The Treasury Challenges on the Horizon with Adam Glasser

Foreign.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals.

About their treasury careers.

Each and every week I talk to them about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Let's get on with the show.

This week's show, delighted to be joined by Adam Glasser, the corporate treasurer at Vantage Speciality Chemicals. Vantage is a leading global supplier of naturally derived speciality ingredients formulations that cater the evolving needs of industrial and consumer markets. Yes, I just read that off my script. So we will get Adam to explain exactly what the company does a little bit later because there's other words in here like esterification. No, no, Adam could do that. I'm not doing that. Anyway, I want to focus on Adam's treasury career. So I'm going to go back to the beginning. We start about that natural step, as we just spoke before the episode, about how Adam starts in political science right through to that natural step into Treasury. Of course, that's what a lot of people do. Adam, if you would handing the microphone over to you, take us back. How did it first all start for you? So interesting times. Back to you, sir.

Sure. Well, I did not, as you alluded to, my root Intuit treasure role was circuitous. So I graduated from university and I actually wanted to be a journalist in a place where I didn't speak the language and I liked the food. So I bought a one way ticket to Shanghai, China and tried to figure it out. And I ended up working for the Economist Group in Shanghai writing articles for one of their smaller publications. They have a lot of activities other than the, the newspaper or the magazine that most people are familiar with. From there I was there for a few years kind of learning Chinese and doing translation. Moved back to the United States and I got into real estate. So I worked for a real estate financing company. I did hotel development for Starwood Hotels, which is now part of Marriott Hotels. And then I went to Dow Chemical where I ran their real estate group upon joining. And real estate, the appeal of real estate is one of the appeals, is the complexity to it. It's very easy to see an office building, it's easy to see a chemical plant. But how that actually comes into being is incredibly complicated. And when I was at Dow Chemical I did a few high profile deals and that the real estate function was housed in the treasury, the larger treasury organization. And so that was the opportunity to jump into Treasuries. So from real corporate real estate at Dow Chemical. I went to customer credit where I had a portfolio of businesses that I oversaw. And then my real lucky break was Dow Chemicals spun off a company in a SPAC format back when that was a cool thing to do. And I was loaned out as their assistant treasurer. And so I basically became there was no treasure. So I reported to the CFO and I just had to figure it out. So the formal training kind of came on the job.

Diving back into that, Adam, just for a moment about your Dow Chemical experience when you had that. So you'd had real estate and you'd learned some of the financing there and everything else and then that step into Treasury. But they. I know a bit about this anyway because we had Gary the. The treasurer of DOW Chemical globally on episode. I think it was back at 100 with that. Was that sort of a rotation program with Dow or what was the sort of. What's the ethos there, if you like. Certainly from that level. I spoke to Gary because he's the global treasurer. You were making your way up the levels from treasury manager. What was that? What they used to do?

No, real estate is kind of. It's kind of off on its own. The fun. It's funny you say that when I first worked at dao, Gary was my boss. So as you perform, the opportunities kind of emerge. At least they did it Dow and at least they did for me. So it wasn't a rotation program, but as I did a. I did a pretty good job. I would in. In real estate and then that kind of allowed me to show what I could do. And then the treasury opportunities came my way and directly from Gary. So.

Well, we'll put a link to him in the show notes so you can go back to the great episode with him. So you then, as you said, you did this spin off now Dow Chemicals, most people know the group right the way across things. So what. What part was Agro Fresh, if you like or can you explain that for us a little bit?

Sure. Agrofresh was a. Was a specialty chemicals company or is. And essentially what they did was they had a whole team of PhD botanists and they bought material that essentially stopped certain kinds of fruit from breathing. So essentially what. How this worked was a bunch of apple growers or pear growers all over the world harvest all their. Their apples, let's say in September in the Northern hemisphere. Well, when you go to the grocery store in April and you have an apple, that apple was harvested in the fall. And so what what they did was that you put all the Apples in a warehouse, you seal it up, you take the oxygen level down and then you put these two little tabs in a solution inside and it evaporates and it basically. And there's no residual and it's all approved for human consumption. And what it does is it stops the apple from breathing. So it basically stops any maturing and then rotting. And then when they open up the warehouse in March, those apples taste like they were just picked. And so that business, so it's a really neat business, had some interesting operating quirks, but that business wasn't core to what Dow does, which is make massive amounts of commoditized chemicals. And so they spun it off and, and so I was kind of handed the reins. And that was like a fascinating experience because not only was it a spin off, but then it went public on day one. So it wasn't just a private company. You also had all the public reporting requirements and all public shareholders at the same time.

And what about, you know, so you're really relatively early stage and you're, as you say, you're high profile, having to deal with all those guys and the challenges that throws any tips for anyone that's thrown in the similar situation now.

Knowing that you don't know things is just fine and asking for help is fine. So having people, usually people are more than happy to talk about things they know about. So I'm not bashful. I still say that today when I get on the phone with Banks, there's things that are complicated. I've done this in business school or I've done it, just walk me through it again and refresh my memory and then things come back. So I think that being able to ask for help, at least at a high level has worked for me, hasn't hurt me and it's helped me learn more and then perform better help the companies I work for. So that was a big one. And then the other piece, if I was fortunate to have this experience and I've taken it with me. But when, if you have that enormous big Fortune 50, Fortune 100, Fortune 500 company experience because the size of the organizations are so massive, the operating discipline, you know what best in class is. And so a lot of my future, my experience I had afterwards, is that okay? At Dow we would do this okay, now I take the same operating discipline and you try and adjust the fit for purpose for a smaller organization. So I've tried to take the same kind of high standards and apply them where you can in smaller organizations because a lot sometimes when the Organization is small and it grows. It doesn't know what treasury can do. And so that, that big company training was very beneficial to me.

When you say that how do you right size it? What I mean by that is you've got hey, I'm from this big BP shell dao boom like this and then you're doing a much smaller scale. How was that? If you like was how, how did you make that work?

I try to be a very clear communicator. So let's just talk like one of the things that I work on a lot, which is usually under appreciated, let's put it that way, is insurance. Nobody wants to talk about insurance. Everybody falls asleep when they talk about insurance. However, when you're building up, you have to assess the risk. So talking about okay, here's the organization, here's our risks, here's our liability, here's our property, here's our workers comp. Here are these things, here's how we should think through them and then go what are, what's the risk we're comfortable taking? These are conversations that anybody can pay attention to but they have to, they have to be set up in a way that are approachable. And so that's, you know, you don't always get there but a lot of times you take what you did last year, you add inflation and then you put it out there for the next year, which is not really a good way of doing anything. So that's sort of how I level said it. Here's the risk here. I'm going to make this digestible. I'm not going to use any of the terms. I'm just going to talk through the philosophical outlook and get your feedback and then we can put something together based on what management is looking for.

And then agrofresh, great journey there for three years. What next?

So I went back to Dow for, for about a year where I was in charge of their excess cash book. So that's short term investing. So managing liquidity, capital preservation, you know, and minimizing risk. And then I moved to Chicago. I was, took a little time off and then started at Randa Accessories as their treasure.

And what was that role like? So you came in as go from global and everything else, you know, again a natural step. Obviously grander apparel and things like that from specialty chemicals. How was that?

The industry was totally different. Right. You're talking about fashion versus chemicals. But a lot of the, the major tenants were, were the same and a lot, I mean so I always have to understand, here's the actual context you're working in. But a lot of the main treasury goals remain the same. So it's just applying it to a new business model. And so that was building the treasury organization because all the treasury activities were done haphazardly all over the company. So it was kind of pulling all of that into one place to making sure they all work together and you.

Know, a few years there, obviously. Let's look back at the time. I mean, timing wise you were heading into then as you joined a weird time to join a company as well around lockdown and Covid and everything else. How did you deal with that?

You know that it was completely bizarre. I was hired via Zoom interviews. I worked basically almost completely remote. In two years there, I saw my boss in person three times. It worked from a, from an actual work perspective, it worked fine. From a cultural perspective it was. The human connections are important. I mean, maybe five days a week isn't where we're going back to. But it was very hard to make personal connections. And a lot of how treasury works in my experiences, you have to lean on. You need to work with your controllers or accountants, you need to work with your financial planners. And building that trust is very difficult during. Through a screen. So did it happen? Yes, but there was never an attachment just because of the way it was set up. So it was completely odd and not something I want to repeat.

And then bring us more sort of, you know, we're going to go on to other issues but you know, still deep diving on the treasury side but then bring us a little bit more so Speciality Chemicals, Randa and now the most recent role of Vantage took us through this. Or Vantage, how you say it?

Yeah, Vantage Specialty Chemicals.

Yes.

Randa was a, was an import business and so it, while it was, it's a very well run business, it didn't have the same kind of complexities that some of my previous roles. And that's why I went to Vantage, which has global production. It has entities all over the place and so you have a lot more, a lot more issues that, that are constantly moving around that make it more interesting, at least from my perspective. So I like being back in manufacturing. This Vantage is also owned by a private equity company. So I had not had that experience and so that was another appeal to doing this. So I like Randa and like Agrofresh, I'm the first treasurer here. So it's trying to bring all of these things that were done in different places under one umbrella and make sure that they're Tied together. So that was the appeal.

So Adam, you and I spoke about this before and then when we had our pre brief call and stuff like that, I had an interview with Judy Fabris, one of my favorite interviews. But Julie has worked for a number of different companies, a lot of which private equity backed or owned and things like that. Most recently Britax. And on our show I did this little joke with her. We'd already pre rehearsed it and I've done it with yourself. But we spoke about it, but it was more about. We're viewing private equity. It's just about the cash, really. That's it. As soon as you get the cash sorted, you know, not your glorified cash manager, but once you get the cash sorted, that's it, that's what they want to see and everything else. Now Julie's quote and from back those times was, yeah, you're right, it is just about the cash. I was like, oh great. She said, yeah, but then once you've sorted cash, then you can do all the other interesting stuff. And I was like, I love that. So we use that on the show. We both laughed and joked about it. With yourself, with, you know, being into that PE backed environment. What's that like for you in treasury terms? Is it similar that as long as those things are flowing and you've got all that, that that's a good way for it to be working or how do you find it from having worked, as you say, in these global corporates and different environments? What's it like for you as a treasurer, Vantage?

I, I can only speak from my own experience. Vantage is private equity owned, but over the last year they have brought in a lot of people from these very large corporates and in order to turn it into a global multinational organization, not at the same scale as some of these other companies, but in the way people think about business and the way people operate. So it is always about cash. I say that, but private equity companies, it's always about ebitda. And so there's always a toggle between if you're running for ebitda, if you're running for net income, because if you're running for ebitda, it's easy to run out of cash if you're not focused on it. So I think there's some of. That's not an uphill battle. Everyone knows what's going on, but to make sure you get enough airtime. However, the, the ownership group is very receptive to different ideas and that's what we're Trying to build that. But, you know, there's a very, there's. It's always the same. It's very, what's EBITDA driven? What's EBITDA driven? And then from a Treasury perspective, I keep saying the same thing, which, you know, I believe in. So hopefully it doesn't come back and bite me, which is I'm not. I'm not here to find the lowest cost, I'm here to find the best value. And so we can talk about what that trade off is, but you don't just buy the cheapest car, cheapest clothing, cheapest anything in your personal life. We should look at what we're trading off in order to get the price we want, because we can take on more risk here and there. And so it's really trying to set up that conversation or set up that evaluation to make sure that it's not, it's not a single metric that we're aiming at. And so far it's been a good reception.

When you're doing, when you're setting those metrics with, again, this isn't getting you up on the stage, but this is one of the. You might get, you might be asked up on stage, who knows, you know, I'm doing a number of conferences coming up when you're, you know, pulled out and they say, right, what are the metrics you guys measure yourselves on? What are the ones that you think, yeah, these are the, you know, the ones we have to look at. Or what are the ones that you think maybe as we move on within the show, that other people should be thinking about as well? How's it developing? What are the metrics, you know, you measure yourself on and the ones you're planning for next? Because, you know, I had a really nice chat with a client last couple of days, I'm going to feature on the show coming up about. They just done their first green bond and ESG was, you know, he said, you know, two years ago, well, three, four years ago, remote working wasn't a thing. You know, two, three years ago, ESG was there, start to come up green bonds. Now they've just issued their first one and, you know, that's one of the measures. So what are the metrics you measure?

You got yourselves on the company measure itself on very traditional metrics. Not. I mean, we have a ESG component, although that's not necessarily treasury focused. Outside of all of our banks wanting to know everything we're doing because they have reporting requirements, which means we have reporting requirements, but we're Focused very much on working capital and managing working capital like a lot of companies. And then what I'm trying to embed is the risk adjusted analysis. So that's tough because it's not the normal perspective here. So different metrics around how much risk, how much variability that we're willing to live with in order to achieve these goals. A lot of the metrics aren't that new. But so, and the conversation is really, again, it's not basic, it's just trying to hammer home here are all the different things, the surprises that we don't want to have happen.

Now we're moving on to this next section of the show. And when Adam and I spoke before, he said, well, how does it stretch us? Well, we talk about your career, we talk about getting up to now, and we're up to now, if you like, and looking forward to seeing you in about a month and a half in Chicago for the Windy City Summit, you know, so looking forward to that and getting back in person exactly as you highlight there. But for yourself, what are the key things you see, you know, as coming to you as challenges As a treasurer, I sometimes spoke about the fact that CFO sometimes maybe use you as the front man and say, look, can you go check out this technology or go check this. What are the issues that you see coming to you as a Treasury professional at the moment that you think people need to be aware of?

I think the biggest one that I don't begin to know how to handle it. But I think the biggest challenge is how AI is going to play into corporate organizations, including treasury functions. And so there's a lot of assistance. It's really cool, it's really unknown. And so that is a big unknown. So, you know, we, the reason I think about that first is you have cyber insurance. Well, you have a lot of, you have AI that's being brought in. Well, what else is going to be automated? And with AI, I think the balance is you get a lot of upside, benefit from understanding what's going on, but you don't get not critical thinking. There are a lot of things in treasury that I find you intuit because you have experience and you look at all these numbers and, and you say something is wrong here. I'm not sure, but something's wrong. And you start digging and you find out the anomaly because you're looking at this and you're thinking through things and you're thinking of your past experience. And so I think that just the way this is coming is it's getting pushed out Much faster than it's understood how this is actually going to impact it. So I think that's the biggest thing. Is it coming into our treasury organization yet? No, but it's coming into our IT organization. So it's just a matter of time in, until this comes through. So that's, that's my biggest unknown, I guess.

And what advice then? What, what, when you're sitting there with another treasurer and talking about this, what would you recommend? You've got that viewpoint, if you like, what recommendations would you give? Sitting there with your, your coffee in your hand and saying to them, have you thought about this? Are you thinking about this? You know, what's, what's the dialogue going between you and that, that other fictional treasurer? What are you, you know, saying, do you guys do this or where are you seeing the weak points or what, the waypoints, if you like?

Yeah, I mean, I, I think you have that, that and then you have, I mean it also goes down to who is in your, who works in your treasury organization, like who, who can see what's, how is that, how is that staffed? Who, who is making the decisions, who's doing the analysis, who's coming up with these, the scenario planning. Because the experience of experience matters. And so that's, that's really, you can put in all these different systems but it doesn't make up for experience. And so how do you, how do you incorporate them without losing lived experience? So I don't know, I just, so I'm, I'm hesitant because you don't know what this is going to tell you. And then the knock on is, will your managers, senior management, the owners, say this is great, just go with it. And then we have, that's, that's my biggest concern because that's out of my control.

What other things for yourself do you think other treasurers, you know, well, this is, as I say, we'll come to the sort of wrap up of the show because we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. But I was going to sort of embellish the question because normally I just say what are your top tips for treasurers? But you know, I know you've got this great experience through these different companies, but for yourself, what are the takeaways? You would, you know, say you've got, you know, you and I are going to meet some great treasury professionals in Chicago soon. We're going to be talking to them. You know, what are the tips you're going to give to maybe the junior guys or, you know, what are the other bits of advice you would give to the other people in the room over a coffee, beer or whatever. What do you think? What are the things that people should be thinking about?

I think just in terms of career advice. And I can't remember who first told me this because it's not my. I didn't come up with this. But you need to. It's helped me, not you, because who knows who you is. But I want to create my own demand. I. In my own internal demand. Here's what we bring, here's how we can help you. Here's what you need help. Great. When you, when you give help that's substantive, you receive it back. Because all of this happens in partnership through an organization. It is not a standalone group here.

Right.

So part, especially in my three experiences being the, the assistant treasurer, treasurer. Here's what this job is, here's how we help the organization and basically explain it. But that's a strong emphasis on communication, clear communication, making the most of opportunities when they're presented to you. That helps build not only your rapport within the company, it helps you, you know, instill in yourself confidence that this is important and here's why it's important and you can, you can speak to it. That's some of the best advice I have. And that's what I, that's what I've had to do here. Nobody wants to think about this, that or the other. Well, let me tell you why you do. Here's two slides and a 10 minute conversation because I know you're not going to pay attention for more than that. So nobody needs 40 slides, nobody wants to list, see all thousand pictures of your last vacation. They want to see the two. And so you got to be able to cut down to make it meaningful. And so I think that that has helped me incredibly trying to work with other people who don't really know what. Because everybody, you know, when you ask anybody, treasure, oh, that's numbers, that's finance, right? And so they bucket you and they, they got you, they understand who you are, they put you in that pile. And that's not necessarily true.

I, I totally agree. And I think actually you, you put it exceptionally well. But one of the things that I've noticed from these conversations is that there are different disciplines. You've got your tax, you got your other areas within finance, FPA and stuff. It seems that treasury, again, why I've managed to do 250, 270 shows or whatever, talking to amazing treasures like yourself, is that treasury really is at that center of that sort of that cartwheel and yeah, maybe the cfo, but maybe they're above it. But they use their treasurers that, you know, the treasurer's got the strings out to credit out to tax out to this out. Yet you know, everything seems to go through treasury and the more that a treasurer does that you make yourself invaluable exactly as you say. So.

No, the only, the only downside, the only downside is because treasury is so forward looking, right? You want to understand what happened. You want to understand how you could have made better decisions in the same situations. And you know, you look at the past and go, oh, I missed this, I can make better decisions going forward but the, the risk is because this happens to me frequently, hey, we're going to have a problem here in a month and all. I can't solve the problem. That's not, there's a legal issue, there's an accounting issue, there's a management issue. But by raising the issue now, oh well, perfect, you can go solve it. No, I can't. There's, there's a segregation of duties for a reason. I can't do these things, but I'm telling you so as you bring up issues that, that you see on the horizon, sometimes they're like, oh well then you just go take care of it, which is not actually going to work. So there's that danger that whoever's bringing up the issue is now the person who's going to solve the issue. So it's still worth bringing them up because it's better off for the organization. And my own personal philosophy is I don't like last minute issues coming up. And so there's a, plenty that come at you whether it's interest rates or whether it's increase or decrease in sales. But we don't need to have our own internal issues be the things that are keeping us up at night because that is avoidable. So I'm trying to avoid last minute hysterical phone calls. I feel like my job is to bring a sense of if there's, if there's issues going on and the temperature goes up, my job is to bring it down. A lot of things and not everything, but a lot of things in treasury something happened, okay, we can go reverse it. There might be a cost, but nothing's, this doesn't have to be permanent. So it's trying to just bring some calmness to situations when they come up and in so doing make sure that they don't come up in the future to the extent we can by bringing them up as early as possible. So.

Well, I, I'm, I've got them. You know, I don't, I don't know if this nickname will stick, but it's like being the Treasury Sooth, sir, because you're speaking, you're speaking calmness, you're doing that, I think across the piece. I think it's great. There is Seth Marlowe, I guess from many, many years ago, the treasury whisperer. But you could be the soothsayer. I think that that's it that we, when people can come to you with their finance or treasury issues and you're there to keep the calm. I love this. It's, well, I think a nice way to end the show unless there were any final words from yourself. But I just really enjoyed it and looking forward to seeing you in, in, in the flesh actually and having a good catch up every, you know, soon and things like that. But any final sign off words from yourself today, Adam, or you know, you know, is that a nice wrap up?

No, I think that's a great wrap up. I appreciate you inviting me on. It was lovely and yeah, I, I look forward to meeting you in person in a few weeks.

Very great, Adam. Thanks very much, Will, as I say, all listeners today. Great guy tab in your network. We'll put his LinkedIn detail in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and thanks very much, Adam for being such a great guest. Many thanks.

Thank you.

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, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen.

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