The Key to Thriving in a Modern Treasury Leadership with Andy Henley

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. And a special thanks to Flywire, our fantastic sponsors. If you've ever wondered whether there was a way to ease your international transaction hassles, they're the guys to talk to. If you follow the link in our show notes, you can see me talking to my mate Greg Levin, their Senior VP of Sales. I get to ask Greg about who are Flywire and how they can help you and your treasury team with your cross border payment headaches. Just follow the link to the interview in today's show notes. And now let's get on with the show. In this week's show, delighted to be joined by Andy Henley, the group Treasury Director at Tesco. Tesco are one of the world's largest retailers of consumer goods, from food to fashion. Serving their customers, communities and the planet a little bit better every day in their stores and online is the heart of everything they do. Founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen using the 30 pounds he received on leaving the Royal Flying Corps, they've come a long way since his small market stall in East London. Yeah, Tesco, great company and thrilled to be joined by Andy today, but we're going to go through his amazing career. Really interesting story. We got very well and we're really having a good laugh as well just before this, so. And he's also being videoed, poor soul. So, you know, that's why we do it usually as a podcast face, both face and radio, but nothing, no comments there. And if you would, can you take us back to how you, your career and how you first started maybe a finance, then treasury and eventually the Treasury Director at Tesco. So talk us through, sir.

Yeah, of course, Mike, thanks. And I should thank you as well for your face for radio comment. I won't take it personally, but you are the third person today to make that reference, so maybe I should.

It's me, it's me. No, that's why we don't normally video these bits and people are. Yeah, there's a reason, Mike. I'm like, oh, thanks.

No indeed, yeah. So look, if I could take you sort of right back. I remember being in my final year of university and like many people, but not like others, I never really had a laser sort of focused view on what I would do when I grew up, for want of a better expression. And I Remember the time starting my final year at university, I had the typical nudges you get from your parents or what are you going to do in 12 months time. And I remember that at the time, the big four accounting firms, as I'm sure they still are today, very visible on campus, sponsoring events, sponsoring sports teams, they're not shy to talk about how they are the graduate employer of choice. So I, as a result of that, met with each of the big four firms interviewed with them and honestly I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself in for but if nothing else I did think, well it, it's a great way of getting a fantastic qualification. People who come from PwC speak very highly of it and worst case scenario I find myself three years down the track, I've got a brilliant qualification and I can work out what to do next. So I joined PwC as a graduate in 2005 and can you explain again.

We'Ve got a global audience. PwC Global, you know, international accounting firm. Most people should have heard it in finance, Treasury. But yeah, could you just explain what PwC was like then if you like as well?

Yeah, sure, absolutely. So, so, so PwC then? Biggest accounting firm in the UK. The biggest accounting firm globally. I think at the time when I joined PwC it had 14,15,000 staff in the UK. It's probably close to, close to twice that now and certainly then and again I suspect the same is still true, recruited the largest number of graduates from universities of any employers and what was particularly attractive about PwC and to accounting profession generally is the UK is a bit of an anomaly compared to the rest of the world in terms of how it trains accountants. So if you want to join PwC, Deloitte etc in the US, so typically you have to have studied accounting at university. I didn't study accounting at university, I studied geography at university and I studied geography because there's simple reason, it's what I enjoyed the most at school. I also remember looking at a prospectus for the University of Nottingham where I went and seeing that it only had seven hours of lectures a week and I thought as a 17, 18 year old that sounded brilliant to me, sign me up. But the beauty of accounting training in the UK is you basically start from scratch. So I remember vividly being in BPP's, the accounting college and this was before the days of iPads and all that good stuff and being greeted with these three enormous ring binders of accounting stuff. And I remember the tutor saying between now and Christmas you'll learn all of this stuff and you'll sit five exams and you'll be on your journey to becoming an accountant. And I remember going home absolutely terrified because as my mum would tell you, I never worked particularly hard at school. I sort of got by at university as well. And this was a real eye opener for the first time in my life where I was really going to have to work hard to master this stuff. And that was absolutely, absolutely true. And I still remember those first few days at college before the penny dropped on exactly how double entry bookkeeping works and you know, being, being quite scared, thinking, look, this is my first grown up job and maybe this is all going to be harder than I thought it was, thought it was going to be. But the experience I had with the friends and colleagues who were going through the same thing, the training offering that PwC provided meant that I never ended up doing what I thought I would do, which is do three years, get a qualification and go and do something more interesting. There was always, there was always a reason to stay at PwC. They're working on more interesting projects, working on bigger clients and more exciting, more exciting clients. I then had the opportunity after I'd been at PwC about seven years to go and work for PwC in Hong Kong, which was a fantastic experience. I spent two years working in, in a place that had many familiarities of living and working for PwC in the UK but culturally very different and very exciting. And it's before the days that my wife and I had kids. So, you know, weekends were spent flying out, you know, places like Cambodia, Japan, the Philippines, you know, really a really good experience. So yeah, so PwC served me really well. I came back to the UK after two years in Hong Kong and decided pretty quickly that actually then sort of nine, ten years into my career, that was probably the right time to get what I kept referring to with the PwC partner group as being a proper job and getting out and doing something, doing something more interesting and a bit different.

Remember you and I talked about this in the pre podcast that yeah, you had those choices, don't you then either commit to, right, you're going to be with the firm and you know, you're going to make these steps and you're going to grow the practice or you're part of the practice or whatever. But you know, what was the tipping point, if you like, for you to, you know, make a move externally to, you know, a corporate.

It certainly wasn't an easy decision. And when I look back now on it, I feel that I left PwC and joined Reckitt Benkiser at the time, at exactly the right time in my career. So I'd learned a huge amount at PwC. The learning curve you experience in those organizations is brilliant and I would thoroughly recommend to any graduate who's thinking about a career in finance to give serious thought to joining these organizations. Because the learning curve you go on, I think is unparalleled compared to any, any other organization. But I got to the stage in my career where I'd seen companies doing interesting, interesting things and exciting and complicated transactions, dealing with all of that. And I really wanted to do some of it for myself.

Yeah.

Rather than being as close as you can be as an advisor, it's still not the same as living and breathing it on your own terms as part of the organization. So an opportunity came up to join Reckitt as the finance director for Corporate accounting. Recit bank is a huge health care and hygiene company, FTSE 10, Footsie 12, something like that, presence all over the world and, you know, products that listeners will be familiar with, particularly in the uk, you've got Nurofen, Gavison, Strepsols, Durex, condoms, Dettol. And I joined Wreck it at the time that they were just in the middle of doing an acquisition of Mead Johnson Nutrition, so an infant formula, children's nutrition business. So I joined in this technical accounting role. But I do remember on my first day, the group controller saying to me, one of the reasons that we, we hired you for this, for this job, is lots of the other stuff, complicated things you've done at PwC, one of which was experience of working on Class 1 acquisition. So for listeners who are familiar with the UK regime, listed companies in the UK, if they do an acquisition or disposal of a certain size, are required to get shareholder approval to do that. And the production of the information to get that shareholder approval is fantastically interesting, but also very complicated. So my first big piece of work at Reckitt was managing all of the Class 1 circular production, which was brilliant and it gave me great exposure to the CFO at the time, Adrian Henna. It gave me great exposure to the board, to the audit committee and to a whole suite of advisors across accounting, legal and investment banks. So once we had done the Class 1 circular, I did various other stuff at Reckitt. One of the big things I did was work with Simon Neville and the treasury team on what was going to be the biggest Yankee bond offering by a UK corporate that year, until the Bat Reynolds deal trumped that, but again it was a fantastic experience working closely with, working closely with the core treasury team. Before then, most of my treasury experience, as is sort of fairly typical, was in treasury accounting. So I'd done lots of treasury accounting when I was at PwC and lots of the complexity in accounting that Reckitt had was, was in the treasury area as well. So that, that really gave me my first exposure to kind of proper world of corporate Treasury, I guess. So after I've been at Reckitt about six months, I moved into a role working directly for the CFO that on my CV has a far more glamorous sounding job title. But the reality was I was a CFO's bag carrier for interesting projects to be that M and A opportunities, potential disposals or just stuff that didn't naturally sit in the remit of any of his other direct reports. So a fairly early stage in my career I had this opportunity to work for a brilliant and extremely highly regarded cfo. And that was an amazing again an amazing learning curve and a really enjoyable experience. But candidly Mike, not, not without its challenges. So one of the kind of questions you gave me to think about ahead of the podcast was what are what obstacles or what challenges have I had in my career? And the one that always comes to mind is those first few weeks and months working for the CFO directly of one of the largest corporates in the, in the UK really tests how tenacious, how agile you can be.

You and I talked about this again and, and you weren't geeking out about it in the wrong way, but you really love that superpower of understanding really the numbers and that really gave you, you'd had this great experience, PwC then you're doing it in a practical sense, as you say in a corporate and everything else. But learning the numbers really gave you that. Remember that sort of you're standing out and you know, looking back on my notes that you highlighted that you'd learning curve there in an accounting firm and then you came into this, it was like well here's another, you know, that was, that was a bit of a hill and then here we go, the next mountain. You know, tell us why if you like that you think again for listeners, if they're thinking oh you're counting and. But that gave you a real step up, didn't it?

Absolutely, absolutely did. And it's really a combination I would say is sort of supercharged my career since then. So the benefit I had from PwC is that steep learning curve and seeing lots of lots of stuff then. I still remember having that initial conversation with Adrian at the time when he offered me the role. And I was sat there thinking, I'm a reasonable accountant, but what do I know about all of this other stuff? And one of the other areas that I spent time in in Reckitt was, you know, being the number two in a small investor relations team. And again, that was a brilliant experience. Do you remember being slightly terrified, sat in a conference suite in a hotel in Paris when I was, for the first time meeting with investors on my own and talking about the record equity story? And at the time, there had been some challenges to the business in integrating the infant formula business. There had been a cyber attack. So it wasn't an easy ride in IR by any stretch. One of the things, candidly, that I've always felt in my career and honestly still feel from time to time is there's definitely something in my mind about, on occasion, feeling like a bit of an imposter. And I think this is absolutely true for lots of people who had similar careers myself. And I still remember sitting in an audit committee for the first time, or presenting to a CFO for the first time, or presenting to investors for the first time and really feeling that strongly. But. But the benefit I had at the time I spent Wreck it was it gave me huge confidence that I can. I can be chucked into a new and complicated area and find my feet quite quickly. And not just find my feet, but be. Be really effective in those roles as well.

Yeah. And then. So you'd spend a number of years at Reckitt, what. You know, and then treasury beckoned. Talk us through or what. What happened next?

I loved the time at Reckitt and when the opportunity to go to Tate and Lyle came along, I. I really wasn't looking to leave Wreck it at all. But I'd worked with Tate and Lyle as a client when I was at. When I was at PwC, I got this call from, from the new CFO, Tate and Lyle, Imran Nawaz, saying, look, I'm hiring a new group controller. I'd love to come and I'd love you to come and meet me and have a. Have a chat. And I do remember meeting him for breakfast in a hotel in the West End. And I remember I got to the end of the breakfast and he told me that he had to dash and he didn't have his wallet with him, and I had to pay for both of our breakfasts, which I thought was an interesting kind of job interview technique. But immediately Just got the, this feeling that he was going to be a great guy to work for. And he had an exciting transformation vision. Not, not just for finance, but, but for the organization at Tate and Lyle.

So, and, and what was the organization at Taylor then? And too, you know, so again for the internationalists, we in the uk, we know all these names, but a lot of our listeners are overseas. But you know, Tate and Lyle. And again, I think this is interesting that as you said, it was going to go through a transition led by him and you being part of it. Who were they and then what did they become?

Well, I'll start with, mainly for the UK listeners is tell you what, Tate and Lyle isn't. Yeah, so, so, so Tate and Lyle doesn't refine, make, manufacture, sell sugar anymore. So Tate and Lyle sold that business and the brand about 15 years ago to a company called American Sugar Refining. So when I joined Tata now back in 2019, their core operations were corn wet mills in the US and they took, and I'm going to grossly oversimplify this, but they took corn at one end of the production line and turned this into a fantastic array of products at the other. And those products could kind of broadly be be separated into two, two areas. One that was called primary products. So lower margin, more commoditized stuff. So if you buy a Coke or Pepsi in the US it doesn't have sugar in it to sweeten it. It has a product called high fructose corn syrup and it's included in the name that comes from, that comes from corn. And then the other set of products within what's called food and beverage solutions were much more sort of specialty, higher margin products that were focused on some of the really important areas of health across, across the world today. So if you take calories or you take sugar out of a chocolate bar, then you can use corn based fibers to replace some of the kind of feeling that's lost from taking sugar and calories out. There are a whole range of products which are brilliant for gut health, for example, or texture and that you can put into, put into food. So the business at the time, Tate and Lyle had these sort of two, two divisions, Primary products, commoditized lower margin and food and beverage solutions. So the vision that the business had when I started was a route to unlocking shareholder value was to say, well, we want to be focused purely on being a specialty food ingredients player. So the four or so years that I spent at Tate and Lyle, I'd say more than 50% of my time is taking this idea as to how could we achieve this separation of the business when you've got something which is such an integrated manufacturing process. So there was what, what was named internally as Project Gemini.

Yep. To find my notes, I actually found that I was there. I did. Listen, that's good. Yeah.

To find, to find a, you know, private equity buyer to take a controlling interest in the primary products business on.

A private basis as well. So the secret project as well.

Absolutely. No, absolutely.

Come on, let's, come on, let's, let's bring it up. It was secret project.

It was a top secret project.

Yeah. There you go. Thank you.

Like one of the things made, that made the top secret project stay as secret as it needed to do was about six months into my joining, or a bit more than that, Tate and Lyle, the world was hit by the COVID 19 pandemic. And suddenly Joe, as listeners will be familiar with, the whole way of working changed overnight. So sort of soup to nuts, the Gemini project was run working remotely. So be that meetings with potential bidders or internal meetings to work out how is pricing, how are pricing mechanisms going when one business unit is, is, is selling to another, what's the investor story going to look like, what's the capital return and the capital allocation policy going to look like Post this, post this transaction and there's really no way of cementing more that we can work in this sort of hybrid technology enabled working from home as doing a project like that from end to end whilst working entirely, entirely remotely. So that, that took up sort of for most of the four years that I was at Tate and Lyle. And what I should have said actually when I introduced it is I joined Tate and Lyle as the group financial controller, but you know, fortunate to work for a brilliant boss who kind of bit by bit bolted on more responsibilities to my, to my job. So that by the end of the time that I finished at Tate and Lyle, I had, you know, I was responsible for group controlling all of the external reporting. I was responsible for the. We had a shared service center, captive shared service center, 400 plus people based in Poland responsible for M and A finance and due diligence. The group's tax function reported to me and you know, very importantly for this podcast, the group treasurer and the group treasury function also reported in into me. So kind of having started sort of peaking my interest in the world of treasury accounting many years before in PwC and most of the time that I was at Tate and lol, I was responsible for running a really good treasury function. A really good treasury team.

And I just want to jump back into the top secret project. Let's keep picking this up. This is great. But joking aside, and again, looking back, you said to me before about how much your role in that project tested your negotiation skills.

Oh yeah.

Especially when dealing with Manhattan based private equity partners. And I'll let you put that in your words because I think it's a very interesting. But again, for the listeners, the technical side, treasury and finance and everything else versus the negotiation and that gets sometimes underestimated. But you can relate that story back to you.

Yeah, no, thanks for the, thanks for the prompt. As you sort of alluded to earlier, there's a kind of, there's a gradual sort of step progress in my career here from being a really good technical guy, really good at numbers, explaining and then so that's all well and good, being able to do that stuff. What I always tell people is really important as a technician is you're able to take technically complicated stuff and you can flex that explanation to the audience because the way that I would explain, take any complexity in anything that I'm doing today to an audit committee, to a board, to an executive committee, to a partner working in procurement or a finance person working in a different part of finance is very, very different. And it's a real skill that I would highly recommend anyone building a career, particularly in treasury, to stay really focused on developing that. So then you're right, Mike, that the next sort of evolution of that skill set is there's a huge level of complexity in the manufacturing process that I grossly simplified earlier of pouring corn in one end and getting stuff out of the other. A big part of that complexity is around how commodity price risk is managed. There's a very well developed futures market for corn price risk management in, in the U.S. but when you're manufacturing, when you're taking corn and turning it into other stuff, you get left with lots of co products. You have a complexity in localization of corn price that the real experts refer to as, as, as basis. So we had this really complex commodity trading function within the business that we were selling. And the world of accounting is always great at taking something which is complex and then making it even more complex to account for that. So a big part of the negotiation and discussion with the private equity buyers of that business making sure that we got to a fair, very fair position in well, what might the closing balance sheet look like for these items? How does the price risk get reflected in that? What's the subsequent risk of that of that unwinding. And of course, early on in those negotiations or those discussions, a lot of it is education with the buyer, then naturally is the rubber really hits the road on deal negotiation, it becomes much sharper and together with your relative, with your respective sets of advisors, you're trying to find a way of making sure you get the best answer for your various various stakeholders. So really had to sharpen my skills in explaining complicated stuff to using that in a deal negotiation situation, which again was brilliant. And I really loved and enjoyed that, enjoyed that project and having the opportunity to do that. And I think often, Mike, people who are really good at technical finance stuff, who are really good at technical treasury stuff, often you kind of sit down in career discussions and very understandably your boss or others will say, but what commercial value are you bringing?

It's a transition.

And when you can then say, well, look, we had this transaction that was £1.7 billion of enterprise value, which is a huge number in the context of Tate and Lyle as a business. And I was able to take that complexity and turn it into a commercial outcome. That's a brilliant story or response back to that challenge, which I think often comes for people doing roles like the one that I do.

You had a diverse background, corporate finance, treasury, industry. And then if you like, talk to us about the move to Tesco's. How did that come about? I know this. This is quite weird. I'm sort of going, well, I know this actually. But yeah, so again, for the listeners, we talked a little bit of the header of the show that Tesco is, you know, largest supermarket in the UK and everything else, but we've had to globally as well. Massive. But can you explain for them and. And then the role and transition?

I live in a place called St Albans, which is small city just north of London. Yeah. And Tesco head office is about 20 minutes journey down the road, so. So from a convenience factor, it ticked a box pretty, pretty, pretty quickly. So look, I got the opportunity to, to move to Tesco came up after I, you know, was getting towards the back end of the project. I mentioned at T Isle Joe. By then Tesco had a new cfo, the same Imran Nawaz that I'd spoken to sort of four years or so earlier when I was at Reckitt and moving to Tate and Lyle. And at the time, my predecessor, Linda Hayward, who will be familiar to many of your listeners, Mike was put a.

Link to the previous podcast with Linda.

Yeah, indeed. Which I listened to last night to make sure that I was properly so had told Tesco that she was looking to retire from kind of executive corporate life. So this opportunity to move over to Tesco came across candidly, I was excited and nervous in equal measures excited because Tesco is massive and the opportunity is huge and it's an exciting company and there's so much going on that having a chance to go there was, was brilliant. Far too good an opportunity to, to not take a serious look at. But at the same time, you know, I did Google and LinkedIn stalking that I'm sure many of your listeners do and saw the experience that Linda had prior to being at Tesco. And when you Google Tesco and Treasury quite quickly you get inundated with brilliant stories about team successes and how, how they were real trailblazer in the world of sustainability, linked finance and have won lots of awards. Again, a bit like the time I recall being sat in front of the record CFO and thinking, well, I'm good at all this, this stuff, this is going to be a big step up. That played on my mind a little bit. So I met with Imran at Tesco. I met with a couple of members of his finance leadership team and was reassured really quickly one, that this was far too good an opportunity not to take a serious look at and, and two, that just the caliber of people at Tesco and in the treasury function in particular being so strong that it would be a really good team to, to join and, and lead, but not, not just lead a team that Joe, I could, I could learn from as well. So that that opportunity came up. I joined Tesco almost a year ago, so sort of back end of April 2023 and was struck within the first few days at just the enormity and the importance of the treasury function in an organization like Tesco and that's sort of twofold I think. One is the sheer breadth of what corporate treasury does at Tesco is huge. So all of the traditional stuff that you would expect a Treasury function to do around FX risk management, interest rate risk management, managing debt investors, managing relationship banks, managing the maturity profile of our debt, but one of the most fascinating parts of it was in the middle of an energy crisis, managing the energy price risk for the entire organization. And look, sort of 18 months ago, any organization dealing with the sort of hugely volatile energy market had a hard task. But for Tesco and for any retailer in the uk, that challenge was hugely amplified by the fact that retail margins are very, very, very, very low. It's a hugely competitive place. So when you're looking at energy price risk management in a business that makes a 4% operating margin, those decisions are hugely important.

Right.

So getting it wrong makes a massive difference to the organization, makes a massive difference to the shareholder experience, as does getting it right, I might say, as well. So that excitement they're learning about this stuff and developing this strategy with the team of experts was very exciting indeed. And again, it kind of piqued that interest that I've always had through my career, which is I always think of myself as being a kind of intellectually quite curious person. I love learning new stuff and I love taking that new stuff and then being able to explain, explain it and, and teach others. And as much as I probably don't have the patience to do it, you know, maybe in another life I could have been a schoolteacher because that, that passion of helping people learn, helping people, helping explain things to people is something I've always, I've always really, really enjoyed. So that kind of takes me, I suppose maybe I kind of pause for breath there, but that sort of takes me to the. Why make the move to Tesco? What was it like when I first got there?

So we talked there and we mentioned there about amazing Linda. She was previously on the show and everything else. And you have a different perspective, different background, not, you know, if different, you know, just very different, you know, career paths and everything else. Can you explain how your background experiences have then influenced your, you know, leadership style and things like that? I know that all three of us are still, you know, friends with Linda and everything else, but she, Linda and I had known, I'd known Linda all my treasury recruitment career and she'd been treasury through and through, whereas you'd had all this diverse range of other experiences as well. What's that? You know, how's that influence your style with the team and things?

Linda's fantastic. Yeah, I never knew Linda until I went, got started to the sort of the process at Tesco and got. Got the role. And my word is she a tough act to follow. Right, so. So if you think what Tesco looked like when, when she came in, yeah, culturally, completely different balance sheet and reputation in the capital markets, completely different. And a huge part of that was due to the brilliant way that Linda managed the team, managed external, external stakeholders. So that made the prospect of joining Tesco one more exciting, but also a little bit terrifying because I knew I was following someone that was massively respected and had done a brilliant job. So when I joined Tesco, obviously very conscious of the fact that my background And Linda's background were very, very different. And I can honestly say that that's been brilliant for me, that's been brilliant for Tesco organizationally and I think it's been particularly good for the team that I inherited from Linda. So the six direct reports that I have in treasury plus the broader team in the UK and in India as well, because I think about things in a different way than someone that's had a entirely treasury driven background. I ask different types of questions, I require different things of the team than I suspect Linda did. Why do I say that's been brilliant for the team? Because one of the things I've learned through my career is working for a very different or diverse range of bosses who have different experiences, who think about problems in different ways, who solutionize in different ways. I've been able to kind of pick the best of that as I have developed in my career and I think it's been a wonderful benefit to the team as well. And because I have that broad corporate finance experience over many years, one of the things I've really tried to use that to do is demystify the world of treasury and bring treasury closer to one the rest of finance, but also the organization more broadly. And Mike, I know we talked about this before, but I remember in my early days at PwC, the Treasury at my clients, but also the kind of treasury, you know, accounting or treasury audit function within PwC, there was often this like a feeling that it was this sort of black box of complexity.

Yeah.

And if you weren't, if you weren't in the club, you weren't in the club and it was really hard and inaccessible. And actually I was very lucky to work with some people at PwC at the time who did a great job in kind of demystifying treasury and bringing outsiders in. So it's always stayed with me as something that's really important, really important to do. So what I've done since joining Tesco is work really, really hard to connect the treasury team with the rest of the business and connect the rest of the business as best we can with the, with the treasury team as well. Because that's the sort of real unlock to treasury being better business partners. Right. So there's a whole load of stuff that the treasury function can do on its own, but you make better decisions about all sorts of treasury activities when you know what the business is worried about, when you know what the consequences of the higher interest rates are on prices. And there are all sorts of other stuff. And I'm really Pleased to say that not quite a year into role, we've been hugely successful in doing that. We really have a seat at the table across the business in bringing our ideas on energy hedging or on capital allocation or on how to manage the delivery of cash flow in a way that we would never have if treasury was still seen as this kind of complicated corner in the corner of the office. And it's a small example, but one of the things I was particularly pleased with in recent weeks is we had an opportunity to bring someone new into the team. And the person we brought in hasn't just not worked in treasury before, but isn't even a finance person by background. So someone who works in the commodities procurement team at Tesco. And for me, that was a brilliant kind of indicator or brilliant sign of we're really getting the message out there that this is a exciting and attractive part of the company to work in.

Going back to that, when you look at this, retaining talent, if you like. And again, I'm looking at the. You've talked already there, you've touched on how important the corporate culture and you've attracted staff and they've gone, hey, I want to work in Treasury. But how do you align that with you as a treasurer when you're a. I say a new treasurer. What I mean by that is you've come in without a Treasury background per se. You're now the treasurer. You know, how do you then, these group of treasury professionals go, hi, I'm the treasurer, and everything else, and is it simply by working with them and, you know, developing them, or how do you instill that?

The ACT has this, like, FTSE 20 Corporate Treasurers Group, which I have to say, has been, you know, tremendously welcoming. When I joined that group and I spoke a little bit earlier about the Treasury I remember in the past, and, you know, you're kind of terrified to go and see someone from treasury because you might end up going back to your desk thinking you knew even less than you did before you asked the question. You went there to go, Treasury.

Yeah, yeah, we know.

Whereas this, the forum that the ACT runs has been really good and focused on really important stuff. So the first couple of meetings that I went to, there was this huge push on the DE and I agenda within the world of corporate treasury, but also, how can we work better with our relationship banks in that space as well? And for me, that was massively reassuring that the moving from a broad corporate finance experience into more of a Treasury specialism was right, because these were people who Were really focused on things that have been massively important to me all the way through my career.

And just going back to that people aspect as well. And I'm not going to do, you know, pre post Covid and all that stuff, but, you know, the transition of people, you know. And again, whilst we host the podcast and someone actually said to me the other day, you are a recruitment company, right? I was like, yeah, but we don't talk recruitment on the podcast. Oh, okay. I said, we talk about people, we talk about their careers and we talk about the biggest obviously thing is blended ways of working hybrid back in the office and things. Can you. I know you and I, you're working from home today. That's why I've managed to grab, you know, some a load of your time. And I don't want to run out of time. We've got another, you know, 15, 20 minutes. But the thing is, what are your insights into hybrid team working? How do you run it with you guys? And again, this is for listeners and they're gonna, oh, we should do like Tesco.

I think. I think listeners should do it like Tesco's. My view is I have a team of bright, capable adult human beings, right? And bright, capable adults work out where they need to be to get their work done. So I've never felt the need to say, you need to be in the office three days a week, four days a week, you need to be in the office. When I'm in the office. And I think, frankly, organizations that do do that, they're really missing a trick because certainly the people who've joined the workforce in the last five, 10 years, they won't be accepting of that. There is this expectation of, of being able to work flexibly. And look, from my experience, when you sold half of the company you work for end to end, working remotely, the. The genie's out of the bottle. You can't go back to how it was before because the evidence is there of the successes and benefits of working, having a hybrid way of working. And look, Michael, I have two young boys, seven and five, and my ability to spend hugely valuable time with them as a dad is only possible because of the flexible working that I had at Tate and Lyle and the flexible working that I now have at Tesco. So to kind of go. To go back, to go back to your question, I think the best organizations, the way they've handled this is by treating adults as adults and letting people make their own decisions. And I haven't yet had to have a single conversation with Anyone about saying I want to see you in the office bit more. And I think giving people or demonstrating that trust in people is hugely, it's going to be hugely beneficial to them. And those organizations. I do often kind of roll my eyes when I read stuff about other organizations mandating a number of days to be in the office and tracking people based on and how many times they, they, they swipe their passes into the office. Because you know, I think in the corporate world today one technology makes that unnecessary and I think it just demonstrates a lack of trust in employees or people in your organization. That J, for me, if I was in an organization like that would really be concerning.

I want to say in a jokey way but actually I'll say in a more serious way as a recommendation to anyone listening today. If you're mandating people to go back in the office five days a week, can you just make sure I know because all I'm going to do as a recruiter is approach all of your teams because to put it technically that's stupid. Basically you're meant to be employing adults. Exactly as Andy talked about there and Katie who works for me, Craig, they sometimes oh, I've got to do this, got to do this. I went, okay, is your phone on? Do you need anything? I don't care. Not, I don't care. I care about them as individuals. I'm not going to clock watch but you know, I've seen it again and there's a few as we know, London based, UK based firms who have said five days a week back in the office I'm like really? I'm literally going through our database, sending out my contact info saying look guys, I've got clients like Tesco's, you know, you should give me a call. They don't do that. But what do they mandate? Nothing. You know, they treat you like an adult if you'd like that. But the inbox starts to fill up with, with CDs. It's just.

That's absolutely right. But Mike, the one thing I would also say connected to that is people who are looking for opportunities and want to progress their career. I think the flexibility cuts both ways. If I sort of go right back to the start of my career that the number of things I learned when I was at PwC just from being sat in the room.

Yes.

With senior people it's almost like a process of osmosis and you, you hear something which piques your interest and it then you end up working on a, on a project as a result of that. So I think that the homeworking flexibility is brilliant and we should never go back to previous ways of working. But certainly the earlier you are in your career, do not underestimate the benefit of just being around people who have seen and lived the experience that you want to have in your, in your career.

I think I put here just two balance is key. I've already said in a couple of things where I've been interviewed remote is dead in treasury terms because some technical disciplines. Yeah, but treasury is about collaboration. But you, you talked about it there, making sure you have planned intentionality. You're there with the team but do something practical about it. Don't just show up to just, just have a coffee and not then talk. Have a coffee and chat and then talk about a number of the things we, you know, implementing new system or doing this, make it reason to be there. But that's about the adultness as well. So.

Yeah, no, completely agree.

I don't want to run out of time. We've still got about another 10 minutes. You've touched on there the fact that, you know, got traditional roles, treasury, the people listening today, they've been all the way through their treasury careers. In treasury you've had this number of different experiences, both of which come together beautifully in this current role. You know what, what are the skills and competencies you think are essential for success in modern treasury leadership roles? Is it, you know, you have to be like you or you have to be like another treasurer, you know, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, Mike, thanks. It's a great, it's a brilliant question. I think to be a successful corporate treasurer, you obviously have to be brilliant at the real basics and the blocking and tackling of all of the stuff that any corporate treasury function does be that interest rate, risk management, FX risk management, management of relationship banks, debt investors. That, that is a given. You cannot be credible without, without doing that. Now that doesn't mean there's a kind of one size fits all approach to getting to that position as a, as a group treasurer in a large organization like mine. But I think there's a couple of things that you, that you have to do to be successful. One is you need to build a brilliant team and in my case at Tesco, I've been extremely fortunate because Linda left me with a fantastic team that really helped me get hit the ground running as I joined Tesco. And the other is you have to be really well connected with the rest of the organization so that they know who to pick up the phone to when they have a challenge that might be in a Treasury area but also so that you as a treasurer are connected to what are the challenges, risks, opportunities facing the business in the here and now? Something that's been, I think those two things have been my number one and number two focus, if not combined since joining, since joining the organization.

So you've been very kind with your time. We've got the last this is the wrap up of the show as you know each week. So you've heard a few of them. So we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. These are the amazing takeaways that the global treasurer for Tesco as we talked about before the show is going to take few in your treasure because so this might be more junior guys, mid level senior. What are your wrap up things for people to sort of put in their back pocket as they're listening to the podcast on their journey And I think right, I need to do that.

Yeah. Number one, treasury is a brilliant part of finance to be in amongst the best. It touches every part of the organization. It's so critical to keeping a business moving in the right direction. So anyone in finance who's thinking about having a looking at a role that might have a Treasury angle to it, I would say absolutely jump at the opportunity. It is brilliant. The other thing I'd say is, and I've done this myself all the way through my career is be hugely open minded about what opportunities might come up, be they in treasury or outside of treasury and back yourself as a financial professional, finance professional to be able to do them. If I sort of wound the clock back 10 years, I never would have believed that I would have spent time doing M and A and doing investor relations and doing doing in the big corporate treasury role that I do now. But just by being open to trying something new and trusting myself to be able to do it. I've had such a fulfilling career and hope to continue having a fulfilling career. So I would say to people, don't have a real clinical focus on what the next stage in your career looks like. Be, be open to doing anything across a broad spectrum of of finance roles.

Amazing. Andy, you've been very kind with your time. You've got a job to do allegedly. So thank you for your time today. I know that people are going to absolutely love this one. And yeah, thank you very much for your time and look forward to seeing you live on stage one day soon maybe. Yeah, there you go.

I hope so. Mike, thanks for your time as well. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you Very much for listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Wanted to catch up with you at the end today's podcast to invite you to Join us in 2024 at one of our Treasury Career Corner Live events throughout the us, throughout Europe, throughout the uk. We're going to be right the way across and we start the world tour for Treasure Career Corner Live in New York on Wednesday the 6th and Thursday 7th of March. You don't want to miss them going to be there. If you're in New York York, please look it up, register you've listened to the podcast, you can actually get to meet some of the guests live. You get to meet me live. I've kind of everything. But anyway, no, I hope you'll come and join us talking treasury careers. Each event starts at 6:00 clock with registration 6:30 to 7:30. I meet with the guests, I talk to them on a live panel. It's live version of the podcast after all. And then we do networking drinks. So the first one say in New York in Times Square, then we actually move on. We've only got 65 people per night that so we're booking up with as I record this, we're over 60% full on one of the nights, 55% full on the second and then we're hitting the road. We're doing Treasure Career Corner live in cities across the us, UK and Europe. We'll be at Kyriba Live in Las Vegas, we'll be at Texpo in Houston. We're also stopping off in Dallas. And then we we've got other of our own events in Chicago, London, Athens, Luxembourg, Frankfurt. What could be better? So if you keep an eye on the website, we'd love to see you there. Keep an eye out for dates and venues. We're coming to a city near you. If you want to connect with us, just reach out to me. Can't wait to see you in 2024. Treasury Career Corner Live, the world Tour. See you soon.

Sa.