Strategic Insights and Leadership Lessons from the Treasurers of Porsche and Tesco

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. Let's get on with the show. So welcome to this, our biggest ever treasury career quarter. Live in London with over 100 of you guys. Lovely people. Obviously, I'm putting it down to amazing panelists. They will introduce themselves shortly. Just a couple of housekeeping rules I'm going to come to. Firstly, number one, you have made an effort to come here in a quiet evening. Horrible out where the. Bit cold out there and everything else. I need your energy, your enthusiasm. Usually as kickoff. Few of you have been here before I do the good evening. You like wake up a little bit, fall asleep a few times and then you say, good evening, Mike and stuff like that. We're not doing that. So I'm just going to do a big good evening. You're going to give it back. Good evening, London. Well, you didn't let me down. Thank you very much, everyone. So that's the first one. You've got some enthusiasm there. Second one is being present in the room. If you've got your phone on, switch it off, please. You've made the effort to be here. Wolfgang's come all the way from Stuttgart and he's come from Hertfordshire. But the fact is the commitment's there and make this commitment to you and your treasury careers. How often are you gonna an opportunity to speak to two amazing treasurers here this evening. But before I do get into it, I'm very good at this. I'd make sure I want to thank our sponsors. Kristen, where are you? There you go. So keep your hand up, please. And I have the guys from Chatham Kyriba, stage three and Tis. Can you get your hands up, please? Look around. Those are the guys. There you go, Jackie in the corner. And we'll put Spaby in the corner, but we'll do that with Jackie. But those are the guys that support this event. Lovely venue and that's. We were doing drinks with them afterwards. Now it's a bit different because last time we were in the two rooms next door we've been given the executive suite, haven't we? Kristen, where are you? Yeah, over there. Look at that. Thanks very much. Yeah, exactly. It's a very nice big room up there. So thank you for all coming this evening.

Who am I?

I'm Mike Richards. I run the treasury recruitment company. Very big fat head There. Sorry. Started the business 25 years ago. Love talking to you guys. Treasury professionals, all levels. That's my day job. It's also Katie's day job as well, allegedly, when she does it. And we will help you find your next role whenever you need it. But I love talking to you guys so much, I started a podcast, this is it. These guys have both been previous guests on it, where I talk to treasurers about how they started their careers, where they are now, where they see themselves in the treasury profession going to next. It then led to this live event format, which I love doing with you guys, but I also need to tell you about the structure. So this is going to be the structure of the evening. So each of my guests will introduce themselves. We will then go through some of the topics. Obviously, they're senior treasurers. Andy at Tesco, Wolfgang at Porsche. When we get later on to the Q and A, ask them questions. How often do you get to ask treasurers questions that they will answer for you straight to your face?

As long as they're not hard questions.

They won't be hard questions, actually. Don't worry. And then we do get to socialize, let's say. So when we go out of here, we. It does make a difference. Go out, head out left, go up to the escalators, up one floor and turn left. Don't want any of you leaving. We will be switching off the down escalators. So I'm going to get my guests to introduce themselves. We'll start off with Andy and go to Wolfgang and then we'll go through your careers.

Thanks, Mike. Hi, I'm Andy Henley. Mike said I work. So I joined Tesco a little over 18 months ago as the group treasurer. And being the group treasurer at Tesco was really my first proper treasury job. So I'll fill in as we go through the Q and A. How that happened for the past six months or so, and I look after a broader remit. So I'm responsible as well as treasury for group tax, group financial reporting and the group Control team. And as I think it says on the slide, it wasn't cut out. That includes looking after about 600 people in our shared service center in Bangalore in India. So, like many treasury professionals, I started my career. Another thing I said Mike on The podcast joined PwC because in my last year of university, I didn't really have any idea what I wanted to do when I grew up. And joining an accounting firm at the time seemed to put off that decision for three more years. And when I joined PwC for those of you who've got worked as an audit in the past, for the first year or so I thought it was the most boring job in the world. Carrying around a laptop, going up to talk to a client who didn't really want to talk to you. Questions where you really understand the answer to the question you were getting but you don't realize at the time it builds like tenacity and agility in you and you go on a really steep learning curve. So I ended up staying at PwC for a little bit more than a decade, most of that working for PwC in London across a variety of different departments. Audit, capital markets, transactions accounting, accounting, technical function and also spent a couple of years on second working for PwC in Hong Kong. Then I got so this is a little over 10 years ago now, the pressure from my parents wanting to become grandparents back to the UK with my wife. Stayed there PwC a little bit longer than that, then took a role at Reckitt Benkiser, working for the CFO at Reckitt Benkiser in a job that had a more glamorous sounding title than this, but was essentially the CFO's bag carrier. So working across M and A finance, investor relations, other projects or whatever needed attention of the day. Stayed there for two or three years, then moved to work at Tate and Lyle where I was a group financial controller and head of corporate finance. And the big piece of work that I probably spent somewhere between 50 and 75% of my time in the four years I was at Tate and Lyle was a big disposal project where we disposed of controlling interest in the kind of commoditized division of Tate and Lyle's a private equity in the US. So if that took up 25% of my time, the other 25% of my time was explaining to people that trades and Nile don't make sugar anymore. Tatar brand in the UK that will be familiar to many of you. Tate and I sold that shade of business 15 years ago. So actually moving to Tesco, it was quite nice not to have to explain every time I introduced myself, no, that's actually not what they do. And indeed it got to the stage where I just stopped bothering explaining that. And even my mother in law when she would say can you pick up some cheap golden syrup and I'll get some for you straight round to Tesco of course, let's take it off the shelf and bring it up to her. And then yes, 18 months ago joined Tesco. So looking after group treasury at a really Exciting time for treasurers more broadly. Liz Pruss had done her best blow up the gilt market. So I remember going all the way from Googling what is a liability driven investment to suddenly being the kind of expert in these matters at Tesco. And we'll come on to. I think that's a, it's a brilliant kind of example of the expertise you're expected to get in a broad area across kind of treasury and corporate finance. And before I run on too much longer, that's why I was 18 months ago and as I said taken on a broader remit in the last six months.

So we're going to dive more into the international experience of both Andy and Wolfgang in a moment but Wolfgang, over to you yourself.

So that was impressive Andy. I didn't, I don't actually know where to start to start but Wolfgang is my name, I'm Austrian and I'm very glad to be in London. Thank you very much for the invitation Mike. We've been working together for, for quite a while in different companies so maybe my background is a bit different I must say maybe when I start very early I was, I grew up on a farm so I was the youngest of four kids and was always foreseen that I would run the farm and that's where my first education is basically being an Agra agricultural engineer. And I decided actually this is not enough for me. I actually worked five years at home with my parents and was a dairy farm and then I decided actually to move on and I wanted to go and do something else and a bit more international as well from Austria, small farming environment coming. I didn't foresee that. This is basically the future of my life and when I actually went into university my father died and I took over the farm. I did both at the same time. I made sure that I had some people working for my farming business and I could basically go on the international side. So I started as KPMG afterwards at the end of the term of my university because I didn't know exactly how I should start. I wanted to become a tax advisor but after the internship I said no, it's, it's boring for me, let's go into kpmg. And then I tried it as well. Everything backwards driven. I want to actually create things, I want to actually look forward, do influence and steer the business. So I thought I might go into more turnaround management stayed with KPMG and then it was a bit life changing moment because I decided to go to a career event where we had I think Six or seven different workshops in two days. And then companies came after me and were asking for interviews. And I actually wanted to go into banking because all my friends went into banking. It was end of the 90s investment banking. Come to London and earn the big bucks and learn as fast as possible. But all the corporates were after me, so it's okay with my experience as an agricultural engineer plus a finance person. And these actually were very attractive to corporate side. So I decided to go and start with Henkel, which is a blue chip company in Germany. And the reason why I chose Henkel is I wanted to go overseas as quickly as possible. That was my dream, my really my direction. I wanted to go, I always wanted to go to the us and six months later I was in Hong Kong. So agility was never an issue for me. I started in Hong Kong, it was the 11th of September 2001. So I think everybody, I remember this date and I started in corporate finance. So I didn't know anything about treasury, came back to Germany and worked in corporate finance. And then they asked me whether I want to go back to Asia and I say yes. I really enjoyed the stint in Hong Kong and to run basically for the Asian Pacific treasury or support the treasury in Asia Pacific. And on the way there, the plane didn't go to Hong Kong, it was turning to Shanghai. So in 2002 I arrived then in Shanghai instead of in Hong Kong, where I supposed to land. But the double tax treaty between Austria and Germany and Hong Kong was very unfavorable. So they parked me in Shanghai and said, you need to learn about how actually to run and do a virtual organization as well. So my boss sits in Hong Kong. I was sitting in Shanghai and covering the region in Asia Pacific. It was fun. So I worked five years for Henkel and when I was in Shanghai, I realized there's a lot of American companies, they're very successful. So I wanted to see what the difference is between the different leadership styles. And then I joined an American company in 2007 state, where it was trolls, but back in Europe. So I had no family with me. So I was totally free. And I wanted to come back to Europe as well for family reason. And when I had the interview, I said, I want to stay in Europe for at least five years. Started in Germany and a year and a half later I was back in Hong Kong taking care of Asia Pacific and the Middle east, which was very exciting and a big role. So was a fantastic experience because a lot of growth. Turnover went from 7 billion to 12 billion in five years and that was pretty exciting. And then I came back to Europe, went from treasury out because I always had the dream to go to become a cfo. So I went into the business, took over the CFO role in Europe for the metal business, did a lot of restructuring post merchant integration. And then in 2017 I was asked whether I wanted to go back into treasury at Borsche. So that's why I moved to Stuttgart at that point of time. It's a fantastic company. And the idea behind was as well, Porsche is part of the Volkswagen Group, but to become independent and if you going as a treasurer to a non independent company, then treasury doesn't have really the essence of it. So the IPO was very much straight from the beginning on the table from 2017, took us five years to 2022 where we went IPO and yeah build up the treasury organization there. And now we are a public listed company.

So we're going to go through here, we're going to talk about different areas. In fact, we'll jump into the international side because both of you have spoken extensively about being in Asia Pacific and things like that. Now do you think I was going to go into what the biggest challenges maybe you had when dealing with the different cultures there and what it was like being there. We'll go to Andy and then we'll come to you. Wolfgang, about that. But again, leadership style, firstly, what did you have to adapt there and do you think it's necessary? I was talking to a treasurer just the other day and he would say, yes, you have to go internationally, you have to have an international assignment. I was like, but do you? And it was like, yeah, it's brilliant if you do because it really gives you that the different businesses and that's really helped him. You've both done it. Would you say that's something everyone has to do with leadership?

Yes, Mike, it's a really good, it's a really good question. I haven't done it quite to the extent where the plane lands analogy. I was planning to go to Hong Kong, went to Hong Kong, stayed there a few years in that and came back taking a step back. What I would say is actually it's. I think it's desirable in life, right, to spend some time living away from your home country, irrespective of the benefit for your beer or otherwise. And when I was growing up, I didn't leave the British Isles until I was 12 years old. So I always had this kind of desire to be much more international as I grew up and in adult life. And I remember at PwC, it was like the expected thing. Right. At some point in time, you'll transition and you'll spend some time overseas. And what lots of people would do is either go to Australia and have what looked like a brilliant time for two or three years, or they go to the U.S. but then a small number of people each year would go to Hong Kong because at the time there are two of the big trading houses, Jardine and Swire were clients of PwC. So you would go out there and one of those two clients, which is a fantastic experience and it definitely teaches you, you learn a lot about how you can't just have one leadership style. Right. So I remember going out to Hong Kong and for those of you familiar with that part of the world, Mike, there's a real culture of not wanting to lose face in front of more senior people.

Yeah.

So often you would explain something to more junior staff and you'd say, do you understand this? Even if I had explained something incredibly badly and they were none the wise of what I was trying to do, so it meant really for me as a leader, I adopted a much more kind of nurturing style and involved more junior staff in that learning. Okay, so explain back to me what I've explained, what I've explained to you. And it's a bit of an Americanism, but it's made me a much better coach with junior staff as I progressed back through my career in the uk. And it's also wonderful when you spend a few years overseas. It's wonderful to have another place which is not home home, but you still have. I still have a fantastic network of people out, out in Asia. So whenever there's a re. Whenever there's an excuse to go there, I will take it. Now that those of you who know Tesco know that it's French for most of its international expansion, but we do have a small sourcing business based in Hong Kong. So when the opportunity came over, came in the summer to go out there and spend a week with the sourcing team.

Yeah. And over to you, Wolfgang, you jokingly said to everyone, you got off the plane, it was a different country, but you drove that you actually wanted that international experience. What's that given you, would you say?

Pretty much similar what Andy's had, but maybe one anecdote as well. When I came to Hong Kong, actually not Hong Kong, but to Shanghai, I changed three things at the same time.

Can you move your microphone up a bit more? Yeah.

I changed three things so first of all it's a totally different country. So I came from the first thing. The second thing, my boss was Chinese and the third thing was I didn't know anything about Treasury. So that was really. The first year was very hard, very hard. But I learned a lot as well because it's not one leadership style. It's basically in Germany I was super well connected and successful. And then you come in a different country in certain things and I was very young. Certain things just don't work. So you need to adjust yourself first thing you need to learn about yourself being comfortable getting off your comfort zone and basically build on what you are good at. But let learn and be a fast learner as well. And curiosity is very important in these regards and don't give up and then really listen to the people there because they are much better than you are and learn from them and just be their copycat in this regards. And I think this is what I harvest today. It was hard at the beginning, but it was an extreme steep learning curve. And Hong Kong is a very different than let's say Shanghai at that point of time. That was the early 2000s, 2001 to 2004. They were basically really everything is in developing mode and not many experts. So it was a different environment. But really to become a leader is different perspectives from different angles and everybody is a contributor. It's not I know it all. No, there's a lot of people that know it. You trying to bring this together and how you nurture that and how you really bring then success or value added to the company.

So when I spoke to both of you on the podcast, you a big, a strong theme was that you both are highly focused on developing those teams now. You both explored it a little bit there. But Wolfgang, you went through a transition with your team that you were reshaping it the past few years and then we helped you recruit some people. So I wanted to talk about how you refocus that team. And then Andy, you and I were then just talking a moment ago about how you building your bench strength and everything else. So I'll come on to that. So I was going to go with you first of all Wolfgang, but how have you mentored and coached that team? Because again this is a number of more senior leaders here and they've got teams and they're going, I want to hear from these two guys about how they're doing it right and maybe also some of the mistakes you made or missteps you've made because you never make A mistake obviously that we're going to put in ever. But any missteps you made, Wolfgang, for you?

Yeah, man. I think the first thing in, in building a team is you need to hire the right people. Yeah. They need to fit in the cultural environment you're in. And I always hire not for skills, I hire for attitude. They need to have the right mindset. They need to be willing, learn fast, learn, go the extra mile. That's what I trying to figure out when I hire people. We can help. Yeah. This is with multiple interviews, going to events like this as well, that they see how I react, what kind of person I am, so that they can make a judgment as well. And trying to understand there was different ways how they did that. But in my different companies we did it differently. In Chausing Controls, for example, we had really the tendency that everybody had to say to it, if one says no, it doesn't fit for whatever reason. Then we agreed to this. Now it's a bit more different that we really have a lot of different rounds we have as well assessment centers where you go through. It's not a hard assessment center, but you go through especially when you acquire new people into the organization. How do you react in leadership style and situation. And it's not about that this is wrong or right. It's about the cultural fit. And the German cultural fit is different than a Chinese cultural fit or the American cultural fit. Right. So you need to incorporate this a bit together. And I think this is one thing. The other thing is, which was very important as well, that I tried to build a team, they are very strongly minded so that they speak up and they don't hold back. And you need to create this trust environment as well that they speak up. So team building at the beginning is important. And then you hire people and they are better than you are in certain areas so that you have a good team you can trust and they can actually play soccer.

And I think also just to add in something there, we both, Katie and I have recruited for Porsche since that. And when you went through the development and I remember one of the guys actually got rejected for one of the interviews or basically he turned up, he was five minutes before he wasn't on Zoom. It didn't work properly. This wasn't going right and everything else. And Wolfgang said that actually quite a nice guy, but not right for us because you can't have those mistakes. What if you put him in front of the CEO and everyone makes a mistake? Why didn't he go on the Zoom link? Half an hour before, why not be prepared? And it was like, oh, Mike, I'm sorry about this, but no, I accept it. We today, we were just talking about the fact that Wolfgang flew over this morning. Andy had prepared it with an exec meeting. I was here an hour and a half early. Be there early, because otherwise it was going to be Katie sitting up here and she'd never talk to me again.

This is a bit about respect, right? Being respectful to others. That means as well, when I come in, somebody is waiting there, it should be on time. I learned that very much in Asia in a way as well. I was never late. But the Japanese, they are on time always. If you have the Japanese, the German are on time, but the Japanese are even more on time. Yeah, they are. Because if the clock turns, the Japanese, they call. And that's what you need to learn. It's just respect, being respectful with people. And I think this is the intercultural way as well, that respect is not black and white. It's. You need to understand how they react and how you emerge into a different culture.

I thought you were going to say that the guy turned up the interview in a Mercedes or BMW and that's what.

That was on the gate. The guy said, no, turn him away, he's not covered.

Now, why can't I get to go back to original question? I think you can't spend. You can't spend too much time investing in your team. And for me, I know I have it right. When Frank feel I'm learning more from my team than I'm teaching them. That shows you got the mix right and you've recruited and you develop people in the right roles. I was very lucky starting at Tesco because Linda Hayward, my predecessor, had built a fantastic team and a brilliant mix of different personality types, some kind of fresh blood that had been hired recently and people that have been there 10, 20 years. And indeed, the group treasury accountant had been hired by Tesco the year I was born. So I thought, yeah, he's pretty good. He said, probably going to get my stuff right. So really what I've done since then is try to expand the reach of treasury across the organization. I think in lots of organizations I've worked in and worked with treasury and Tax across, often lumped together, oftentimes, like physically in the office and around the corner from the rest of finance. And I think people incorrectly think it's inaccessible, black box, really hard to get into if you haven't grown up in that world. So for me, one of the most pleasing Things about building out, moving some people out and other people in and promoting people in the team. Two things have been brilliant. One is being able to elevate and promote one of my direct reports to being the Group treasury director when we did the restructure to broaden my own remit was fantastic because becoming a director at Tesco is a big deal. So to be able to help someone through that process, that job satisfaction doesn't get much better than that, frankly. And the other is a number of people who, in the 18 months that I've been there, who aren't treasurers by background, haven't worked in treasury, who now want to work in the treasury function, because we've been much better in the last 18 months at getting out and facing into the business and helping them solve complicated challenges. Be that ups and downs of fx, be that the energy crisis challenge we've gone through, we've done a fantastic job as a team of selling what is a fascinating job and a fascinating function to work in across the organization. And we've had people who are not even in finance. Right. You talk about. I brought in somebody who's in our commodities governance team. You've hired people from other parts of the other parts of the business. And that for me is a brilliant measure of kind of building a team. You asked about mistakes made from a team building perspective. The one that I think comes to mind is, and maybe it's a bit more of a British cultural thing, but I think often we're not quick enough at making tough calls and sometimes you haven't got quite the right people in your team. And the thing that I've learned over years is if you think you haven't got the right person, you definitely don't.

Have the right person.

And the quicker that you resolve that situation, the better it is for you and your team and if not, more importantly, the better it is for that particular individual as well. So I think I've got better as I've got grown up through my career at making those tough calls because 100% of time it's worked out better for that individual as well. Yeah.

And this is called the treasury career corner. So it's about careers and the career steps. So we're going to talk now about hybrid. It's something that pre Covid wasn't a thing Covid, if you like accelerated flexible working by five, 10 years quickly. And obviously everyone's had to get used to it. And now as we come out the other side, it's never going to go to Wolfgang first and then to you, Andy. But what I was going to say to you guys, just give them a second, is in about 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes time, Katie will come round with the microphone. You are going to get the opportunity to ask these amazing treasurers. Don't ask me questions, you can talk to me in the bar, but you'll get to ask them. So think now, you've heard a lot so far, but keep thinking about what tips you should be able to get from these guys. Wolfgang Hybrid working, It's benefits, challenges, how do you do it with your team and make sure that it works for everyone? Communication. I know it's a challenge. That was another thing on your play as a treasurer, do you.

Yeah, I think we were lucky enough that we basically could actually go from one day to the other in the hybrid working environment. We were ready in 2020, as I still remember 16th or 17th of March, when we basically turned the key and just said, okay, we work from home, we could do it. So from that angle, that was very good. Did we have a lot of learnings? When you look at how our business were progressing and basically growing, we were very lucky and fantastic environment as well, where we actually, from a Treasury team's perspective, used this very well. But I think now, four years further, we see there are some limitations to it as well. Right. So we are human beings, we want to have, I think, connectivity, not through digital environment. I really. And that's why I'm here physically and not digitally. I like people in the room. The energy gives me energy, brings new ideas in. You have not always an agenda where you basically just run it through. You have people around to help you because you're not very good. I can't program Python, but my colleagues can. You just ask them, you have a minute in digital environment, you miss this. So I guess we lost a little bit in this respect. The connectivity and the innovation and the energy level. I think we need to adjust this. I think this hybrid work mode, you need to find the right way. I'm very lucky with the team I have because it's treasurers. I don't need to motivate them. They're very highly educated, they are really driven, but of course they move to different cities now. It's a bit harder to bring them together. And we see slippage, we see slippage and I think this is very important because slippage in the way is a sense of urgency. Sometimes you move, then I say, okay, I'm in the office Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I'm not in the office. So let's move it to next week instead of doing it on Friday because you're anywhere in the office. Right. This is a bit the tendency what I see in corporates and there's a lot of discussions now in Germany in particular going on because the labor unions are coming from that angle. Okay, we made a rule and now we are sticking to this rule. I think the flexibility is important. I don't need the people to be around me. I need making the free choices, doing a fantastic job, but no slippage, no moving of sense of urgency because we are in a competitive environment and this competitive environment needs that. We are fully engaged in this regards and it put the focus on it. And I think this is a where I'm a bit worried how we actually, particularly in a very regulated environment use that because I think we can have all the freedom. It's just how do you balance it.

Out to make sure it works?

Yeah, I kind of hope within the next sort of 18 months or so we stop talking about this at the top of your conversation and it just becomes, yeah, I was very old fashioned in the days before COVID If I was at work, I was at work. If I was at home, I was at home. But at the time we first went into lockdown, so March 2020, I'd been taking our six, seven months or so. We were a March year end. So I'm sitting and thinking we're gonna have to close the books, get audited. You had a letter from the FRC about last year's account to come in and he think, I don't know how this is going to work from home. It works incredibly well. And like I mentioned the project I was working on at my time, we sold half of the company, soup to nuts, remotely. Everything done virtually through things. And I think that it made people aware that you can, you don't have to be physically present, you don't have to be physically present all the time. You can still make it work. I think now we're finding the right balance in most companies. I'm always surprised when I hear people saying we're mandating five days a week back in office because you think that's not necessary. But equally flexibility cuts two ways. I get just as frustrated when I hear people complaining about having to come in a day a week or a couple of days a week. I think particularly as you're building your career or you've got lots of more junior staff working for you, you need to impress on them, don't underestimate the impact of being together in a room with other people. So particularly if an inquisitive person that wants to get on, it's a kind of slightly lazy expression. But there's this process of osmosis that you can learn why just by sitting with other people and hearing what's going on. I certainly benefited from that in my career. So I think now we've got the mix about right. Exactly. As Wolfgang says, I take a view that I employ bright hard working adults and bright hard working adults to know if they need to be at home or know if they need to be in the office or whatever else it may be. So it worked pretty well. The other thing I do gently remind my team about from time to time, if they're grumbling about, we now have a three day a week in the three day in the office per week policy. I think you also have to look out across a broader organization. And I say look at Tesco, we have 320,000 people who have no choice about where to work. Right. They have to show up every day in store. And by the way, that was equally true through the pandemic as well. So I think it's very easy to look at things just through a corporate lens. And I think having an appreciation of the rest of the organization that doesn't have the luxury that I view of sitting in a nice office at a top of my house appreciating that from time to time was really important.

I think this evening proves that treasury professionals like to be in the room together, that we're going to collaborate afterwards, you're going to get other ideas. And when we've recruited for a number of our clients, it's a warning sign.

To us as well.

Someone said, I want 100 remote and I want to be in Treasury. I'm like, okay, here's somebody else's number. Because at the end of the day it gives you a message that they probably aren't right for Treasury. There might be a technical discipline they would be, but treasury by its very nature is collaborative and that's what we get all this different knowledge when I do the podcast and that's what I've got so many times. You know, when I started the podcast six and a half years ago, I thought was a pretty good recruiter. Now I'm a really good recruiter because I really understand so far I'm still work in progress Now I understand 350 different treasurers and people said, oh, when's it going to stop? It's not stopping, it's I thought we do 10 and actually when I go to the conferences, within 10ft of me are 10 different treasures and everyone's got a different story. You all use the same tools but in a totally different way. Debt laden, cash rich, private, decentralized. That's why it's so fascinating. But going back to you guys and technology, we're going to jump into this. I'm not going to do AI, as you said, it's as tired as hybrid. What I was going to say is I know that you and the. We're coming a bit of commodities because obviously that's a big thing for both businesses and things like that. You have integrated talent into that area as well. It's going to do that a bit about technology and then come to yourself, Wolfgang, as well a little bit more because a bit of an award winner or some of the team and things. So we're going to come into why you think that's quite important or some of the projects you've done as well. So with yourself, Andy.

Yeah. So given that you called out Kyriba being in the room, I should say we implemented Kyriba.

Yeah, there you go. Thank you for sponsoring us, Guy Reba. Thank you very much.

Works very well. The biggest investment that we've made in technology, in finance more broadly at Tesco, in Tesco, more broadly, interestingly, is it's actually invested in people. So I mentioned earlier, we have a big Tesco business Services, a GBS operation in Bengaluru and our enterprise analytics team is almost entirely based out out there. So when we set up the shared service center 14, 15 years ago, longer than that, maybe 20 years ago, it was all set up out of salary arbitrage opportunity. Whereas actually now the Indian universities are far better than universities in the UK at churning out graduates who are literate in all of these new contemporary ways of working. And the same is true of our machine learning team and our enterprise analytics team and the stuff that they can build for you really quickly has amazed me. So when I first started at Tesco, we were wrestling with what should we do with respect to our kind of energy hedging position. And I had a chance conversation with a guy called Venkat who is our enterprise analytics director in India, and he said, give me a couple of hours. And we were, I was hypothesizing about the different things that I thought might impact energy price and he built a really simple model in a couple of days that we genuinely use that year to determine the percentage that we would hedge. And it's the speed at which we can apply those technologies that really amaze me. But the most important thing is the investment in people.

And what it was tongue in cheek, but we'd had a conversation about there were a number of awards team as well, because it's actually giving recognition of things. And I know that was for some of the technology you guys have brought in. What's that been like for you guys? And why is that so powerful?

Yeah, it was not all about technology, but I think it's about the team as well. We did the transformation right. We had so many different topics, but one of the things is, you know, Porsche is a 40 billion company and we have over 50, 55% is FX. Yeah. So it's. It's huge implication, a very huge focus how we manage that. We don't have a big team, so you need to have the right team as well. We have the FIS and Quantum for risk management purposes and we had to implement that. We went out of Volkswagen, which they have a different system. So we build it from green greenfield approach up. I knew this system before, but my team basically did the whole evaluation. It came just by coincident out with the same, let's say provider than what we had before. But at the end of the day is it's the basis what we have right now. I always say it's only the basis the processes and the basis needs to be right in order to build on that of artificial intelligence. And there are a few people as well with data science in my team, which is amazing for me. When I look back in asset management, for example, I need an answer for something and half an hour later I get a presentation, one, two slides and I was like, okay, man, they do it with Python, artificial intelligence or GTP today in order to build that very quickly. And it's right too if you have the right data sources. In technology, In treasury, in 25 years, on and off in finance and different finance functions as well is continuously on the way where you actually find new tools, new developments and it's just actually progressing. And now we're in a new age as well. I was just last week in. In Asia again because I think in that angle and especially in Singapore and so on, we. They are thinking in a different way than we think here. I agree as well. In India they have so many technology technicians as well and fantastic universities where you can actually tap into that. So we are happy where we are, but we are not applying a lot of artificial intelligence yet because it's more really how do you actually build up from the company enterprise perspective. A private cloud which we are not totally ready and there's other companies out there. They are totally leapfrogged. Yes.

Treasury being in the spotlight. I wrote an article a number of years ago where I talked about the spotlight being on Treasury. There's a crisis, everything else and then oh actually crisis over. We've had Ukraine, it's a thousand days now and that threw the spotlight onto treasury and there's been other situations. We had Covid. We've had all these different things. Global financial crisis before that and everyone comes to treasury and then everyone takes a breath and it gets a lot better and things. How do you both keep the spotlight on treasury or do you when you're going through that? I know that Treasury's not back office function, it's a critical function but sometimes it can be taken for granted a little bit. And this is these guys in the room that are thinking, yeah, how do we keep front of mind for a cfo? We'll go to Andy maybe first on this and then sure.

Treasury is always front of mine at Tesco if It were a 4% operating margin business. So you can't afford to get. It amplifies the importance of Treasury. You can't afford to get those calls wrong because there's nowhere in the P L to hide. Hide if you do so we don't. I don't necessarily recognize that there's time when things are straightforward and easy and therefore the role of treasury is less important. I also think we're living in a increasingly uncertain, increasingly volatile world and I look back over the last five or six years at least I can't think of any time where stuff felt passive, which I think for treasurers is brilliant because you become the trusted advisor of the cfo, you become a trusted advisor of the CEO, you become a trusted advisor of the executive committee. Every time that there's a speculation who's going to win the US election, what's Rachel Reeves going to say in the next budget? It's a really. What's the right way of describing it? It's a very privileged place to be that those things happen. And the first person that the CEO and CFO or someone the exec committee calls is the treasury function.

In our case, I consider three KPIs where we have a huge impact. Right. One is the hours related to FX management, commodity management because FX in our case is so huge. 10%, 20 billion up and down, 5% up and down is billions. So our margin in total is 7 billion 12 billion on the FX would be huge. Right. So that's the first thing. Second thing is net cash flow. Net cash flow is on the forefront, is driving really the company value at the end of the day, capital, and it's on the capital market, very important. So we changed that over the years as well. When I arrived at Porsche, we had a net liquidity as a target. Net liquidity is for treasury, very important, but not for the company per se, not for the organization, because cash is basically what it really drives and that's what drives the value of a company. At the end of the day, the shareholders want to know how much dividends they are going to have and whether you apply the cash properly and what kind of investments you're going to do. And then the third one is the financial result. So financial result is maybe a lesser importance in this regards. It depends in what area, how, how much funding you have maybe to do. But it's of course very important for the earnings per share perspective. We have, let's say, developed a very. I sometimes my boss is much more in strategic topics, so I have a lot of leeways. So we are very important from strategic perspective. But as a treasurer, and that's what I always say is the best, is if you don't have sleepless nights. Right. From the liquidity perspective, from the FX perspective that you have basically here, this already set out. And you need to think very strategically advanced because if there is a crisis and then you start on doing things when you are hyperventilating, it's like diving. You jump in the water, you're not prepared, you're going under, you're not going to be calm in the water and say what I'm going to do. And I think as a treasurer, that's what you need to be. You need to really think advanced, strategically, have solutions in place if there's a crisis that you don't need to hyperventilate at that point of time.

And that's. You was going to ask then about the strategy going forward. There are challenges, you and I talked before for your industry and for Treasury. What do you think are the main key challenges for you, Wolf? Going for? Maybe for the company, but then also for treasury going forward. We're going to come to Q and A in a minute as well. And then we'll come to Andy from you.

So our industry is on a huge transformation. Yeah. It's maybe everything coming at the same time. It seems a bit. It's electric vehicles. Right. So it's geopolitically different regions there's tariff implications and technological differences as well between the region because in the past you can imagine and that's where we came from as a luxury sports vehicle manufacturer. We produced and engineered the cars in in Germany and we exported it because everybody around the globe they just love our cars. Now unfortunately it is not the same case anymore. The US has a different perspective, the consumer perspective. The Chinese have a different just to take this too have a different perspective in terms of what they expect from the electric vehicle, from the connectivity perspective. And so you need to be agile and just to this now geopolitically differences as well. If you have tariffs what does it mean from the supply chain from the value chain perspective as well. And that has implications for treasury how these of yeah just to name maybe one is how do you fund your suppliers? Because your suppliers they need to. You need to bring them along in this transformation and you need to have the suppliers they are still producing and helping you to produce for the next 10, 15 years. ICE car on the other hand, you need to have new suppliers coming in.

How is the treasury does in this room. But what should they be doing? Reaching out to the business.

Yeah, yeah. You need to be a business partner. You need to really listen and being close to them. This is main job of mine is to really be close to the business and understand what their needs is and how I can actually create value in terms of a risk management perspective. But finding a financing perspective and offering solutions or have solutions already in it somewhere in the drawer. Because sometimes you're trying to push to the business solutions they don't want it. Okay. So you can push very hard but it doesn't help. So maybe you have somewhere something in a drawer when the time is right then you can go and implement it easy as well. But then you are valued strategic partner as well.

And we will get takeaways about so Q and A then takeaways. But Andy, yourselves.

Yeah, we have some immediate challenges. The Chancellor helpfully dumped a couple of hundred million pounds worth of cost in our P and L Y with the change in national insurance a couple of weeks ago when you were razor thin margin business like we are those challenges that you deal with. But look, I think Tesco as an organization has proved in the past that it deals well with their uncertainty. And I I think that the kind of the secret is reacting to those challenges better than your competitors. So there's some immediate challenge to deal with. I think that the technological change in grocery retailing is clearly not as profound as an organization like Wolfgangs. But I think as human beings, and I'm sure I covered this on the podcast, we're becoming increasingly impatient as a species. Who I did myself. You order something on Amazon and you get irritated if it's not coming the next day. And that's only going to get harder and harder. Right. So again, being able to navigate that change in behavior through technology is incredibly important and I always give a plug for it. But Tesco, we run a rapid delivery service now called Whoosh. So you can order your groceries and they come. I think it's small print, it says in as little as to 20 minutes, but it's pretty bloody quick. And I think that those are things that you have to get right.

Okay, audience, you've got this amazing opportunity. So Katie, with the There you go, nice and bright, where you are, questions from the audience, please.

I want to know what Wolfgang's favorite car is before we get to which.

Model of car, know which. You can do that in the bar into the microphone.

So everybody, can you hear me?

Yes.

My name is Victoria, I work at for Mercedes Benz for quite a few years, also in Asia Pacific, based in Singapore and Tokyo. And I have a technical question to Vulcan. So Mercedes Benz approach in terms of fax hedging, we had a natural hedge, so we would usually reinvest the capital within markets we are working on. And I noticed it even from my time in Singapore, you usually take a very different approach and just would like to know the reason why. Such a different strategy from very similar companies.

Cool.

Yeah, this is actually a very good question. Thank you very much. One big difference is we are not a volume car manufacturer, Right. So we produce around about 300,000 cars. In order to look into a new production site and new facilities in a different region. In order to do natural hatching, you should have around about 100,000 cars. So when you look at borscht, it's 300,000 cars. We have six different models and a lot of different derivatives. The 911, for example, you have a 911 Turbo, just to name a few. Then you have a Cabrio, you have a GT3, you have a lot of different derivatives and you have the same on the Cayenne side, a similar thing. So we don't have enough production volume in order to go into different regions to do a natural hedging. We looked at it, but this is basically not necessary. That's why we have a very different hedging strategy, which is in this regard, all the production is in euro. And that's why Our FX exposure is very high and that's why it's very much a big focus from our perspective to really make sure that we have here a long term perspective on that.

And it's not. Is it an unfair question what your favorite Porsche is or the answer?

No, it's not an unfair question. I think we have fantastic cars throughout the models. No, but really when my drive and I drive and I drove a 911 but just returned it, now I have a Taycan which is an electric car. I drive a Taycan already since 5 years I have 2 cars. Fortunately my wife didn't like the 911 too much because we have 2 kids so she needs to have a Cayenne. This is luxury problems.

Any other questions? Yes, thank you. And we will be heading to the bar shortly so don't worry. I can see a few thirsty faces. We will be directing you the right ways shortly but yeah please your question.

Hi Sohail Shah, I'm a head of treasury accounting at Anglin Water. My question is mainly India related so.

When we talk about shared services or.

Gbss in India, I know technology is a big TS for India but do.

We have enough treasury shared services in India?

Yeah, sure. Look what I found in the time I've been at Tesco is it's amazed me just the capability that we have in our GBS in India and I think a significant part of our treasury back office function is based on there what we try to do in treasury and across the finance function is every time there's a vacancy opens up anywhere, even if that's the UK based role we're now flipping the question the other way around and why can't this be in our shared services? And so I put in stiff, I shouldn't call it a shared service center etc. We call it our global business center. And we found almost every time we're able to buy and invite people in far gbs and to do the roles. So it's then it becomes you get into this fantastic kind of virtual circle because once you do that we're giving people, you're removing that glass ceiling of the opportunity that exists in a GPS environment. And by my word your attrition metrics drop rapidly when you're able to open up the world of the rest of the organization to people that work enthusiasts.

I'm going to move to the takeaways for our panelists because then you can actually ask them one to one questions whether upstairs and things Andy, yours or your key take so you can go.

Through all of them, try and remember.

What I wrote now. I think a lot of these I've covered, right, the uncertain times. Your role makes a huge difference. You're only as good as your team. And over investing in your time in team development is massively important. I think that the biggest one I would. I probably haven't talked about that for me personally is really important is the bottom one, which is the importance of acting with integrity. And I have two kids who are 8 and 6 and they're getting to that age where if they need to, they can lie to get away with something. And I've been trying to say to them, actually, integrity is really important. And I always associate it as being, you do the right thing even if nobody is watching you.

So, Wolfgang, for you, I think I covered it pretty much as well. First one, I think strategically, I think very important. Treasury. When I look at Porsche, we have around about 40 people in Treasury. This is really business partnering. So you need to be part of a strategic and create strategic value and business value by thinking strategically. Be prepared is the mantra. Do your homework, make sure that you have some ideas and solutions in the table. What I really learned in China is one solution is not enough for two. You need to have a handful because it always changes regulation. And I think now we have it on a global scale even as well. One solution doesn't work. Be business partner. Working in your corner at home doesn't get you anything or anywhere. You really need to reach out, get information, know how or what the business needs. So being a business partner is absolutely extremely necessary. Be trusted partner and then hire the best people. You can't do it alone. Yeah. And the best I can relax when my people are working and they know what to do and they actually drive me and ask me that I can help them, then I know that the team is working and I don't get many calls. That's the other thing I have had at some point of time, manager told me, okay, I like when people call me. I say, I don't like when people call me because then I have a problem most of the time. And I know that the organization is not mature enough at that point of time. The best is actually that you can create new things or they come to you and say, I need your help.

Okay, my slide now, some of you will have already seen it. It's not really changed very much. And actually Carly, who you've all had emails from, has said, oh, do you want to change this? I went, no, actually, mine is first of all, still, give yourselves a pat on the back for actually being here today. There were a few people. I said, someone before, apparently we're all snowed in, it's a blizzard outside. Because someone said. And I would look to them. And I said, where is. Where. Where's this lady based? She's based in London, so be careful out there. Yeah, Abominable snowman and all that. And she went, oh, it's the snow and the trays. I went, really? But you've made the effort and actually invested this hour with these amazing treasurers. But then connection going upstairs in a minute. I jokingly all say, I'll have a beer and things, but do. Because otherwise you can. In a minute, you can just go get the down escalator, you can just leave. We were saying before, oh, what if people. If you want to leave, go. There's free booze upstairs, but secondly, there's free advice. There's other colleagues that treasury is collaborative. You can actually get some. You can connect with people and take some notes. I talk about this lots with Chris Fulton, great networker in the us. He always makes a note on his phone or takes a business card. You might meet someone up there that could be your next colleague, could be someone that works for you, might be your next boss. Just by investing this time, essentially investment in yourselves. That's one of the key things where.

You were going to stop with that, Mike, colleague, next boss.

No, that's it. No, we're just stopping there. But send me your CVS and then follow up as well. So when. If you make a good connection tonight, refer to it on LinkedIn. Don't just send them a quick automated connection request, actually follow up and go, oh, we met at this. Love to be part of your network and follow up. You guys are great networkers. You proved it by being here. I want you to put your hands together for these amazing unless. And there you go. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode just as much as I did, recording it with another amazing guest. And feel free to sign up through wherever you get your podcast through Spotify, Apple podcast, wherever it is and keep on listening. Thank you very much for your support. Now, before you move on, I wanted to let you know how you can stay ahead in the treasury world. So you'll see in our show notes how you can sign up for our Treasury Recruitment newsletter. It'll give you immediate access to our 2025 Treasury Salary Trends white paper in there. We've got assessment of things coming from the salary survey, but we actually go back over the past 20 years. We look at some of the insights there. We then also can give you some strategic career advice. We give you bonuses like access to CV and resume templates, things to basically help you with your treasury career. If you go there, we'll put it in the show notes, but it's you go to our newsletter on our website as well as the newsletter you might be looking for your next role. If you are. Well, that's what we do and we do it best. So reach out to us if you want to. For the US roles, you go to joe@treasuryrecruitment.com For European roles you go to Katie treasury recruitment.com the UK and more senior positions come to me Mike treasury recruitment.com or go to the website treasure recruitment.com Feel free to connect with us in person. We're going to be doing a number of upcoming events and conferences throughout 2025. Got more news coming your way about some exciting plans we've got as well. So give us a call, drop us an email. Thanks for your support. We'll see you at the next event. Until next week, anything.