiences. You've then also been a tutor to a number of treasurers. What when you look back at it or look at the other thing, any other areas that you think we should be aware of?

I think we have to help the banks a little bit. The banks are of course most banks have gone through reorganizations because they know that basically they're selling a commodity, they move money from A to B and everybody can do that. Some do it better than others. But I think it's very important that the banks continue investing in technology. And what the treasury community is asking for banks is basically a complete solution. So what I would say in the next five years what has to happen is banks and corporates working together in going into a flawless faultless treasury where we can see that the banks absorb the demands from corporates for security, for improved process, for real time treasury but also for enhanced visibility if the real time treasury is taking place. And I think real time treasury is one of these things that, that we can use or we can abuse but real time treasury, if it really becomes a matter for Treasuries to implement in the next years. I see a lot in real time transfers and real time transfers that basically means if you can fund your accounts within the banks immediately, you don't need daylight overdraft lines anymore because basically at the moment when the account vendor payment goes out, at the moment that it is funded again by the in house bank, you basically decomplex the liquidity demands on on the bank. So I think it's working Together with the banks on the real time treasury on the real time information and that can be done through the APIs. I think APIs will have a much bigger impact in the future for information, real time information than they will have in the real time transfers. But both real time transfers and real time funding will be important and I think that is a joint collaboration between treasury professionals and the banks. I don't see a lot of possibility for cryptocurrency. I don't think it's a good choice. I do see a lot of opportunity for blockchain and I think the blockchain, the tokenization of transfers, that is something that is very interesting. I do see a lot of opportunities for blockchain in working capital. For example the confirmation in exports, in logistics. I do see in common capture records like property records where blockchain can have an opportunity. All of that is something that, that I would say we can work on in the next years with the banks.

As we wrap up the show. Patrick, we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so people can connect to you and as part of their network. But what are the wrap ups for you if you're in treasury whatever stage you might be maybe more junior in treasury mid level or senior. What are the things, pieces of advice you would give that maybe you've given to your team as well the past that what are you saying to them they should be doing?

I would say at the moment it's that there's continuous education and treasury that is clear the next 10 years you have to be very savvy on technology. Track everything that is happening with the OECD. Track everything that is happening with fiscal and legal constructs that that are developing further in the next years there will be global taxation. We have to comply with that. And it's very clear that the only way that central banks and the only way that governments are going to check on global companies, on multinationals is through their cash flow. We all know from Enron since 2000 when Enron happened. Is that so? It's very clear that the only way that governments are going to check on companies is through their cash flow and that is base erosion and profit shifting. Pillar two which is going to happen, you have to understand it, it will be important and it will be on the treasurer's desk to process it and to comply with it. The second thing that I would say is stay in touch with with what is happening on AI. Stay in touch what is happening with blockchain. Stay in touch what is happening with Real time treasure. Not everything is useful for you, but there are some parts of it that might be useful for your business, depending if you have a large balance sheet, depending how much working capital you have, depending how structured you are, whether you're business to business or business to consumer as a company. And the last thing I would say is be a good colleague, be a good person. This is a very small world of treasury and actually you will meet the same people in your career in the next 20, 30 years for many times. I've known Mike for 15, 20 years.

Yeah.

And I will probably see him for another 15, 20 years.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of people in bank that I know and there's a lot of people in corporates that I know from a long time. This is an area where you want to be and it is a very interesting and I would say a very sophisticated family that we have. We have a lot of knowledge, we have a lot of good young people that have to be trained, take care of each other. There's a lot of things that are happening and we all need each other to grow into this, the future of Treasury.

Fantastic. Thank you, sir. As I say, we'll put your details in the LinkedIn show notes so that in the show notes so you can connect to you. And thank you very much for today. It's been. I knew it would be great and it has been. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mike. See you again.