Saying “Yes” in Your Treasury Career with Stephen Hogan

Foreign.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they built their careers, where they are now and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next this week's show, I'm joined by Stephen Hogan, the VP Regional Treasurer Asia Pacific at Deutsche Post DHL Group. Now, Deutsche Post for those at dhl, for those of you who don't know, is the world's leading logistics company. Under the brands, the group provides international portfolio letters, parcels, deliveries, freight transport, supply chain, E commerce right the way through 550,000 employees, over 220 countries and territories worldwide. So everywhere you'll see the name everywhere. Now that's a lot about them. Why actually going to do with Stephen, which is really good. We've had a really great chat. Stephen's actually based down in Singapore and has been for the past 16 years. His really fascinating career journey. Originally, you know, he's from England so, you know, that's a good thing. It makes him a perfect candidate to be on the podcast. But joking aside, Steve, I'm going to make the show again. Over to you. You had an interesting start, an interesting introduction to finance and then came into the world of Treasury. Perhaps you can explain for the listeners. Well, your story, sir, over to you.

Hi Mike, good afternoon from Singapore. Thanks very much for this invitation. I am in Singapore but I was brought up in London, an Irish, so I'm of an Irish background but I grew up in northwest London and yeah, I suppose where did I begin? I mean at school, you know, went through, did A levels, I suppose at A levels I'd already kind of looked at the finance area. So I did things like economics and law and accounting, A levels. And then obviously at that point, you know, I had a bit of a gap year, did some temporary jobs and traveled a bit, went to America, went around Europe for a bit. Of course you also needed money to do that. So actually the first job I got I was doing temporary jobs. So some of that would have been in the city, some of it, you know, even working in a cake shop. But actually a first proper full time job was actually I joined the local HM Revenue and Customs. So there's probably a few people now booing and hissing at that. I worked in northwest London and I was responsible as an assistant collector for arrears collection in the Willesden tax district, which is effectively covers large parts of Hampstead Willesden, that kind of northwest London area.

You are definitely getting Northwest Londoners now BOOING that's true, yes, yes.

So, yeah, so it was interesting. It was the civil service. It was, got a good experience of tax and finance from dealing with, you know, companies and self employed people and very broad. It was interesting because you, you know, for a 19, 20 year old you were doing enforcement, so you were out there collecting taxes for the, for the government. And so yeah, it was interesting and, but it was not, you know, probably something I wanted to do permanently to be, you know, go up through the revenues hierarchy. So at that point then I left London and went up to Manchester and that's where I studied economics. So I did economics there and obviously by about the third year, you know, you, I moved more away from the classical economics into, you know, money and finance and those areas of macroeconomics as well. And so, you know, that was my degree. And you enjoyed student life in Manchester? In Manchester as it was back then, in the early 90s and then when I came back to London, I think, you know, that kind of period, I think early 90s, you know, the UK was still sort of coming out of recession period. So you were looking, you know, to try and get a job and similar kind of civil service was. I got a job at the Central Middlesex Hospital NHS Trust in West London. And so that was now working in an NHS trust finance department and that was as the assistant financial accountant. And that was because, you know, at that time I probably was focusing more on being an accountant or a financial accountant. But very early on you had responsibility. So immediately I was given responsibility for staff. I had eight people working for me. I was responsible for accounts payable. I had the hospital cashier was reporting to me and also the trust fund accountant and the trust fund accountant managed a lot of the charitable funds that the hospital would receive, donations, endowments, etc. So there was a kind of investment portfolio there element. And very quickly, you know, in that role you were doing, you know, the elements that were financial accounting but also treasury because it was cash flow forecasting, balance sheet management, I was doing the tax and VAT compliance, you know, so lying on my background from being in the revenue, financial accounting, of course, a traditional financial accounting role, statutory accounting of reports, the NHS chess executive and treasury management. And that's interesting because, you know, people may think, well, why would a hospital really have a big treasury management function? Is it really not? Well, what is important to understand is actually the hospital was receiving large amounts of money. It would be services are being purchased from the trusts by the NHS nationally, but also by the primary care trusts, I mean it may have changed the setup, you know, in the last 25 years. But you know, at that time we had primary care trusts, you know, in the region around. So the bordering regions, the local primary care trust would be acquiring services and this was what was called they were paying blocked amounts. So you would have at the beginning of the month large flows of money coming into the bank accounts of the trust. And you know, then it was very much you were doing money market fund placement. So you know, I was dealing with the likes of, you know, many banks like Hambros, Kate around, people like that in terms of money market deposits. You know, minimum ticket size was a million pounds sterling but you could go up to 10, 20 million on a single ticket size.

So you quasi treasury already then, weren't you? So that's what we talked about.

Exactly. So you're already doing Treasury. So actually you're now engaging with not just the bank. You know, we had the banking partner who was providing cash management services for the trust in itself and the bank accounts. But you actually were dealing with banks in the city and dealing with the traders and, and understanding how that what they were doing. And obviously, you know, they would even be coming ringing r you up asking, you know, do you have money particularly on those periods in the month when we all know money flows out of the system. I mean historically back then it was often around the 19th of the month when everyone pays again their taxes. So we return to taxes, you know, paye is paid and VAT is paid and money flows out of the system. So you started to understand that actually if you were cash positive, interest rates would, the yield would go up. You could benefit from that. At the same time, you know, as I said, there was the trust fund account and, and she was dealing obviously with endowments and funds that had come in from people's donations, from wills, et cetera. And there, you know, that was money that having, you know, you want to protect it. So it was being invested in investment trusts, et cetera. So there was also that kind of investment role. And then the other major project I had at that time when I was there was I did a banking tender. So then that was really, you know, another treasury kind of role. And that was, it was those areas you see that obviously then were piquing my interest more. And you know, you did the banking tender. What solutions you want for the trust, how you want to change from moving from manual check transactions into a more automated payment process. That was a major element. But you know, there comes A time where you have to decide you want to carry on in a certain area. And I think at that time I decided that maybe I didn't want to spend my entire life in public service. You know, I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong. But it maybe move more into a commercial organization. And that's when, you know, I was looking around. Yeah, I was getting offers from agencies were trying to push me towards other NHS trusts or people were talking about NHS Executive order. Exactly. But then this role at DHL came up and it was quite interesting and it was the role of treasury accountant. And at that time, you know, dhl, you sort of have a vague memory and it was the famous song Ain't no Mountain High Enough. That's kind of what you knew, if anyone knew the adverts. But what I knew straight away was this was a global organization and that piqued my interest the fact that this was a company operating in 220 countries and territories in the world. The role was as a Treasury accountant. It had staff responsibility, not, not many, you know, a small team. It was really those areas more of cash and liquidity management, managing the bank relationships again treasury management, money market fund activity, depositing money on behalf of the company into the city. A little bit of FX work as well. Obviously there was to do with motor and vehicle leasing and a bit of financial reporting. So I moved over to that and that was based down in Heathrow, so a bit further to travel. But it was an interesting role because now you had a, you know, rather than just dealing with people in the Trust within the hospital grounds in West London, you now had, you know, 80 service about, I think about 80 service centers all over the UK, Northern Ireland, who were doing banking and cash depositing from the service centers. So these were the operations service centers where the couriers would return to every day. And it was that role. And I was, so I was a Treasury accountant reporting to the finance manager who reported to a financial controller who reported to the CFO of Express uk. And I mentioned that because actually it's relevant to what happened subsequently. And as time got by I think, you know, you would have your day job, you know, those, those elements I mentioned. But then also projects started to come up. You know, one of the things was we worked on projects where we were, this was around 1999 where you customer accounting was getting more and more where people were using credit cards to pay their bills or customer services. People were ringing in and you. Everything was still, you know, the old, I don't even Know the. Remember the name where you put in the kind of paper foil and, you know, quickly pulled it across and wrote down the credit card number. And that was not efficient. And so, you know, one of the projects we worked on was about how to change that and really implement a credit card screen system. So a real, an early kind of solution where you could have a screen system where you could enter the credit card details. And that really obviously was supporting the treasury function there. There was also rationalizing the bank accounts, making sure that they were efficient, making sure that we were maximizing yield on our money, that we were receiving and putting out our money market funds. And then I used to go to Brussels, which was where the global headquarters of Express was for training courses sometimes. And then somebody. It's like anything. I think one of the important things I've always believed in is about networking and relationships and building relationships. And what I've always liked about DHL was everyone's on a first name basis. People don't think about what your job function is. They think, you know, it's your Stephen or whatever. And there's a hierarchy, but we're all part of a team. And then I got asked to take care, you know, could I support looking after not just Express uk, the operational company, but could I look after this management company that was looking after the salaries and stuff of people, expatriates working in Sub Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe and, you know, that gave you now a broader introduction to DHL in the rest of the world. Then I had people come to me and say, okay, we need to build a hub in East Midlands Airport. Can you do the construction accounting on it? Because, you know, it's kind of treasury. You need to draw down the money. So you were given this role of, oh, can you take this bit on? And I think maybe it was about being open. It's not about being put upon. But I was open to, you know, okay, these are new challenges, new projects. Yeah, yeah. And so I did the construction accounting on the hub, which still exists up at East Midlands Airport. And then I got involved in. I was suddenly asked then, could I help out with the funding and drawdowns because we're now buying, I think it was about at that time, 25 Boeing 757s from British Airways and these aircraft. So it was literally the aircraft would. You would buy them, you would send them off to places like, you know, Wichita and Kansas. Obviously the aviation people would be doing this, but I was to make sure that the money was in the right place. The Payments were made, we drew down from the facilities with the banks at the right appropriate time so that the aircraft could be purchased, it could be sent off to Boeing in Kansas to be refitted into a freighter class and then the final payments be made to Boeing. So now you had this far broader treasury experience into, you know, major Capex acquisition.

So it's sort of quite unusual to be involved in all that stuff, treasury wise. But when you were doing that, was it that because you were just open to the ideas or people just got to know you as the going on Steve will help sort of thing?

I think it was an element of that because going back to when I, when I talked about how I reported to the finance manager and then he reported to the financial controller and he reported to the cfo, was one day someone actually said to me, but I thought you reported to the cfo. And so there was, people had got, you know, you were, I suppose there was an element of you were willing to do the job, you were successful at doing it. People got to know, okay, you're the person to come to, you know, you've got a can do attitude and which was great. And you like to have that. You like to think that there's these people no longer, not just in the UK, but in Belgium in the headquarters who think, well, you're the person we need to speak to. And even, you know, they may have a different perception of who you are, but you're delivering on what they wanted. So, yeah, I think there was an element of can do and an element of. I just found it all very interesting. It's great things to be involved in.

And then did that, having that connection because again, for the audience. So then you made the move on and you know, talk about the moves and maybe related to that because people knew you then, you know, did that really help with your moves?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, because, you know, what was happening was then the company was deciding to implement a shared service center in the Netherlands. And so then you were told your job was to be transitioned, though technically they said, well, actually we don't know what your job is, so we're transitioning part of it. But, you know, the company takes care of people and there was going to be an opportunity, maybe, okay, you, maybe you can come to Maastricht for a short period, maybe there could be the potential of a longer period. But at the same time, going back to the credit card collection solution, you know, the people in group, treasury who had also connected with me on the Boeing 757 acquisition. They wanted to talk about could we do this credit card solution across Europe. You know, actually it was like that, it's network, its relationship. It was over a pint in a pub in Chiswick and someone said, well, if you're impacted by this shared service center, why don't you come and work for us in Brussels? That sometimes happens. And so I said, sure, why not? That's when I moved to Brussels to the global headquarters. You know, I could have gone and actually then I was helping them, the shared service center in Maastricht with the setup of its cash management. So I think I made the right move. Some people said, well, we were going to offer you a job in the shared service center. And I said no, I actually like this idea of being in Group treasury because that's actually where I was already now thinking of I wanted to be in Group Treasury.

Well, that's where the magic happens. That's what we're on the podcast for.

Yeah, exactly. And I mean obviously at the same time I was doing, you know, I already started my SEMA exams and was doing my professional accountancy exams at the same time. But the reality also was work was more you. When you're given more and more project. I think it's quite interesting that I had more projects put to me that meant people were more, have always been more like, well, you deliver on it. You're the person who'll deliver on it. And they've been, you know, the idea of it became doing the exams was just, well, I just need to tick this off for myself personally because no one's actually going, you know, sometimes you're in a job and people say, hey, you're not going to move until you've completed stage one or completed stage two or complete. That no longer became an issue for me but obviously I carried on with it. And so I went to Brussels and you know, that was around 2001 and it was, you know, responsibility for the monthly treasury reporting pack for the Global Management Board. So you now had that connectivity into the senior decision makers, tracking treasury performance against benchmarks, you know, looking at things like cash. There was cash, there was fx and FX was what it was. Every currency you can imagine in the world, fuel. So a lot of jet fuel exposure because, you know, DHL Express, we have about 250 aircraft worldwide and interest rate management. And then I was also supporting the dealers who were executing the hedging transaction. So I had a more of a reporting, you know, multiple different roles. So I would support them in the execution so doing some trades as well. And then I was given responsibility for cash management projects in Western Europe. So looking at, we were already then rolling out in house banking. So cash pools, setting up zero, balancing cash pools, deciding on who was the best banking partner. And that's when also at the same time, what was going on in that period, 2002, was Deutsche Post had the public post office in Germany. They had gone public listed on the DAX Stock Exchange and had gone on an acquisition spree. And they clearly wanted to not be just the post office for Germany. They wanted to be this global logistics giant. So they had already been acquiring Danzas, which was the, I suppose, 140-year-old Global Air Freight and Ocean Freight Company out of Switzerland, what we now know as DHL Global Forwarding. They had acquired that and obviously they had been a shareholder in DHL Express and this around 2002. So they then went to become a majority when they acquired out, I think, the Lufthansa shares. And then by the end of 2002, they literally became the 100% shareholder of DHL Express. So at that time, you're trying to do your job. You've got these projects, cash management projects going on. You're starting to look at maybe doing Asia. And then you've got this, well, what's going to happen when this big German post office decides to acquire us? And I remember in Brussels going to meetings in hotels and there was a lot of uncertainty of where it was.

Going to be and you were worried about that. But, you know, this was. This turned into a very positive view, didn't it? Sort of grew and grew sort of thing.

I think, you know, the great thing out of that was actually, you know, and that has always been the history of acquisitions in the group. There's not an acquisition and there's an acquisition in terms of you take over a company and you buy shares, but there's not a cultural takeover. So it's not like you suddenly you keep the best people and you keep the culture. And that even now, 20, 30 years, you know, you'll see that within our different acquisitions, there's still the legacy cultures still exist, which is slightly different in each division. So, I mean, I remember going and we would meet up and the people from Danzas in Switzerland would come and Express. Obviously we were based in Brussels and now the people from corporate finance, as treasury was in Germany. And I remember meeting in a large castle, Castle Crickenbeck on the German Dutch border. Like, you know, are seated in this large, bought a room around three parts of the room. And that's where we were then, discussing what was going to be the future of treasury or corporate finance in this new 3D organization, effectively bringing together these three companies. So there, you know, you're wondering what happened. And I remember my colleague who. The colleague who actually had asked me to come to Brussels and who is still part of our corporate finance organization in Bonn, he was. He went down to Germany and they were discussing about, you know, how do they bring this all together and what is needed. And the next minute I got was a phone call and he says, you know, our new boss, he's going to ring you in about five minutes and he wants you to go to Singapore. And he said. I said that you might be okay with that idea.

Yeah.

And. And I thought, okay. He had made an excuse to have a break. And I think it was because at that time, you know the guy. So corporate finance, just to understand. And it's still the truth today within Deutsche Post. DHL is the responsibility of our department. We're a centralized global department is Treasury Risk Management, but it's also mergers and acquisitions. It's group pensions, you know, the strategic financing of the group and the subsidiary. So all of that falls under my boss's responsibility. The guy at that time, he had done all the acquisition. That was what he really focused on, was acquiring these companies in his role. And then he just said to me, you know, I'd like you to go out and go out to Singapore and look at cash management in Asia Pacific with our, you know, with Express and Danzas as it was then. They were the two main companies out in Asia. And could you go next week? And I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. And he says, but you, Sorry, you.

Were only going to go for a short period when you just. Because I think that's essential to it as well.

So it was like, go out for 12 months, but you can come back every three months. Don't get rid of your apartment in Brussels. Keep that there. And you'll be like, okay, well, what about where I stay? Well, the people there will sort you out something. Put the rest of it on expenses and off you go. And you're like, okay. It's like, I wanted to see Asia. Now DHL is paying for it. So, yeah, I went out to Singapore. You know, the first thing was really to work on these cash management projects and really look at eight countries, if I remember at the time, and how we could bring. Because obviously then in Asia, it was fundamentally the express business in every country and Danzas or DHL Global Forwarding. So as we know them today, DHL Express and DHL Global Forwarding and they were working together as a finance organization already, which was great. And so you arrived and of course the nature of DHL is you're a colleague and so of course you know, you are welcomed and you're given a seat or a desk. But fundamentally you were on your own. My new boss was now in Germany. You were left to your own devices. You get on with it, right? You have this project to do, get it done. And once you've done those eight countries go and do Oceana, Australia, New Zealand, Finland and so on and so on. Get all of the banking and cash management fixed, get it that we're using our core relationship banks, get it in these, in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc. That we're using zero balancing cash pools, that we've opened up the central entity accounts. Our in house bank is up and running and LinkedIn because already we had at that time, you know, an in house bank running. And that was actually quite interesting that you actually had two companies, both DHL Express and Deutsche Post who were using in house banking. So it was a natural, easy rollout fit. Then when you're there, then the business going, well, you're the treasury guy, right? We've got, you know, the forwarding people say hey, we've got a big FX book. This is your issue now, right? So you take care of it. And other people say, hey, but you know, we've had these bank facilities that we've been managing. That's your job, right? And there you go and then the divisions, you're sitting with them and then people are starting to say here, this is your work, right? And it was, it was, you know, so you're trying to center. So as part of trying to centralization the business is realizing, okay, now we have our treasury person here and that was great to be actually that they saw you as theirs. So you'd have people go oh no, no, he's the four, he's the DGF treasurer. And the Express people go no, no, no, he's the express treasurer. And it's like, no, I'm for all of you, right? What was great, I think was that empowerment of, of just get on with it. You decide you have that support from the business out there, the regional office, they'll support you for the administrative things. You know, there'll be someone to help book your flights, whatever. And you had all of that. But Ultimately, just get on with it. And my boss in Germany, you know, you'd ring him up and he'd be like, is there a problem? And you'd be like, no, I'm just ringing to say everything's okay. And he'll be like, okay, great. But I think he was more a face to face person. I mean, he's now retired and my new boss is a boss as well. You used to go to Germany, he'd always sit with you. But you know, it was get on with it, I trust you. Just get it done. And that was very great. And so then after a while and I used to go back and go to my apartment for the odd day or two in Brussels and then back to London. So, yeah, I, for a year I lived this slightly bizarre thing where I didn't really, you know, I had an apartment here. But then I'd often be traveling multiple countries because you're building networks, building relationships.

With people and so forth, but you embrace that move. And this was one of the key things. What was the state of. And again, you talked about being a helper, helping all the different businesses out there, but what was the state of Treasury? Because again, this preloaded question to the listeners. I know how it developed over the years with you, but could you just talk about the evolution there and how treasury, as you say, you talked about the early years and swiping a credit card machine back in the uk, but you got out there in Singapore. What was it like, you know, the beginning, the middle and not the end, but you know, to now sort of thing. How has it evolved?

On a positive side, at least most of the subsidiaries in many of the countries were using what we would classify as core relationship banks. So that's at least one positive. But there would be situations where, you know, a lot of stuff was being done, which was you could quickly, when you're a fresh set of eyes, you know, one of the things they were doing lots of check collection and trying to handle checks and it being very manual process. And you immediately realized. And what actually I did, I did with some banks is I said, okay, look, we're going to focus on these eight countries, right with you too, because you've already got a kind of presence there. But you need to come up with the good solutions. You can go in, you can sit down with people, you can work out what their issues are. And together we need to come up with tangible improvements. Improvements. So, you know, for instance, putting in the cash pools or putting in lockboxes to take care of the checks at that time. And you know, and people were a bit reluctant to do this and that's where, you know, trying to educate people about why it was important. And nowadays people would never, you, they wouldn't let you take the lockbox away if you tried. And so it was about showing value and it's always been important to me. So you need to clean up and get a hold of how many bank accounts we truly had. And when you're talking Asia Pacific is 41 countries and you're talking at least a minimum of two business units in eight in both countries you can have one entity had 200 bank accounts but it needed them because of its geographical foot in China for instance. So you had lots of bank accounts and it was really about finding the best bank who could get the solutions and then building a relationship with those banks so that they delivered the best thing for our subsidiaries. And sometimes, you know, it was interesting and that's why it's important to have a great dialogue with, with your businesses. Because I went down to Australia and you know, we were going to do a tender for Australia, New Zealand. You had your core relationship banks, you know, many of them said yeah, we could do Australia but we're using a local provider. The local provider, let's say, wasn't that great. Our business there said, you know, they're not really delivering what we want. So you had a bit of. And then one of the other divisions said, well we've been using these local guys for 26 years and I think we should give them a try. And I think it was important to understand to be open to other, you know, not just be the corporate. You don't want to be the person who was from the ivory tower, so to speak, telling them this is the way it's going to be, you know. So in the end, you know, we found the best fit. I wouldn't say it was terrible, it needed to be tidied up more than anything. Of course we rolled out our in house bank at that time was what we were doing. So over the years we rolled out our in house bank based on depending on what kind of country you are, you can do certain things in some countries that you can't do in others. An important thing was that big FX problem that sat in the forwarding business actually was coming because the forwarding business is a broker business which, where one forwarding unit, say DGF Singapore is actually dealing with DGF UK for example.

Right.

And so actually it's intercompany exposure. And so we realized stick it all into the in house bank, process it through the in house bank on a direct debit basis. You have no FX noise, you have no foreign currency transfers. You have literally killed two things in one go. And you've cleared this problem of intercompany noise both in terms of disagreement over invoices, but also FX problems which are really left pocket, right pocket and also making noise. Hundreds and thousands of transfers every month between different subsidiaries and then those same subsidiaries wanting you to hedge it. And actually you were able so we rolled that out. Obviously by that time you're now realizing and I was told we need to set up an rtc. That's where I recruited a small team and effectively was told, okay, it's not just about looking at bank relationships. Now your job is to represent corporate finance. So whether it's bank relationships, financing or debt, FX or commodity risk or working capital or M and A, it's your job to be at the front. You are, you know, and even my current boss now is, you know, this is what we are, we are at the front end and we are the connection to the business, to our colleagues in the region on those topics. And so you know, I got involved back in one of the big things was the acquisition of BlueDart. And BlueDart was a, a major, you know, when you went into India, if you wanted express servicing. Even today you don't say dhl, you say Blue dot. Everyone knows who you're talking about.

Right.

And you know, I got involved. Other people may run the project but my role was to ensure everything was in place so that we could execute it, so that we could pay all the shareholders interesting by pay orders that we had the guarantees in place that the bank accounts are in place to execute the transaction, that the demat accounts are in place to host the shares upon purchase. And so it suddenly your role changed. It wasn't just cash management or a bit. And that you know what I liked about it? We've over the years, as I say in house banking is a norm for us. We've rolled out the payment factory in Asia Pacific. I tend not to, I have a number of key banking partners who do clusters of countries and that's because we, you know, going back to my point of finding the best bank for the fit and then my role, you know, we intu 2005 globally we acquired Xcel, the UK supply chain company based out of Bracknell. And so that suddenly brought another large division into the group and they had extensive operations in Asia Pacific as well. So now you had to bring them on board to the same structure.

Steve, I just wanted to jump in. You sort of, you said about setting up the regional treasury center and then, and we spoke before about, you know, how you structure them. People here might be in similar situation. They're setting up a set of recruiting staff and things. We're hosted by treasury recruitment company, but we don't make it a sales podcast. That's one of the things we don't do. But tell us about some of the people stuff and how you then looked at the structure and how you're supporting the business. Again, I'm doing this so there might be someone in the US saying, oh, actually I'm off to Singapore, Asia or whatever. How did you set it up or how does it, you know, you roll out the responsibilities and team wise.

The first important thing to understand is from a group perspective, we have have what we call corporate finance or treasury policies. And these apply across the group. And at least from that aspect, from a business perspective, they are really focused on the business and the customer. Our policies are not just agreed by our department, they're agreed by the Finance board. And that's important to understand because the Finance board includes all of the Group CFOs of the division. So in effect, if you're a CFO in a country, you know, your ultimate boss agreed that. So that's important. So the RTCs, you know, I went down the road of. It was just I got somebody who came from a Treasury accounting background, but also probably similar treasury, you know, was an accounting background and then moved into treasury and always was in treasury roles. They came externally and other people came internally, you know. And I always thought if you have good finance background, good understanding of the business. And I had people who, one of my people was very good commercial, had worked in different parts of the divisions in a finance finance, but also in a commercial role. And that was very important because it understood the business more. They had a lot more connections. What you were looking for was people who had technical skills, who had the knowledge, but also understood the business and maybe had a network in that cell. And so, you know, and we're very lean. And then I suppose it's always been about relationship. One way we did that is to engage with our businesses. We're always there. And I've always believed from the very start of my career, no problem is too small and even if the problem is not your problem, deal with it. If it's a customer who rings up, I'm not going to say, well, sorry, I'M Treasury, I don't deal with customers, I'm dhl. I deal with that person because it's a customer and we have to be customer focused. So the way we engage with our business is, you know, being there, being contactable. We set up training courses so we, we create. And this was actually because of a feedback from a survey. You know, you want to. It's good to check with your colleagues in the business, how are you performing? Are you delivering the right solutions? What would you like and what. One of the things that came back was treasury training is having a network. Building relationships is at the core of an rtc, I think. Right. So we are from a. From a legal sense. I mean, if you're touching on that, we are just purely hosted by one of our businesses in Singapore. So we don't. We're not one of those RTCs who have a separate legal presence. We're doing everything on behalf of the central entities. So all of our central entities in Germany or the Netherlands are financing vehicles. I'm acting on behalf of them. I haven't formed a Treasury company. I have an investment company that I formed in Singapore. But we keep it like that. We're hosted. We sit with other people who provide services like legal, real estate, etc. Corporate communications. I think it's really about engagement, being out there. So we used to travel a lot. We used to do go to the countries, we'd meet with the banks. We'd bring all of the business units together. So we'd bring everyone, all the CFOs into one room with the bank. And that's, you know, you then say, right, do you have any problem with these guys? Because we're here to help. And it's about our businesses understanding that if they have a problem, they know the person to call and that's us. And that's our role at the end is really to be the troubleshooters. And, you know, I'm more than happy sometimes we have our business where they go, I need to. This bank is wanting to sell me something and I don't really want to deal with them. And they use us as the bad guy in the room. They say, well, Stephen Hogan says I can't. And I don't mind that. I don't mind that if that helps you, because now you know that I'm the guy helping you out. And so it's about relationships, but also, yeah, training. And so we set up this training. We do it every month. We do about three sessions a month. We focus on some of the basics of treasury or corporate finance topics or risk management topics and we deliver it by Webex and it's been really successful. And we originally wanted to do it as a one off thing but it found out that people continuously want to come back and it broadened not just from the finance people but non finance people. You get even country managers would join people in the commercial organization pricing people. And that helped because actually what happened then is you then had people who were pricing people or commercial people saying I saw one of your webexes, I have a customer who has foreign exchange needs, could you help me out there? And this actually then opened up a new value added service service which is supporting the business in how they deal with customers. I mean reality is our customers stretch across everything from oil and gas to high tech, FMCG, banking, down to grandma. So you know it's, it's B2B, B2C, it's across, you name it. Anybody who wants to move goods anywhere in the world, there's a good chance we're probably working with them as a customer.

And I was gonna say, you know, we're coming towards the end of the show and we'll go, we'll go to that. But, but just before I just want to sort of have a section in between that. And just, just to ask you, you've given a great description of where you were wrapped and what you do and the focuses you have and stuff but where do you see, I know that you're on various panels, you know, you've, we talked about this before the show but you know, where do you see treasury going to next? What are the big things before we then move to the wrap up? And you, you know, you talking about, you know, your tips for people that are listening in today. But what do you see?

Treasury digitalization is hugely important for us as a company. People think of logistics maybe as just you know, lorries, planes, ships, moving things but actually it's hugely important. So across the organization it's robotics, it's robots in warehouse, it's drone technology, the Internet of things. And the same applies in finance and the same applies in treasury. And that is, you know, looking at things like data analytics, RPAs, robotics basically adopting technology that makes transactional work not obsolete but is taken care of because Then what Treasury 4.0 for me, what that is is delivering value adding solutions to my colleagues and my customer. And to understand for me who my customer is, is the person who is paying the bill. We don't use the name customer is not my subsidiary that's my client colleague. So I should be supporting him, you know, directly and indirectly in maximizing customer value. And that should be by providing enriched port on, as I say, business intelligence, counterparty risk, proper structured finance for their business, helping them with their suppliers in supplier financing projects and so on. And so I think it's the future of treasury is to ensure that the compliance to topics are covered, to ensure that the transactional stuff is automated as much as possible and then move as we have a philosophy which is, and it's for finance in general, which is influence business direction and be business leaders. And that's who treasury should be. So, you know, influencing the business direction, supporting the business direction and being business leaders, not just finance leaders. That is a given. We should leverage our expertise and intelligence as a normal. It's, it's the, it's the extra step we need to make the value add.

And are those your, your three tips or the, you know, you know, we put your LinkedIn profile rather in the show notes so people can connect to you if you think it's good. Yeah. Or have you got something sort of more personal, do you think?

Oh, yeah. I mean, if, if we're talking career wise, I say one of the best things I ever done would, you know, is one, be international, be mobile. You know, the world is full of opportunities. We're in a world that, you know, we're a great believer, okay, our company, globalization. Right. So there are opportunities. Get out there. It can be nervy and I had that, I had homesickness at the beginning. But go out there, go out to the world because there's a lot of opportunities. Be willing to challenge people, challenge yourself, but also be willing to challenge people because come up with new ideas, be the master of your own. I think continuous education. So continuously build your knowledge. I have that focus that, you know, your focus on your customer, on your colleagues. I'd say be international, be continuous education and be inquisitive, challenging and realize you can breach your borders, that treasury is not limited to a certain path.

I think openness, basically, as you say that open to international, open to sort of building your knowledge and just, you know, be ready for it. You know, I think that's a key thing I've noticed from a few of our guests and you, you included that, you know, if you think, right, you go into this and you're just going to be doing that same job in the next two to three years and not ready to move or do probably treasury might not be for you, but you know, as you say, that's, that's fantastic advice. So, Steve, amazing. You know, I let you just, you were describing it so well. That's why, you know, people are sort of, you know, you sort of went, nice natural flow there. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for being on today's show. Thank you, sir. And we'll put your details in the show notes. People want to connect to you and great to chat.

Thank you very much. Nice to chat to you.

And you.