The Benefits of Pursuing a Treasury Career Abroad with Brendan Boucher

Foreign.

Welcome to today's Treasury Career Corner podcast with the lovely Brendan Boucher, who is the group treasurer, Compass Group. We're about to go into the original episode that we recorded back in August 2020 during the pandemic and they were just about to turn a corner as a business, but food services business. So really hit hard. Covid19 but then they came back. You'll hear that at the end of the episode. We pick up the story from there in another 40 minutes or so. So enjoyed today's episode. Let's get on with it.

This week's show I'm joined by Brendan Boucher, group treasurer at Compass Group. Compass Group, a world leading food and support services company. Footsie 100 listed company. Well, I was going to give you annual revenues, but I'm not going to do that. I'd rather talk a bit more about Brendan. He's been the group treasurer of company since January 2018. But prior to this, and again we'll explore in the show because we've got some really interesting moves there. Group treasurer, AstraZeneca Petrofact based in Dubai, OMV over in Vienna. So it's really encompassed the international moves and things like that. But also chartered accountant, fellow of the act. And that's where we are out to really with Brendan. I want to go back to the dim distant days and how you got there. So Brendan, take us back to the beginning of your career and how you first got started in finance and then discovered the wonderful world of Treasury. Sir, over to you.

Yeah, thanks Mike. I mean, lots of luck along the way. But just in brief, I studied geology at university, so clearly not a relevant degree, but I joined Coopers and Lybrand, showing my age now, which you'll now know as PwC. So I did my training down in Bristol for five years and really what sort of kick started it all on from for me from there. So this secondment to the office in Moscow back in 1995 and it was a real eye opener, having worked it down in sort of a regional office in Bristol for five years, four months in Moscow one summer really opened my eyes up to life outside of Bristol and what I'd been used to. So I looked for a move at that point into industry and I luckily I ended up in Glaxowelcome in West London, a big pharma company back in the day and started working as a head office financial accountant, doing consolidations and tax returns, VAT returns, reporting to group and all of this good stuff, good role, great company and I Lucked into Treasury. I think it's the best way to describe. Just came about because my predecessor in the treasury role had. We'd done some work together on implementing a car scheme in the UK business. He moved on internally and was looking for somebody to replace him and he gave me a call. I'd had some interaction with treasury and I went and had lunch with him. He described the role and what the team do in more detail and I said, it sounds brilliant, it sounds absolutely great, I'm super interested. Went and had an interview and I didn't get the job. And from being enthusiastic about it, I was really disappointed about it. But such as luck, sometimes the guy they offered the job to didn't take it. He went elsewhere and I got the job. That was my move into Treasury. It was my move from a business unit into the head office of glaxowelcome. And that's how I started. My first job in treasury was as Regional Treasury Manager for Middle east and Eastern Europe. So basically not doing a front office role or a back office role, but just doing an international advisor role. So I was very lucky to get that opportunity and that was my start in Treasury.

And you grew there, sort of your experience. And actually, it's funny, we were just talking before the show that Brendan used to work with Sarah Chain, who was our first ever guest, Sarah Jane hall from glassesmithkline. And we were just going through about what she was like and everything else. Fabulous lady. But, you know, you then started your development and just talk us through your GSK time, because that was, I mean, amazing that early in your career and you get GSK. What were they at the time? Were they FTSE 10 even then?

Yeah, definitely, you know, so Glexo Wellcome merged with SmithKline Beecham to form GSK. I came from the legacy GW side, Sarah Jane, who was the group treasurer post merger, and the other assistant treasurers. My title in GSK was Assistant Treasurer International, which was a great role. So as an expansion of my Middle east and Eastern Europe portfolio to cover the international region. So that was in GSK terms at the time, everything other than Europe and the Americas. So some interesting geographies in that portfolio. And, you know, frankly, it was almost like changing companies. Completely different office, different colleagues, different boss, different environment. It was an amazing, you know, I spent 10 years in total with GSK and predecessors. An amazing company to work for. Highly successful, totally international, very blue chip and very professional. So it was a great environment in which to sort of learn and to Evolve from looking after a small portfolio of countries to a large portfolio and over time picking up experience and increasing sort of responsibility for other things in treasury, whether that was line management of the back office, which I did in gsk, or obviously the funding and risk management aspects.

And as you say, it was sort of. It was opportune that you moved companies, but didn't you stay same company? But again, it sounds like you got real progression there.

Yeah, no, definitely. I think this is a key for me in terms of my own experience and we'll talk about, you know, how people need to sort of develop their careers, but getting as much different experience in different places with different people. Particularly, one, it's been very interesting and two, it's really helped drive my career forward and, you know, that was pivotal.

Part of it and so it drove me forward. You know, then talk us through your time, because then you made the international move after that. But there was development at GSK, you know, what was that like up to 06 and stuff?

Yeah, I think the development was great. You reached a decision point. I was assistant treasurer. Sarah Jane was no intention of moving on. Sarah Jane, still the group treasurer. So probably a good move that I did make a move rather than sort of hanging around, potentially move up internally. But no, joking aside, I had a decision to make to prolong my GSK career, which meant doing something a bit different, or to pursue my treasury career, which really meant an external move. And I deliberated on it a lot and decided actually the things that I enjoy about treasury were still the things I was enjoying about Treasury. Therefore, I decided I turned down an internal move into the business and that really was a springboard to make an external move. So I started looking and again, I was lucky. Obviously, a good background in GSK and a lot of hard work and experience along the way helped. But I had a call regarding a job and I remember talking to the recruiter, went through the spec in detail and I said, it all sounds great. And he said, but there's a catch. I said, okay, what's the catch? And he said, well, it's an Austrian company. And I said, okay, I understand. I don't speak German. I get the catch. He said, no, no, that's not the issue at all. It's an international company, but you'd need to move to Vienna. And I said, that's even better. Without really thinking it through, I thought, that's fantastic. So I was very lucky.

I was able to make the move.

From assistant treasurer to group treasurer via an external move. And to put into the mix, changing sectors. So I moved from pharma to oil and gas and changing countries from London and the UK to Vienna, Austria.

And what was it you say, you know, you were open to that move? Had you considered international news before? Was that sort of completely out the blue something again? Because we talked earlier on and we're just saying that treasury in your back pocket is fantastic, sort of your mini passport, if you like, to traveling the world. But, you know, had you thought that yourself or where were you in that thought process?

To be honest, I was looking for a group treasurer role. An interesting group treasurer role. I think, having worked in gsk, very international group, that was a strength, given the experience that I'd had and something I'd already enjoyed. It's not just about the occasional travel to some interesting places, but just the daily contact and interaction with colleagues from all parts of the globe. I really enjoyed that. So the international aspect was a bonus. It wasn't something I was absolutely looking for at the time. The more I thought about it, I thought, this is a great opportunity, but a leap of faith. I think there are a lot of people that would say, yeah, I'd like to work internationally, but to do it as part of a change of company and a change of industry and a change of job level, in this case from 80 to group treasurer takes a little bit of courage. And it was a step into the unknown and sort of looking back on it, that whole experience was probably the most challenging of my career and probably the most rewarding in my career in sort of equal measures. And it certainly requires a strong stomach to take that on.

You had the stomach for it. So you were there for what, three years or so? And what was that like when you got into Treasury? There was a fresh team or brand new or the established team, or what was the sort of background.

It's a very established team, very stable team and a lot of experience. You know, it's probably the first time in my career, which may be what you'd expect when you make the step up to managing people with more, certainly, in terms of years, experience, more experience than yourself. So I had three teams, three direct reports, all with significantly more years under their belt and more experience than myself, which is. It's helpful from a learning perspective, introduces some challenges at the same time. So, yes, very, very stable team, very successful organization, but a big, big transition to make.

Yeah. So you made the move, you'd got yourself established in Vienna properly, feet under the desk and everything else, and then you made another international Move. Talk us about that.

Yeah, you know, as with these things, it was challenging and that period I was OMV coincided with the financial crisis. So it was pretty stressful going for a period where liquidity in the market dried up completely and free cash flow dried up completely with the oil price going from a 150 to 50 odd all at the same time. So it was a real, it was a real sort of challenging and it was a stressful period. And, you know, my wife and I decided, look, we're going to. We've had a great experience, loved living there, amazing work experience. That's the stage of our careers. Let's, let's head back to the uk. That was the plan. And I was. I had one of those sort of perfect storm situations, as I'd put out feelers, and I actually had three simultaneous job offers, believe it or not.

Mr. Popular.

Well, it was just one of those sort of strange situations, one that felt very familiar and comfortable, which had its attractions. One was a little bit smaller but different, which had its attractions. And one was petrofac, which again was something completely different. As a startup, there was no treasury function at all. And I mulled over for some time. I remember sitting on a boat on my 40th birthday in Lake Como, speaking to two of the companies who are both pressuring me for a decision. It's funny how you reflect back on these things, but I talked to a few people, got some external perspective to help, and once I'd really thought about it, the right thing to do was the. The sort of more challenging one, which again was petrofac. I turned the job down initially because they said, you need to go in to base yourself in the Middle East. And I said, look, part of the reason for my move is to come back to the uk. And the CFO called me one Sunday and said, look, why don't you give it a go? Why don't you go for a year, 18 months? Do you like us? We like you. Move yourself back to the UK safety net as well. Yeah, exactly. It's a British company, but the biggest part of the business run out of the Middle east, so hence a preference to have people on the ground there, albeit with corporate roles. And it was the right decision to make. So we moved directly from Vienna to Dubai, so couldn't be more of a contrast in terms of locations and from a very established role and company to a rapidly growing one and a Treasury startup. I was simultaneously group treasurer and group Treasury T boy at the same time. So it's Fine. It was a very interesting challenge, very interesting place to be. And, you know, frankly, having done, having had one international move and experience under my belt, making the second one was a lot easier. Just emotionally it was a lot easier being prepared and accepting of things being different and the known was just a lot easier.

And you, you went in and established this treasury, as you say, from, from scratch. What was that like in the, you know, for someone listening today, you know, think, oh, I might do that or.

Have I got the guts to do it?

You know, what are the sort of elements of that that you think people need to think about or, you know, not tempering their minds. But what are the, the key things? You sound like you're very open to this idea, although it's a brand new challenge. Boom, you know, you've done Vienna, now you're in the Middle East. You know, what are the things that you would. Someone else was doing the similar move and they're saying, oh, Brendan, what should I do? Or what do I need to think about? What would you say?

Well, I think just, you have to be prepared to be out of your comfort zone. That's the number one. I knew going to work in Vienna and you going to work in Dubai at the time were going to be different, but I couldn't articulate how they were going to be different. And you just have to be open minded and there's going to be some setbacks. My boss, when I moved to omv was a very experienced CFO and he said, you know, you're going to go home some days and say, what the hell have I done? Why did I come here? And my last day when I left the office, I sat with him, I said, I remember you telling me that. And there's plenty of days where I've gone home saying, you know, how are we going to deal with this situation? This is stressful. But there isn't one single day I've gone home and said, I regret making the move to come here. So I think that's kind of the attitude you have to, you have to have. You're going to have some setbacks. It's going to test your resilience and, you know, test your sort of your family and your support network. Because this may sound like a small point, but, you know, moving, if you've grown up in an area, you've got a network of family and friends around, you're suddenly overseas. Your only network in my case was my wife. So, you know, you become all things to each other and you know that could be good, it can be bad, it can certainly sort of test you out. But it's a sort of family close together because you're more reliant on one another to help through the sort of the ups and downs. I think that's what it is. You have to expect that the ups will be a bit higher and the downs might be a bit lower.

Challenging.

Yeah.

In terms of treasury diving into that, you said it was a startup in those terms. So what did you focus on? What was your 90 day plan, as it were, or if you remember back that far, but just in general when you walked into that sort of environment. Just want to do this briefly before we then make that other move to AstraZeneca. But again, if someone's listening in and they're wanting tips, say, oh, actually I'm going into a fresh treasury, as it were. What's your ethos, if you like, around going into that?

The organization has to be clear on what the mandate is. In this case there's a clear mandate for change and clear support from group cfo, who's my boss, downwards for change. So you have to have that in place to help it be successful. You also, I think have to be realistic because if you are making changes.

In that case there was an element.

Of taking what had historically been totally decentralized and responsibility for things like bank facilities, bank lines and all of that with the operating units and centralizing it, you're going to find some resistance to change from within the business. So again, it's not to say, look, that you're heading into a major conflict and a fight, but it is a case of setting out a sensible plan and to be patient. And the way I approached it was to set out a plan and to identify what absolutely should be the responsibility of the new group treasury function where the policy boundaries lied and get all that agreed at the high level in the room with the business units represented. Let's have the debate. Are we all agreed on this and then we can move forward and you know, recognize you're not going to be able to do everything all at the same time. And there may be resistance from parts of the business and of course I, and we experienced some of that as we went through, but just to sort of work it through and you know, you have to develop credibility. So people say, right, you take it on, that's fine, but you better do a better job than we've been able to do ourselves. And better job in some cases means cheaper price for the business. If you take it on and you don't deliver, then you're going to find more resistance again. You have to have the stomach for it. And sometimes to be firm and clear, manage expectations and be patient, you might say, I want to wave my magic wand and have full centralization in a year. It isn't going to happen. But just start off with the basics, chip away at it, get the credibility and then you move on to the next stage of building the team, building the infrastructure to support what you need to get done and moving the right.

Direction all the time as well. Yes, as you say. So you were there, what, five years or so?

Yes.

So you did five years Middle East. Why the move?

The key points. So we'd been outside of the UK for eight years, then we wanted to come back for family reasons, to be closer to our parents as they get a bit older. So I could have relocated with my existing job, just moved, having sort of established the function and the Treasury Group in Dubai, I could have relocated myself back to London and done the job from there. But just the fact that you say, okay, I'm going through the process of having to make another family move, physical move, let's at least have a discussion externally with what other things might be.

Be available.

And it just coincided with a call regarding AstraZeneca. And obviously having worked in pharma before I knew what I was going into, and again, also another great company, FTSE 5 Corporate, and again, some real changes to make as a result of a relocation of the team, in that case from London up to Cheshire. So in the end I enjoyed my petrofect time very much and enjoyed the people I worked with, good sort of prospects. But it was, it became a relatively straightforward decision to say, look, I have to make this move, it's a good opportunity, good time to join and going back into big pharma, you know, which. Which I spent 10 years and enjoyed in the past, was quite attractive as well. So, yeah, that's, that's how it came about. So we moved then directly from Dubai to Cheshire.

Again, you have the people listening. AstraZeneca, it's a massive pharmaceutical that is walked in, brand new team or where it was up to in its development stages.

Yeah, a lot of change in the team. The treasury function had historically been based in central London, was relocated at the time I joined to Cheshire, where the group tax and group finance functions had been for some time. So a mixture in a number of people were asked to and did relocate from London to Cheshire and a number of people didn't make the move. And Recruited locally in the Northwest. So, you know, clearly a period of lots of changes of personnel in the team and again another sort of physical move. So, you know, really the focus was not so much a radical overhaul of treasury, which was obviously in good shape. Systems, processes, ways of working. Embedding down a new group of people was a prerequisite there, following the movement.

And how do you do that? We talked earlier about establishing some of the stuff, more practical things about a new Treasury. But what's your people management ethos? Is it around just sitting down and getting to know everyone and being the cuddliest, friendliest treasury can be, or how do you actually do it?

I think it's a bit of all things one. I think with all of this, the whole sort of leadership angle, you have to be true to yourself. Absolutely. It's the wrong approach, in my opinion, to try and be who you aren't. You need to be sort of cognizant of your natural style, may need to be flexed from time to time. And, you know, I see myself as generally a fairly relaxed and sort of collegiate person, but certain situations call for a more direct approach. You know, that we're going to sort of specifics, but there were some sort of specifics and things. This is irritating. I don't want to see this, this way of working, I don't want to see this happening in the team. And you know, people down had some robust discussions, said that, you know, this has to stop. I remember an off site that we did in Chester over the course of a weekend where we set out the expectations and I was clear what I expected of the team. We all went through our sort of individual strengths and weaknesses, so we understood each other better. Not just sort of a team bonding session, but a mixture of that sort of soft skills, if you like, and dedicating the time to appreciating that everybody's different in the team. It was very helpful. And then, you know, we used it to have effectively a sort of a contract amongst ourselves, which was helpful. And we used more than once subsequently to that, to calling out behaviors which were not commensurate with what we'd agreed. So you have to be prepared to be robust. If you need to make changes, you need to make those changes. But sometimes you've got to work with what you've got. Right. You might be, you might say, I want to change the entire team, but I don't think that's the right approach. I think working with what you've got, developing people, giving opportunities and over time opportunities will naturally present themselves to change things around or give different people different exposures. And frankly, you need to obviously be cognizant of other people's development as well and make sure people are getting those opportunities. Because if you don't, they will leave, they will get them elsewhere.

We're there for that period of time and then AstraZeneca move. But you also then come to that with the move to join Compass and we'll sort of bring ourselves up to date there. And I think with Compass in particular, you perhaps describe it yourself, but you know, in the recent times with COVID and everything else, you made a move which you can describe if you would, and then with the sort of effect on. Let's talk about perhaps pre Covid and what you guys were doing and then during. And then coping. I think it's a lovely little sort of section of the show, as it were, because I think people will certainly really resonate with it as well because they'll probably be in very similar situations. So, you know, you were there for again, AstraZeneca for sort of three, four years or three years and they moved and things and, you know, talk us through that, if you would.

I don't mind saying a little bit sort of frustrating for all of us to have relocate on. People relocated from London to Cheshire. I moved internationally to Cheshire to lead the team and then within sort of three years we were asked to relocate again to Cambridge. That's quite a tough ask for people, quite frankly. And I'm not just talking about the treasury function in other areas. The uptake of people wanting to make the second move was relatively low. And yeah, again, it's frustrating. It's a brilliant company, great opportunity and we all enjoyed working there. But personal logistics sometimes dictate what people would want to do professionally. And that's what we were up against. And I felt a little bit bad by not making the move myself and choosing to leave. But it's one of those things, isn't it? Where do you want to locate yourselves? And Cambridge might work for some people, it doesn't work for everybody. That was difficult. You know, it's difficult to sort of maintain our performance as a function during another period of uncertainty. People making life changing decisions about whether to relocate or to move. And then as I was exiting, trying to recruit and help build the team, including my sort of successor in AstraZeneca in Cambridge. So, you know, a tricky balance, getting all of that right and keeping positive throughout. But, you know, my personal preference led me to make a change. I Didn't know much about Compass beforehand, but global catering company. We don't trade as Compass Group, but so you might not be familiar with the name, people listening in, but, you know, you almost certainly have eaten our food in, either in your office or if you've been to Wimbledon or Twickenham or Tottenham Hotspur stadium and many other sort of international locations, a global catering company. It was described to me as this is not a caretaker role. We need to make some important changes to improve the efficiency of the treasury operations. And that's precisely the path I and the team were on over the last couple of years before we hit Covid. And it's all sorts of things. Not a full centralization, very decentralized organization, just improving the interaction between the center and the businesses. Not being reactive and firefighting, but being proactive and partnering, putting in place new cash pool, new treasury management system, overhauling policies, et cetera, et cetera, and then just strengthening the team and the resilience and the capacity for the team, succession planning and all of this. And we making good progress and then obviously run into the COVID situation. Obviously this is a hospitality business. We found ourselves quite significantly impacted. And since the beginning of April, about 50% of our global business has been closed. So you need a significant shift into a way from profit margins and incremental improvements to a real external and internal focus on liquidity covenants and the things that are bread and butter to treasury professionals, but not necessarily to our board and IR colleagues who are talking to external community analysts and investors regarding things like liquidity and covenant tests and so on. So it was a very challenging period. Obviously, everybody, many, many others are in the same category. Of course, we had to do a lot very quickly and just sort of reflecting back on it in that period at the end of middle of March, the office had technically closed. We'd gone into lockdown. The only people left in the office were the CEO, CFO and a few of us from the treasury team, which probably tells you a lot about where the focus was at the time. Our initial projections of what we thought we may need, and that was based on input from the businesses, of course, we came up with a number. Our CEO said you need to double it in terms of liquidity. Really, it's kind of sharp intake of breath. So we did a lot in a very short space of time and just to sort of raffle them off. Incremental credit Facility, bank of England, Covid Corporate finance facility. We were, I think, the first corporate to access that program. At 1 minute past 10 on the day that the window opened for issuance.

You're doing the speed calling like you do for concert tickets. Hey, is that. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. And I think that's the key thing here is sort of identifying where we were going and responding really rapidly. Okay. Every bank was being asked for additional liquidity. Some of your banking partners in our case more helpful than others. It was pretty challenging to put credit facilities in place at the end of March this year. So we did that. The bank of England facility covenant waivers and we negotiated financial covenants from our bank facility last year. Smart move. With hindsight, we had legacy covenants in our US private placements which since initiation in 2011 had never had any airtime and we'd operated miles inside of those covenants. All of a sudden the latest projections say you might have an issue. So going through the covenant waiver process as part of going concern debate for the half year end for the audit. A lot of time spent with the board going through liquidity and our response and then culminated in a 2 billion accelerated equity placing which I think is the largest equity placing in the UK as a response to sort of COVID and all that done in a sort of 10 week period which was continually intense and moving from one sort of stressful project to another. But if you sort of as soon as you can reflect back on it, I'm sort of, I'm really proud of the team for the resilience and the ability to step up when asked. And I said when we went into this, when we first started working from home, this is our time in the spotlight and we need to step up. And again, not every single person in the team was directly involved in all of the projects. But even if people weren't, they were picking up the slack where other people were focused on some of those crises projects. It was, it's sort of good indication of. Indication that good people in place with the right experience and frankly the right attitude to step up and to work with that immediacy and laser like focus when it's required. And that for me is the most rewarding part of it. I think we were able to step up to the challenge and really sort of help put the company in a good place now and moved on to. There are plenty of challenges ahead, but at least liquidity, balance sheet and all the things that we can control as the treasury team. We're in good shape on. So it's been, it was certainly challenging, definitely. But it was very rewarding to see the response.

And as you come out of it now, what are the sort of plans for the future? Who knows? Was slowly returned to normal, if that's the right way to put it. But as we move forward, how is the business recovering? You know, how's treasury sort of planning for the future?

Sort of, yeah.

We don't have the crystal ball on when our business comes back. We don't know when people will be back to mass sporting events. We don't know when people will be fully back into their offices eating our food. And indeed whether there are some structural changes with more working from home going forward, sort of changing the business model a bit. So all we've been able to do is to organize our balance sheet and liquidity, et cetera, to say, look, we're well placed to deal with it, even if this situation pertains for many years to come. So that's the first thing we can do. I think we have to take some learnings from all of this and one that when push comes to shove, we can move more quickly. Sometimes big companies can be rightly accused of being a bit slow to make changes, but when you're really sort of faced with it, you can do things very rapidly. The right level of interaction across the business, so we shouldn't lose sight of that going forward. And, you know, it's a reminder that we need to be as efficient as we possibly can on the basics and free up our. I think the philosophy for us is use the technology that's available, automate not the day jobs, but automate the processes as far as we can so that we can maximize using a relatively small resource. We're not a big team to better support the business, and that has to be something we continue focusing on going forward.

How do you filter that? And again, just to put in perspective, I sometimes talk about CFOs, not pushing the treasury under the bus, but pushing you out in the front of being their filter for technology, being their filter for new initiatives, and saying that we talked about this again, that you very much are at the forefront of a lot of financing and initiatives and this fresh technology, and you go, is this right? You're constantly looking at what would be the return on investment if we did move to this system, or is it driven by the business and actually we need to implement this to make it work, or what's the sort of thought process, would you say?

I think it's hard and I think it's getting increasingly hard with the way the technology is sort of developing. You know, one is obviously a great enabler for some of the Basics. But if you take our situation, decentralized company, lots of different ERP platforms around the place, so no uniform ERP solution. So we're the opposite end of centralization when it comes to consistency of processing and access to information. So obviously that's a business issue. It's not something we could necessarily drive from the treasury side. So we have to sort of step back and say, well, what's important to us? Where can we add some value? So just as a small example, we put in place a notional cash pool over the last couple of years. It might not be sort of seen as state of the art and full physical centralization of cash, but it reflects our organization and is a relatively quick win effort to put it in. But it's a relatively quick win to get most of the benefits without disrupting what's going on in the business. So you have to be sort of proportional. It won't be the same for everyone. Some people listening to that will say, why would you possibly have a notional cash pool these days? But it worked for us, it got us most of the benefits with minimal disruption around the business. In a low margin business and this hospitality is a low margin business, you have to be efficient with what you do. I think sort of picking between how the technology is developing. We are still at the point of putting in an upgraded treasury management system is our sort of core system and hopefully we've got that decision right and hopefully with the capabilities to build and integrate going forward with that system, you can't do everything all at the same time. So we sort of broken down it. Let's do the cash pool, let's do the treasury management management system and then let's see where we are and see how it evolves from there.

We're coming towards the end of the show and what we'll do is we'll put on the, we'll put Brendan's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But before we get your top three tips, if you like, for people, if they want to, you know, follow a similar career to yourself. But just back from that, just for a moment, you know, just with yourself. You've been through this amazing journey of treasury and it's taken you around the world literally. Again, you know, what are your thoughts just on being a treasurer and why it's such a great profession? Because we talked about this and we were just saying that it's a blessing and a curse sometimes as well. You know, we were just talking about the fact that, you know, all treasurers do exactly the Same job, the same way with the same title and they don't, you know, it's all different ways and different challenges, which is in itself is fantastic. But you then came up and we were then talking about, you were saying that it literally has been the way.

To take you around the world as a person.

So just reflecting on that for the listeners today, what are your thoughts?

Well, I think what first attracted me when I had that first discussion before I moved into treasury sort of over 20 years ago now, the things I felt attracted me at the time, it's like it's forward looking, it's externally focused, it's highly international. If you're in a large international group, of course, and it's impacted by external events which can make it challenging, but it also makes it very relevant. What's going on in the wider world to a lesser or greater extent has an impact on what we do. I like the external focus, the relationships, whether it's with banks, other stakeholders, rating agencies, it's another dimension to the role. And I think being in the corporate HQ gives you sort of excellent insight to the business. Obviously you have good access to senior leaders and the board. There's a lot of individuals that I interact with on a day to day basis where you're continually learning from, whether that's sort of business knowledge, technical knowledge or just their leadership approach. And I think it's a great place to see all of that and good level of internal collaboration as well. One of the things, we work closely with other corporate functions and with other parts of the business as well. Each of the countries across, we're in 45 countries and have interaction with all of them from time to time. And I think also there is an ability to make a real difference whether that's financially. We've tweaked around with our FX and interest policies and delivered some material savings as a result. Same on the insurance side, efficiency of operations. If we can make our lives easier and the lives easier of all of our operating companies around the group, then so much the better. So I think the principles of what happens in treasury, what we do, the risks that we manage, somewhat similar to when I started, the way we go about it is quite different now with more technology and as you say, this is a transferable skill. To a lesser or greater extent, every large company will need a Treasury resource and as I've sort of proven to myself and evidence of, you can do this role in, in pretty much any country, language barriers aside and pretty much any sector, the nuances and the specifics will be different. But having that sort of transferable skill is, you know, I found sort of. It's helped have a really sort of rewarding and interesting, interesting career. And I can't really see that changing for treasury professionals.

Now, does that give you three tips or everything else? I mean, we will put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. I didn't want to interrupt because I thought it was great, but, you know, if someone is looking at that, you know, what, what would you more on just a real individual basis. So say you're sitting there and again, a lot of our UK listeners tend to be, earlier on in their careers, more treasury manager level, wanting to one day get your role. And some of the US listeners, which is a big part of the listenership as well, you know, they will have listened into your war stories and some of the stuff you've talked about, because that's again, when I've spoken to them, they said, that's what we want to hear about. My. But maybe for the earlier, those listeners, earlier in their careers, what sort of tips would you give or what, you know, what summaries would you say?

Yeah, I think three things. I mean, one, get involved. I think that's the key thing people should focus on doing in their current roles. I would encourage people, and I do encourage people, irrespective of their level. I think people should be able to talk with confidence about what the function does, what's important, what are the key or topical issues and how they impact the business. If people aren't thinking in that way, they're not trying to understand the business and be able to articulate it. Let's just say you were stuck in a lift with the CEO and they said, well, what's going on in Treasury? People should be knowledgeable, irrespective of who they are and where they sit in the treasury hierarchy. That level of curiosity, if you like, I think is key. Secondly, I would encourage people to get as broad an experience is possible, whatever that means, do different roles in the function, move around, don't say, oh, I don't have any experience to do that, either get the opportunity or do some job shadowing or do some sharing or put in place a buddy system where you cover from somebody when they're on leave or something like that, just to broaden your experience. And thirdly, it doesn't necessarily have to mean changing jobs, but in my case, that certainly benefited me significantly. You know, we talked a bit about the international experience, that that's a bonus, but it does definitely increase your confidence Your ability to deal with different situations. And I just sort of reflect and say, I was much better prepared to deal with this coronavirus crisis than I was the financial Crisis in, in 2008, simply because I got a lot more experience and picked up a lot of. A lot more sort of scars along the way. And just you have the sort of confidence and robustness to deal with it and over and above that. Changing jobs might sound scary, it might not be the easiest. The easy thing might be to do is to stay put. But I found it hugely rewarding as well. It's a steep learning curve each time you make a move, particularly if you're going into something unfamiliar, but something, if you adopt it with the right attitude, one, it will benefit your career significantly and two, you find it hugely rewarding. You just have to be flexible and accept the ups and the downs.

Yeah, well, great summary there. So make sure you understand the business. So if you bump into the CEO in the lift, love that one. Don't be afraid to work across roles, so, you know, cross train, as it were, and as you say, don't be afraid to make the move when needed and it'll prepare you for the future. Amazing. Great final summary there from Brendan. Mr. Boucher, thank you for your time today. Been truly just a natural flow to it and I really enjoyed it, as I do with a lot of the shows, but we've known each other for many years, but I just think it just sort of flowed. I think there were so many sections that people can just grab value from, whether it's about managing people, managing a crisis, you know, we could. Well, we'll release some of these as little mini excerpts sort of thing which people can listen out for. So that all remains. Thank you very much, sir. Been great to chat.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, sir.

So I hope you enjoyed that. That was an amazing conversation with Brendan Boucher, still the group treasurer of Compass Group, but that was two years ago now. I'm bringing Brenda back to the show today. We're picking up the story from there. And at that time we were turning a corner and Brendan and I were just talking off air then about some of the things that happened since then.

You know, the new, you know, coming.

Back to the office, working from home. I'm not going to give too many leaders with that, except say, welcome back, Brendan, talk us through, maybe pick up the baton from there on for the next lap of the story. Over to you, sir.

Thanks, Mike. As we were just discussing offline, I think it's amazing to think that Two years have passed since we last formally spoke. I think clearly August 2020, the world was still in the grip of the pandemic. I think the core initial actions that, that the treasury team at Compass had to focus on were kind of mostly done by August 2020, but doesn't mean the business wasn't still in a phase of recovery, which it clearly was. We still had lockdowns in different parts of the world. The pandemic was still a significant factor for the global contract catering business. And our job has been from that date up to now to continue to support business in the best way that we can. That's the most fundamental thing, you know, to a certain extent have been able to get back to the business as usual of what we were wanting to do in treasury. You know, continual improvement. We've implemented our new treasury management system that was on hold during the pandemic. We've now done a first upgrade of that. We've refreshed policies and procedures at board level and communicated those. We've completed and now recently issued a sustainable financing framework. For the first time, we are starting to get back to the ability to do support in country banking RFPs and clearly in the last couple of years that hasn't been possible in many markets. The markets have been still dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic operationally, without any bandwidth to do the projects that we would want to do and sort out which bank we're using in Germany, for example. So we had to be a little bit patient and to just listen and work in response to what capacity the business has had. So there's a lot going on. That's, that's the key.

And your food and beverage services, we said that in the main show before starting, you know, Footsie 100 recovering strongly. You're seeing that, you know, we, there's been lots of press over here about canceled flights, but everyone not being able to upskill re recruit people post pandemic for you guys is that you start to see everyone on flooding back and eating because again with that feeds into working from home. If people aren't going back into the office so much, there's less need for food and support services around that or are you seeing that being more flexible? How's that working for you guys?

Well, business wise, just to put it into context, in April 2020, 50% of our global business was closed. So that was how significant the impact of the pandemic was on our business. If you look at the most recent results, our quarterly trading update to the end of June 2022, we're back above pre pandemic levels, levels in terms of.

Revenue, but it's been that long.

So it's been a steady increase between the lows of April 2020 through to, if you like, April 2022. But we're now back trading above 100% of pre pandemic revenues, which is a pretty sort of astonishing recovery in a pretty short space of time. I think, to your point, if you think about the sectors in which we operate, some were clearly more impacted by the pandemic than others. We operate in business and industry, as you rightly say, people. So this is catering in offices, factories, distribution centers, et cetera, et cetera. Well, no one was working from their office for a period of time, so that part of the business didn't quite grind to a standstill because factories, et cetera, were still able to operate, but clearly significantly impacted that. That business sector has not fully recovered. It's not quite back at 100%, but it's in the 90% and heading back. So whilst there is more working from home, clearly, and that is set to stay, I think clearly the model has changed a little bit. What we're seeing is people are, when they are in the office, they're spending a bit more time in the office and food is a very sort of powerful social tool. So when people are together, they like to eat together and they're spending more time eating and they're spending more money on eating. So to a certain extent that's helpful to make up for the lost volumes. What we've also seen is people using, and this is our clients using food as a tool to attract people back to their offices. A number of our clients in the city have moved to free food. We ourselves encompass, have actually moved in our head office to free food, and isn't purely a tactic to get people back to the office, but it's helpful to encourage people back to the office. I think it's a nice touch to enable people to spend more time collaborating and eating, drinking when they are in the office. So that's the business and industry side. But if you think about the other sectors in which we operate, sports and leisure, well, that ground to 100% to zero at the height of the pandemic. That has recovered very, very strongly. If you're a sports fan, we do a lot of stadiums in the uk, Wimbledon for example, and the same around the globe, particularly in North America. And as. As people have been able to, to go back to their events, they've done so with A huge amount of enthusiasm and you know, they've had a bit of a few pounds of dollars in their pockets and they've put it to work spending when they go and watch the, the baseball or the football or whatever it happens to be. So that's bounced back very strongly in other areas. We operate in healthcare and seniors, so hospital, senior care, living, etc, that's been resilient or more resilient as you'd expect through the pandemic and so on. So it's been varied depending on different parts of the business. But I think the overall message is the business has recovered very strongly from a pretty challenging time when half of our global business was shut in April 2020.

I think also I don't know if it's directly relevant. We, I was talking to a client candidate the other day.

We would just say, oh, you know, what about you guys?

And you know, very similar to you. He said, well, all of your business was hit. I said, yeah, it was and it was a tough time. But also everybody's business was here. If it was just us having a 50 cut in revenues, but also our competitors were having the same and we certainly became match fit, you know, that was one of the things we did right. We'll get this done, we'll sort this out. And it sounded like again, you and I have spoken about this, Brenda, that you were in a similar situation. It wasn't just you. If it was just you in that situation, when then that's an issue. Whereas if the entire sector, the entire world. Exactly, you know, the entire sector was down then, as you said, you're now coming out of it and you've improved yourselves and thinking about that, this, this, you know, you touched on it there about working from home a little bit more. How are you seeing that affect you guys in treasury per se?

Working from home is, is. Is here to stay to some extent and I personally think, think most people would will appreciate the additional flexibility of being able to work from home, whether it's one, two or even three days a week. A lot of people have long commutes. A lot of people will appreciate the additional flexibility. My personal view is I prefer to be in the office, having had a chunk of time over the last few years working from home than a chunk of time working back in the office. I prefer the interaction with my colleagues face to face, not just with the team but with the wider organization. I prefer work being work and home being home to a greater extent. But the flexibility I think is the key. From my perspective, having the Right. Culture in place in your team or your organization is far more important than being stringent about saying thou shalt be in the office X days a week. I mean we as an organization head office said philosophically we should be together more than we're apart. So take that is aim for three days a week in the office. But it's clearly, it's not policed, it's not rigid. Most people, I think, have been happy with that. Most people want to come to the office. We all enjoy the interaction. We try to create a good work environment. I think most people appreciate you could learn more, you can pick things up. It's easier to keep the communication going when you see people at least a couple times a week. And I think that's the key to it. If you weren't seeing your colleagues or your teammates or your wider business colleagues from week to week, then I think you get out of touch quite quickly. But even if you're just touching in once or twice a week, then I think that's probably a pretty good place to be. I'd be hesitant to say anyone would, would or many people would be demanding five days a week in, in the office going forward.

Well, again, and I think, yeah, you qualified that very well.

Actually I was going to re qualify.

But didn't need to because as you.

Say, and this is one of the.

You know, both Brendan and I touched on this. There's an ex client of ours and please say he was saying, must be. You've got five positions open. Three of them, I think. Yeah, five. Five of them. Two of them in London, two of them in New York and one in Singapore.

Right.

Five days a week in the office. Must be in the office and you know, be not for any business reason but maybe for an ultra control thing or whatever.

It doesn't matter.

I don't want to work with them, you know, if they would have caught. I said look, and we've already said this with. We recently had another client who said, oh, we're a bit more paper based, we're a bit more traditional like that.

Right.

And it must be five days a week in the office. And it was much more sort of not entrusting people and everything else. This was a more junior role that Craig was going to work on, a Treasury manager and this must be like this. And he just simply said, he said, said, well, my thoughts are this, Michael and I agree we're out because we just said, do you know what? That's not the kind of clients we need or want to work with. Not least sunny. We're going to struggle to fill the.

Job and we're going to let them down.

But more, we don't do that as a business. You know, we have Carly who now works 100% remotely because she prefers it. She doesn't live that far from the office. That's her working style. We see her quite regularly, whenever she wants to, but that's what she prefers. I'm not going to regulate it. I don't need to, you know, there's no need. It's it, you know, there's that flip side of when we do need to see, we do need to, but we don't all the time. And you're the same though, aren't you?

I think that's right. I mean pre pandemic, not many people would have said, look, let's, let's test our disaster recovery or business continuity plan by working from home throughout any a year end or a month end or whatever the key pinch points are. But we did that, we proved it's possible, which is a good place to be. So I think think you want people who want to work as a team. I think that's really important in Treasury. It doesn't mean everyone has to be in the office face to face. I mean just two examples from my recent past. We had a global leadership conference face to face in London about a month ago with 350 odd people from around the group that proved the power of personal communication. Having not been able to do those events for a while, that was sort of incredible. Clearly is a benefit of getting people together.

But you know, on the other hand.

We'Ve just completed a, a virtual investor roadshow. You know, people in different locations is a very efficient way of doing that type of activity. People not having to travel transatlantic and you know, spend two or three days traveling around different locations to get to different meetings. You just do them back to back to back in an afternoon. So I think yes, two recent anecdotes from, from my side which show both can work if you use them appropriately at the right time.

Yeah, exactly.

As I say, fit for purpose, appropriate, right time.

Great way to describe it.

Well, anyone that's listened today, they've already listened to the first show. We're into this sort of follow up.

So I'm not going to take too.

Much more of your time. The looking to the future now we've been through this, we talked about it, you and I then just it's not been a recession per se. You know, this has been a predictable pandemic. It's been tragic and everything else now as businesses recover in this new fitter format sort of thing going forward, where do you see it? What are the things that you think, you know, there are conferences coming up exactly as you say, or you know.

What are you getting the guys in.

The team to focus on or you as a treasurer, what are you, what are the things that you're thinking about going forward?

Well, I think, I mean there's always a lot going on in, in our, our business, you know, we've remained decentralized. We've been through all the of, of the, you know, the pandemic down side, then up the other side we're growing very strongly. So you know, there's always a lot going on. You know, fundamentally always sort of describe ourselves. We are a support function. So you know, our fundamental job is to continue to support all the changes that are going on around the business, whatever they may be. And you know, priorities sort of change on a weekly or monthly basis and they need to, we need to be that nimble. So you know, we need to continue to focus on. I think treasury has always been an area of continual improvement and we're no different to that. So continuing to develop how we use technology. As I said before, we put a new treasury management system in place that went live once we were back in the office post pandemic. We've now done a first upgrade of that. But it doesn't mean you can just leave it on the shelf with got lots of things that were either deprioritized or just weren't possible to do with the first implementation. But we need to, we spent a lot of time, money and effort on putting it in place. So we need to continually enhance that. We've got a global notional cash pool in place. We didn't get chance pre pandemic to turn on all of the automatic sweeps. So we need to go back and do that. One thing, thing that we kind of recognized as a, as a bit of deficiency across our corporate center during the pandemic is our capability in terms of business modeling, you know, the basic consolidations in place. Yes, but you know, above that a lot of use of complex spreadsheets, a little bit, you know, individual point person risk and not, not particularly joined up. So again, another opportunity for us to use more modern technology to improve the resilience and automation and speed of which we can collaborate. I think that aside, we need to continue to develop the team. You know, unfortunately we've got a sort of strong and stable team in place. But we need to make sure that we are bringing our treasury managers through, that they're getting enough exposure, they're getting involved, they're getting good opportunities, getting good experience. Because, you know, as you know, know in your business, Mike, if people don't get that internally, they will go elsewhere. And this is not specific to treasury, but Compass is a business. You know, we recruit a lot of chefs, obviously, and, and people into our operations and we always say Compass should be a career for life. There should be opportunities for mobility, to progress. You know, we have a number of people who joined our organization as chefs who are now running managing directors, regions or, or countries.

So, you know, there should be endless.

Opportunity and really the same should in the treasury space. So I think we need to never lose sort of sight of that, need to keep giving opportunities. There's always a lot going on in.

The, in the business.

There's no reason why in our relatively small team, you know, everyone shouldn't get good exposure to everything. So we need to continue to sort of focus on that. Yeah, I think we've got a bit more of a role to play in, in the whole sort of sustainability agenda. We set up a sustainable finance work working group which we thus far have chaired from Treasury. There's a huge amount more we still need to do in that space, whether it's sort of reporting, getting the right disciplines in place and just continuing to drive the sustainability agenda. It's clearly of a sustainability team. But I think, as many people will recognize, the work around this is coming into sort of mainstream finance and I think treasury has a role, role to play there, particularly if you're linking financing to sustainability, going down the track. So one of the things that I've always found interesting about treasury is always evolving, it's always changing. Whenever bored, there's always a lot to do and I see the same going forward, frankly.

And again, final great words there from you, Brendan, but what I'm going to do is again, give you the final say. So final takeaway if you like. For anyone that's listening today, they've heard first show, heard second show, they caught up with you. What do you think about what's the final words, those treasury professionals out there?

Well, I think just to sort of reflect, one of the things that attracted me to treasury in the first place, and I've been doing it for quite a number of years now, was the fact that it's forward looking, it's external. What's going on in the outside world has a real impact on what we're doing in the function in the company day to day. And if you just look at what's happened over the last few years, clearly the pandemic in our case at least had a massive impact on the business and a massive impact on treasury and what we were able to do.

So the ability to work through that.

Really provide a high degree of value and resilience to the company with our doing the treasury basics extraordinarily well during that period is something I look back when I finally retire with pride on how we went through it. But even now, rampant global inflation has a clear impact on our business. On financial markets, you've seen it with sort of going from virtually zero interest rates in the main currencies. That's changed significantly and we've had to functionally adapt and work with that, tested the sort of resilience of our policies in a rapidly changing world. So all of the things I found interesting when I first thought about moving into Treasury, I still find interesting now. And I think, you know, to sum up, that's what makes it a really rewarding career because it's very dynamic, it's.

Ever changing and there is a real.

Opportunity to make a difference. So, you know, anyone listening, you know, I think treasury is an amazing place to spend your career.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending.

On where you listen.

Listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen to the show from, it's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the.

Podcast is a lot of hard work.

To produce every week. It'd be amazing. That's take, say, 20 seconds. Leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.