The Importance of People Skills in Treasury with Senne Van Nieuwenborgh

So welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they've built their careers, where they are now and what they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show, I'm joined by. I'm going to try my hardest here. Sene Van Nievenborg, the Senior VP treasury at SES Satellite. SES are a world leading satellite operator and the first to deliver a differentiated, scalable Geo meo offering worldwide. Now, tell you what, I'll get Sunny to actually explain what that is later on in the show and explain exactly what he does and how that impacts on the work of Treasury. But as we said just before we kicked off the show, Senny actually says in his profile that he started his career as a management consultant. But it's not quite true. When I actually look back and did the research. You originally studied law before then going in management consulting and finance and Treasury. So take us back to the dim distant past, if you would, and how you didn't go into law. What was driving you back in those days. And then we'll go through your treasury career, if you may. Over to you.

Sure. And hi, Mike, and hello to everyone. Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting one. And somewhat surprisingly, probably to most, is that as a kid I actually did want to become a lawyer. So relatively early on that kind of settled itself in my mind and actually drove me to go then to college and take a law degree. Now, as I approached the end of those studies, I became less and less convinced that that was what I really wanted to do. And therefore, right after my college degree, I did an MBA in Belgium, which exposed me kind of to a much wider area of fields. And that basically led me to go into consulting right after the mba, something that was on purpose, very widespread because quite frankly, I didn't really know what I wanted to do and just wanted to get some exposure, wanted to work on some projects and that's what I did basically for the first five years of my career, having worked for Accenture at that time, still Anderson Consulting. And then at some point, basically the opportunity popped up to join Dow Chemical in their Treasury Department in Belgium.

So just to ask you, so you had five years in consulting, which a lot of people do, and there'll be listeners today who are actually in that consulting, what did that give you in terms of exposure and experience and how did that then and why did you make the move to Dow? Was it just, you know, a lot of people say they're tired of traveling four or five days a week or. What was it for you that led to that? You had a good, you know, good run of five years. But then, you know, what did that help you with, as it were, in your career?

Yeah, I must say, you know, I mean, at least for me, you know, you come out of the NBA, you think you know everything. I mean, you think you know, I mean, now it's up to me to kind of go and do it all and for me to go and explain to others how it all works. Well, pretty early on you learned the hard way that you don't know that much and real life is slightly different than what they tell you at the business school. And that's why I was really, I mean, looking back, it was really a good, a good school for me. And I probably learned more in those first few years about business in general than during my entire educational career. And there I think, yeah, it was a good choice with hindsight because I got to work on many different projects. Some more in the finance area, some more process driven, some more it. So there was a broad range of things in different countries. You typically tend to work with a lot of young and bright people in these environments. And that also applies to investment banking. That also applies to the major law firms. And these big consulting firms are a little bit the same. So indeed, like you say, it is tough. They make you work very long hours. I'm sure they still do today, and they make you travel around. But that didn't really put me off. Rather, on the contrary, I felt that was kind of a very energizing environment. Now the company I was working for at that time, it did change over those five years. Not only did it change name because of the whole Enron thing at the time, it also IPO'd and rebranded itself and also kind of started to reposition itself back in the day already so early 2000s, towards becoming more of a large system integrator. So big scale SAP projects, which was a little bit less my cup of tea, to be honest. And more and more you started to kind of be pushed a little bit in that direction, especially if you were unstaffed or on the bench, as they called it. And that was not really my thing. And then you start to kind of keep an eye open for other opportunities. And then there was actually colleague from me with whom I did the MBA who said, look, actually, you know, if you're interested, we have an opening. Why don't you Come and talk to my boss. And that's what I did. And there was this click and decided to go for it. With hindsight, did I make a deliberate choice to go and work for Treasury Department of a major corporation? No. I mean, it was kind of by chance, it was kind of by accident. It did have a certain appeal to me from day one, but I knew very little about, let's say, holistic nature and all of the activities of a Treasury Department. So I initially started in the credit risk department of Dow and I could get my head around that and what it means and what it is that they do. But I had only very limited sense of all the other aspects of what the Treasury Department does. And that was kind of. So it was a very good introduction for me into the wider area of Treasury. And then later on, obviously I got introduced more and more into the more technical and deep treasury treasury skills as I moved and progressed my career within.

Dow Chemicals and Dow Chemicals itself. Some, a lot of people will know the name, but they might not understand how it operates and things. Obviously, you know, massive chemicals company, you know, headquartered in the US as, you know, as looking at a lot of the, you know, the, I mean, they're massive, you know, headquartered in Michigan. But, you know, how did it operate within Europe? And when you joined there, was it a big team or, you know, again, because lots of listeners will be, oh yeah, I know Dow, they're huge chemicals. That's it. You know, we're doing some work with Sabik, for instance, and I got to understand a lot more about the global nature of a lot of the roles at Dao and Sabik and everything else. How was it for you? Was it real, you know, day one boom, you know, global outlook or was it sort of small role and you grew into that. How did it evolve for you?

It started relatively smallish, I would say. I joined in what you could call a relatively local office in Antwerp back then, which was, yeah, a medium sized office within, within the Dao family of, let's say 100, 200 people. And we had some, we had a credit, a local credit team there taking care of a region, Benelux, uk, France, Nordics, these kind of countries. And the team was like four or five people. So that was all relatively smallish. But quite early on it became clear that, you know, you are part of this massive organization as you've described it. And just, you know, within treasury they have teams all over the world in Asia and Latin, Americ, America, of course, in the headquarter they also have a sizable regional office in Switzerland, where I then moved to after two years, where they have 5, 600 people, of which 30, 40 were Treasury. And you start to become part of a much bigger organization with a much broader scope. But initially it was fairly small. But what was beneficial for me is that indeed you can kind of start quite small and then grow into the role. And typically, I mean, career wise, you are then better off in larger organizations because they have typically larger treasury functions which enable you to move around more swiftly and get exposed to more of the sub domains and acquire basically the technical skillset. I would say that's quite key early on, that you acquire those basic treasury skills and that you acquire them fast but still thoroughly enough so not just. I mean, you can't just scratch the surface and then say, oh, yeah, now I'm a specialist. So you. The good thing with Dao is they left you like in credit for like two, three years and then you went on and you went to do financial planning for two, three years, and then you could go to Risk and then you could go to Pensions, and then, you know, and after, after having spent like, you know, between five and 10 years, you kind of knew how it all worked. And you could say that, yeah, okay, I know a thing or two about treasury that's, let's say, an advantage. The disadvantage is sometimes that you kind of. You could see the road ahead of you for the next 10 years as well, which was appealing to some and then less appealing to others, and was perhaps also a reason why I left Dow, because indeed, at some point you knew where you were. You knew kind of where you were heading and what the road was going to look like, more or less, at least that was my perception. Others might disagree, but that was one of the reasons why I left. After having spent seven years at Dao. Great, seven years. I'd recommend it to all great employer.

Great people, they employ a bit. Why would you recommend it in treasury terms? Because you came to Credit Risk and then into the more mainstream. Why would you recommend that? Again, people listening and going, not sure I want to work for a global multinational like that. I'm just a little person in it, surely.

No, no, not really. I'd say it is quite human. And it used to have a campaign where we had T shirts with like, the human element, like, you know, as a tabel, you know, this mendeleyev table, you know, like a new element, human element. And I'm not sure that applies still today because I left quite some time ago and I understand from the people that I'm still in touch with that a lot has changed with the merger of the ball and all of these things. But I think, in general, great people, and I can genuinely say also in terms of quality, if I can say it in soccer terms, it is truly the Champions League that you're playing in. Really amazing people with amazing skills. And if you come into such an organization relatively early on and young, you just have to look around and learn and absorb as much as you can. And that, I must say, even to date, I've benefited hugely from having worked in such an environment. And Dao is one of those. I'm sure there are others who are in this camp, whether it's Nestle or other large corporations with sizable treasury operations. I definitely don't regret that part of my career, let's put it like that.

And so it came to an end, if you like, or it was time for a move on from Dow. How did you know what came next? Because he went treasury manager to group treasurer. That's pretty much a step. A lot of people like that what came about. Describe that.

Yeah, that came as a surprise to me, to be honest, that I was contacted through a headhunter, as it sometimes goes. They kind of approached me, and I was based in Switzerland at the time. The company that wanted to hire me was also headquartered in Switzerland, but was listed in Belgium. I'm a Belgian national. Not sure that played a role. It might have. It might not have, but it seemed to be a match. And they basically, after a few rounds of interviews and discussions with the CFO at the time, who was then going to be my boss, we had, again, a click. And I think that's very important because ultimately you work for a company, but you work for people and with people. And we got along. And he had the same feeling, apparently, and he decided to basically give me this opportunity knowing that I had no group treasurer experience, which was kind of a bit of a risk for them and for me, because could have well been that after three months, you know, I failed miserably and they had to fire me. I mean, that risk was then on me, but it worked out just fine. And it was for me, the key reason also to leave Dao, because at that time, I started to become involved in the project financing of what is now the Sadara Project, which was a, and still is like a $20 billion project financing that they were establishing at the time. So hugely, hugely important. Incredibly interesting. And I had started to find my way also in the Middle east, which Is kind of a very interesting region. Started to do some sukuk financing and all of these interesting things. Would have loved to complete that. But then the opportunity came. I mean just decided to go for it. It was an amazing opportunity to. To jump from call it treasury manager Emea to group treasurer of a publicly listed company. Be it on a smaller scale. At least the company was smaller. But the opportunity was there. Took it worked out fine. Again, no regrets.

Yeah, well, just going back. So I spoke earlier on in the year. One of the other interviews I did was with Marcus Keady. He's director of Treasury Group treasury and I think he actually got it when he was 26 or something like that. Damn him. But at Lundbeck and he's based over in Denmark. But he similarly was made treasury director or group treasurer, treasury manager, group treasurer, all be in the same organization. Made that step in. What was it like for you moving from, you know, maybe an operational role or a certain level to suddenly the number one job? How did you cope with that? What was the. Again we'll have listeners going, oh, you know, if I make that move, what were the secrets you would roll out again, sort of thing.

I moved into that role very humble, I have to say, and kind of cognizant of the fact that there were still, I mean that I had seven years of treasury experience, but that there was still quite a few things that I had never done. So I had never done a public debt offering, I had never done or I had never done a large syndicated credit facility. And these are pretty critical when you move into such a role. I moved into a mining company where all of a sudden the whole commodity risk management fell under my responsibility. Where in dao. This was actually kind of outside treasury, so I had had no exposure to that whatsoever. So you kind of move in or. I moved in quite humbled and at the same time, you know, you go in open minded, very eager to learn, get to know the people, try, try to get a feel for, you know, who does what, who is kind of responsible for what, how, how are the power maps and try to find your way. And of course to get the trust from senior leadership is critical. So I had that trust. I knew I had that trust. But then obviously have to go in. I had to learn quite quickly and then start delivering quite quickly because obviously all of a sudden you have to manage a team. Some of the people in my team were doing their job for like 10 years or more. You have to earn their trust. I would say that you have to earn their Collaboration but still you have to establish yourself as a leader of that team and you have to build credibility quite quickly on.

And certainly then you made the move from the natural move, if you might say, from global metals business in zinc and lead to satellites. A natural move one might say. Or not. How was it different in treasury terms and how did you make the move or what led to that? Because it's obviously quite a shift. Some obviously treasury is multifunctional but obviously works across different industries. Pretty different set of drivers I would say, wouldn't you?

Yeah, absolutely. And just in terms of business, you know, one is kind of few kilometers below the surface of the Earth, the other is 36 kilometers, 36,000 kilometers above the Earth. So that's a change. It's a little bit more sexy. I find you sense that when you talk to people and mining typically doesn't do that much when you say I'm in mining, nothing wrong with it. But when you say, you know, I work for a space company, I basically deal with SpaceX on a weekly basis and with other space companies and obviously people get easily excited over something like that. But deep down in my day to day job there isn't such a difference. I still manage a sizable senior debt portfolio, we have FX exposure, interest rate exposure, we have sizable cash management operations and so on and so forth. So the content of the job isn't that dramatically different. What is dramatically different is the context within which those two companies operate. Nifter when I joined was challenging, was clearly in a very volatile market environment, had made some very sizable investments into mining which then unfortunately did not turn out to be the great assets they had hoped to be. And the whole thing did go south three years later, unfortunately the whole thing has been absorbed by one of the main shareholders. I will not go too far into that. But there are lawsuits left and lawsuits right, right. And this is where they are today. A very different environment also in terms of credit quality. It is clearly it was an environment of non investment grade.

Right. Well that's always a challenge as a treasurer, isn't it?

Absolutely. But also interesting when I joined actually the company was not rated and then we had these proxy ratings assigned by some of the relationship banks and you know, you tend to go and believe them. Some were saying yeah, you know, you're crossover like you know, maybe not investment grade but then maybe double B Until we then decided to actually go and apply for a credit rating and what we got was a single B minus. And that was an eye opener and kind of puts things in perspective.

Yeah.

And it's challenging, it's tough. You know, all the treasurers out there managing these kind of companies, they will probably acknowledge that it's, it's not easy, it's tough. And then having the opportunity to go and work for an investment graded company obviously had some appeal, made me jump ship, so to speak. Now, having worked for SES for three years, I have to say it continues to be challenging. So there's no lack of challenge. Also in the new job, I remember my boss when I told him I had decided to leave, say, but you're going to be so bored. Ses, partly government owned. It's telco, steady cash flow investment, great rating. You'll be so bored. And three years later, I can tell you I haven't been bored for a single day because it continues to be challenges.

Why?

The market is shifting dramatically, especially in our video markets. We are meanwhile at the lowest level of the investment grade bbb. So there is obviously some pressure around that as well. The leverage needs to be carefully managed and we're obviously doing that. It continues to be very interesting and far from boring.

And with that, you know, with that challenge, if you like, and location wise, you sort of, you know, we talked about the fact that obviously you're Belgian by background, but then working in Switzerland and Luxembourg and different cultures and things like that. How does you know, does that impact your treasury work at all when you're dealing with different partners? Or is treasury, you know, just international, global anyway? Or do you. Have you found differences?

Yeah, there are clearly differences. Now I've mostly worked in very centralized treasury teams, but obviously, and that's been the case also in my current role, we are very centralized in one location. From that one location we cover the entire globe. And hence you have to kind of also deal with the regional differences in regulation, in payment practices and in culture. And for instance, I was referring to my earlier days when I was still in dao, when we were doing some local financing in the Middle east, which has its own particular nature. I can assure you that you talk to banks and pretty quickly you realize that it's not only about credit committees, but also about Sharia committees who then have to give their approval on certain transactions which give it a certain flavor, which give it a certain taste. And that makes it all very interesting. Within SES, we have less exposure to the Middle east, but we're very active in the US which is obviously, culturally speaking, not that different, I would say from Western Europe, but we also have huge operations in Asia. And that Part is definitely growing. So, yeah, you have to be cognizant to these different cultures. Cultures, different parts of the world. Within the teams that I've managed, I've always had very mixed teams, so I've had people from Japan, people from Venezuela, from all sorts of backgrounds, from all sorts of countries. Yeah. Which make it only more interesting, I.

Would say, with yourself, you say it's more interesting. How do you manage all those different cultures? Is it culture clash or do you have to start to be, you know, how do you show sensitivity? Again, some of the listeners today, before we get towards the end of the show, but they'll be managing teams in a similar way. What's your ethos on managing groups of diverse treasury individuals? How do you make a success of that?

I'd say in my case, that has always come quite natural. I've never felt that anyone's geographical, ethnical, whatever, background was a topic. I think in the teams that I've worked in, you have a common sense of purpose. I think that's important, that you can gather around a certain common project, common team, common. Common values, common purpose. And then I think it works out just fine. And I never had to be too mindful or too stressed about people's backgrounds because I've never experienced this to be a real issue.

Right, you've just. Yeah, it's. It's just, you know, you're just. You're international treasurer and I think that's with a lot of treasurers. They just sort of. Because of the nature of the work you do, it is. It is global, it is international. You deal with different people every day. Whether you're picking up the phone to Asia Pacific or the us, it's right the way across, Right? Yeah. So as we approach the end of today, today's show, we'll look, you know, looking back over your career, we've talked about, you know, some of the different challenges you faced within the different kind of companies, from, you know, Dow to Near Star to ses, and, you know, managing that as you do very carefully. But looking to the future and some of the other people, perhaps that will connect with you after this. We'll put your LinkedIn profile and they look at your. Listen to. Do you know what? I'd like to do that role, Although it's challenging and it's got its different nuances, I'd like to have that sort of role. What are the major pieces of advice you would give to those treasury guys? Listening and whether that's analyst or more senior, they're thinking actually want to do something similar. What sort of things would you pick out from your career if you like.

First and foremost, perhaps obviously it does require a certain technical skill set. I mean, let's not fool ourselves. You know, it does come with a certain set of requirements that you know, the sooner you, you have a good grasp on those, I would say the better. At the same time, I stress very much to everyone who is still early on in their career. Absolutely. Make sure you have them, but don't, don't stop there. I would say there's a lot more to it than just the technical skills. So obviously you need to be able to, to commun very well. You need to be able to engage with a lot of non treasury people. You need to be able to engage with the business. You need to be able to be a trusted advisor to people. Especially as you progress, you need to be able to communicate with senior leadership, to board members even. And as you progress, these things actually become more and more and more important. I mean the technical skill set as of a certain level in your career will be assumed and if you don't have them, obviously you will quickly fall through. But it's about all of these other things, skills, I would say that will start to matter more as you progress in the career. So definitely don't forget about those. I mean, when we hire, when I hire, I think, of course the technical skills are important, but it's much more about personality, about a certain attitude can do attitude that is important to have an open mind and to have a certain degree of flexibility as well. You know, if there is an opportunity, you can always say, yeah, but no but, you know, and it's, it's too warm, it's too cold, it's too far, too close. Yeah, sure. And everybody's entitled to make their own decisions. But of course, if you say, look, here is where I am, that's where I want to be, it might not always be on your terms. I mean, you sometimes might have to make a sacrifice left or right, and I wouldn't even call it a sacrifice. You might just have to do an extra effort and then hope that it pays off and that it is rewarding. Yeah, that would be my main areas of advice.

Yeah, being flexible when faced with those challenges and as you say, not just focusing on the technical aspects, which sometimes we do get into with the podcast where we really deep dive in people's technical skills and everything else. It's much more than that. From that's where you've done it and.

I see that for instance, I mean, as you sometimes get out and then you meet other group treasurers. And I always find it remarkable when some very large corporates. And there are two that come to my mind I've met at some point the group treasurer of SAP Software company. And it's a few years ago, I'm not even sure he's still around. But when he got the point that he had very little experience in the treasury area and how did that happen? And again, he said, you know, it was more about my background that I have within the company, the knowledge I have about the markets and my personality that was considered to be appropriate for this kind of role. So he had very little technical skills at the time. I mean, I also know the group treasurer of Solvay, the Bell Belgian chemical company, who used to be the head of ir, you know, and from that background, she obviously knew a lot about the company, a lot about the markets, a lot about all these great things, a lot about the financing as well, but not necessarily that much about perhaps the technical skills. And still, you know, she's an absolute great treasurer and is doing a phenomenal job. And I think these are certain examples that say that as of a certain level, it's definitely not just about a certain technical skill set. You are then also supposed to surround yourself, yourself with the necessary technical expertise that you deem is important. And it is more about. About personality, leadership styles and so on.

Yeah, well, great advice today. I think, you know, in particular, I think the, you know, as we come to the end of that, I think the big advice there is not just about the technical stuff, which is actually a little bit different. Sometimes study, do this and things, it's. The softer skills are just as important. I think people take that from. From today's conversation and, you know, all remains for me to say is thank you very much for your time. We'll put your LinkedIn profile on there to, if it's worthwhile connecting and you want to connect with the people, reach out to Sene and we'll see where it goes from there. And, you know, wish you all the best in managing and challenging times, but you're doing a good job and look forward to seeing you next time when I'm over in Switzerland.

All right, sounds good. Thanks a lot. Definitely.

Thanks very much.