Treasury Career Corner LIVE in Greece with Dimitris Siokis, Elisa Mylona & Christos Baltoumas

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 treasurers about how they built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. And I want to give a shout out to our sponsors flywire. If you've ever wondered if there is a way as a Treasury professional to ease your international transaction flows, then these are the people to talk to. There's a link in the show notes to my interview with my good mate Greg Levin, their Senior VP of Sales. Greg explains who Flywire are and how they can help you and your treasury team with any of your cross border payment headaches. The link to the interview is in the show notes, so check it out and I also want to share some more exciting news. We have partnered with Euro Finance for their 33rd International Treasury Management Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. It takes place from October 2nd to 4th, 2024. Looking forward to it. I've gone to the Euro Finance conferences now for the well over the past 20 years. If you're an international treasury professional then it's the place to be. Not only because I'm going to be there, but you'll get to meet as well as hopefully myself, over 2,200 senior treasury professionals from over 60 countries. You'll meet me we can talk about on my upcoming special feature podcast about the current state of the global treasury recruitment market, live and in person from Copenhagen. And I'm looking forward to meeting many treasury folk from clients such as Bose, eBay, Lego, FedEx. It's just going to be amazing. I hope you'll be there. Great opportunity to exchange experiences, meet leading financial and technology providers as well. It's going to be a great show. Now our LinkedIn audience. I've already offered a 10 discount too, so you can get access to that. But you, yes you as a podcast. This time I have an even bigger surprise for you. Yes, included in today's episode and some of our future episodes there is a secret extra discount code that will save you even more than the 10. Just have to listen out for it and you can save even more. Listen out for the code. Have a pen ready or you can just, I don't know, bookmark it. Listen back to the podcast. Why wouldn't you want to listen to it twice? But anyway, if you listen out for it and you can save even more to find out what it is and save you listen to today's episode and I can't wait to see you in Copenhagen. And as I say, each and every week. Let's get on with the show. And this is the last of our Treasury Career Corner live recordings. This took place in Athens, Greece in June. Amazing being there at the Athens Olympic Museum. Interviewing Dimitris Siokis, the group treasurer at Coca Cola Hellenic Bottling Company. Alyssa Milona, the executive director, treasury and Customer Finance at OTE Group. And Christos Baltarmas, Director of Treasure at Lambda Developments. I hope you've enjoyed these paths past.

Wow.

What is it, five weeks? Amazing. How many treasures can you roll into one month? Well, we did it in July. We. We gave you 12, 13, 14 people. Amazing events, really enjoyed it. Went everywhere from Vegas via Texas, London, and then headed back through Chicago and then ended up in Athens, Greece. And that's it. We're gonna have a little bit of time off for the summer. We still got the podcast coming through, but then next thing that happened. Wow. Yeah, we headed back off. So we're going to be end of the year, we're going to go Dublin, New York, then Euro Finance, then AFP Nashville and then we're going to finish off the year again in London. So lots more Treasure Career corners lives, lots more amazing treasurers. Enjoy. Thank you for all your support and look forward to seeing you at a conference very soon.

Who am I? Why am I here today? So someone actually asked me earlier, why is it called Treasury Career Corner Life? It's about recruitment. No, it's about these amazing three treasurers and their treasury careers. Because as we know, success leaves clues. These are three great treasurers and they are going to talk you through some of their career tips. Actually, we'll say this, first of all, Chatham Financial, can we have you? First of all, that's a lovely Sarah Datasite. Can we have those? My sponsors, lovely here at the front. Do speak to him, even though he's an Everton supporter, but we'll let him go. Salmon Software, where are we? Thank you. Come on, hand up. Thank you. Saint street with Edwin. Thank you for aspects. And Ted, hands up. Come on. So who am I? I'm Mike Richards. I run the treasury recruitment company. I basically move treasurers and treasury professionals around the room. Treasury analyst up to manager up to treasurer. This is who I do it with. If you go back the team, Joe in the us, Katie across Europe and Carly just put something to me. This is what happened nearly six years ago. I decided to record, with their permission, of course, some of the treasurers that I was talking to and I thought we'd do 10 episodes of a Podcast, see how we got on. We're now approaching six years to do the podcast. I've spoken to 320 treasury professionals about their treasury careers. It's incredible. 150,000 downloads. People like it, people just like you. So feel free to sign up. But why do this? Because then I get to talk to amazing treasurers. This is what we're going to do now. We are going to go through and get each of the treasurers here to go through their backgrounds, how they started in treasury, how they are, where they are now and talk about it. We're then going to quiz them a little bit more some of the choices they made. Education, qualifications. Now, I know we've got quite a senior audience, but there are also some analysts, managers wanting some tips. We can do that for about an hour. We will run for time, don't worry. And then we will talk about things like Hybrid and everything else. That's enough talking from me. We're going to start with Demetrius. Demetrius, if you would.

Good afternoon, everybody. Glad to be here. I see a bunch of seasoned professionals. I'll try to calibrate effectively what I would say that is relatively relevant to you as well. Okay. My name is Dimitri Shokis. I'm working at Coca Cola helenik the last eight years. I started my career back in 2000 and it was. It started in treasury but in treasury in Pireos bank in London for a while. Then I did a couple of years in risk management advisory in PWC London and then spent three and a half years at Barclays Capital London doing extraction derivatives, risking ETF Baptist the London period. Almost seven years in London and then I spent good years with Eurobank on the buy side of Eurobank on the asset management of Eurobank. It was only eight years ago that this opportunity came Corkle F la and I moved back to treasury but not from the banking side of things, but from a non financial, corporate treasury side of things. So that's made up the working experience the last 24 years or so.

Yeah, pass it on. I'm going to quiz each of our treasurers here more about their careers as we go further. So carry on.

Hello. Hi. Thank you everyone for being here in the middle of the heat wave. I'm Elisabiron. I'm the group treasurer at Hellenic Telecommunications Organization. I. I started my career in before Dimitris actually I worked. I started my career in the banking sector in a German bank called Hippo Ferrans bank which is. Has now been taken over a few years ago actually by UniCredit I worked in the corporate department as a credit analyst. It was a great school for me. I learned a lot about the banking industry, how to assess financial statements, how to negotiate loan agreements. And then in 2005 a great opportunity came for me and I joined Oted at the beginning as a Treasury analyst. And then gradually I grew in the organization and my role gradually expanded. At the beginning I was just focusing on debt. And then through the years I gained control of the cash and cash flow management risk and in 2017 I became group treasurer. I've done a number of milestone financing transactions. During these years we've raised more than 12 billion of debt of funds. Some of these during the crisis and a few years ago I also became responsible for the customer finance of OTECH Group. For those who may not be familiar with this function in the finance division, the mission of this team is to ensure the best customer experience in the bill to pay journey, to safeguard the billing integrity and to monitor all the inflows. So this role is quite complementary to the treasury because actually we have a very good visibility on the cash flow and how cash is generated.

Okay. And I'm Jesus Baltumas. This is my 23rd year in Treasury. I started from a small local Greek company focusing on a realtor sector, moved on to a big multinational in the energy sector, and then for 11 years in a private equity firm specializing in real estate. And after that, for the past six years and a couple of months, I'm the Treasury Director of the Lambda Development. My early years, my focus was mainly on payment and cash flow and liquidity management. And for the bigger part of the last 15 years, I'm more focused on loans, financing investors. So I have seen all the, all most of the aspects of Tesla.

We had our call before this as well. We talked about education and the rubber. I know it's a couple of years ago, but how you first started here, treasury and some of the audience here studying education, did you find that was a key thing then? Bringing ground through initiatives?

Treasury was the thing that I always wanted to do back then here in Greece. Maybe we didn't call it treasury, but payments and the cash flow management and liquidity management was the thing that I always wanted to do. The main reason is because when you are in treasury, you have one eye inside the organization, one eye outside the organization, talking to lenders, banks, investors, suppliers and trying to bring all this experience inside the organization to reach your goals and make things happen easier. I had my studies in finance and in banking. Nothing out of the ordinary. The usual things, but I don't consider this to be a big plus and something that have helped me over the years. It's a nice start, a nice thing to have because you cannot apply for a junior treasury position with a degree in literature. It would be for me anything. But it was difficult to start. But I didn't end up in treasury by chance. This is what I was always wanting to do from starting.

How did you decide that? How do you start?

I don't know. By chance I didn't discover treasury as Treasury. I discovered what I wanted to do and I tried to find all the job openings that were matching the things that I had in my mind about what best will fit for me.

Okay. I didn't know actually what treasury is. I wanted to do something in finance, but I had no clue exactly what. I studied economics in Athens and then did a Master's degree in the uk. Education was important for me in the sense that I acquired problem solving skills and critical thinking. But if the question is if one can achieve, can have a great career in treasury with another degree, definitely the answer is definitely you can do a degree in maths, in engineering, in economics, in whatever and have an excellent career in Treasury. I ended up in treasury because this job opportunity came and it fitted my, my, my needs at the time I wanted to switch to the corporate sector and focus on the, on debt financing. And I loved it and I still love it.

If someone else is like yourself, if you were giving advice to your younger self and then maybe sitting out there now, what is it you would tell.

Them to do to be successful in Treasury? If you start now, I would recommend to start as a small fish in a big pool rather than the opposite. Because in a big organization you get to work with lots of people, get exposed in many topics, see about how to manage various stakeholders. So that would be one advice. I think for me it worked quite well. One thing that I didn't do and I could have done if I could turn back time is that I haven't worked in international environments. I would have liked to stay in the UK after my studies and work there for personal reasons. I came back. I think it's good if someone has this opportunity to grab it.

Thank you. I will go back to the qualifications that you said, especially for the young professionals. We don't have that many here because we are surrounded by a seasoned professional. But for me, qualifications, especially if you are about to hit, let's say to attempt hitting the market abroad, it is very relevant to have the right qualifications. So a Good degree, a good master's degree. It's. I think it's must. It's a must get the right job. And when it comes to the professional qualifications, things like CFAs and things like FRMs, I had the Financial Risk Management Certificate from my gap four years ago. I think these are all very relevant for junior people that they want to come to the market and it's something that employers are taking your. Because that's what they have. They have all your academics, your qualifications with a judge. A funny example, when I attempted, let's say, to find a job in London, I went to a headhunter, I gave my cv, I had my msc, et cetera. But the guy went through the CV and he I study maths in Athens. Right. So I have there the Kapodestrian University of Athens. Right. Pretty hard stuff. I cannot even speak for. There's not a chance you find a joke in London. All I'm saying is that a good degree, recognizable degree, degree in professional qualifications, especially for professionals, are very relevant even for later in the career. Anything you can get and learn from qualifications.

So I'll again come back to dweet and then go back through the panel. You have developed as leaders, as coaches and coaching your teams. I know that we've talked about this before and I've discussed it briefly with all of you. Again, we've got some more senior treasury professionals in the audience. What would you say is your management style and what do you think other people you've probably seen throughout your treasury careers, good examples and maybe some bad examples. What advice? Again, this is what we're trying to give to these people. What are the challenges you face with those coaches or people in those leadership positions, if you like.

Yeah, I guess when you're becoming a manager, the thing is the challenge, a big challenge, is to calibrate the right level of involvement in the various tasks that the team has. And you may have other team managers as well. So the way that you're getting involved in the day to day and again, this important calibration of how much in detail you go when you're actually check reports, give feedback, et cetera. It's this conversation, I think, is the most important thing because you need to keep your team, let's say, motivated. And if you do into. If you come into micromanagement, especially if you like details, et cetera, you want to check everything, then you're carrying a big risk. So I think the key thing is to, when you're becoming a manager, is to come a bit, step back and see how I can manage, let's say, to give the power back to my people. Right. And involved with the right, let's say, wave the right level and calibrate that. Surely I would say this is relevant.

Fully agree with Dimitri's position on top. I think one of the key role of a Treasury manager is to pass on the strategy to the team and to provide inspiration and to be very transparent on what we are having to do. Because this is one of the roles as a manager and it's very important because the treasury is a key function in the whole organization. So definitely a Treasury always needs to focus on aligning the strategy with the delivery.

Yeah.

Do you do that? Are you doing that very much working with your cfo? Is that coming from you to your cfo, with you talking about deliverables and then are you then passing on to the team or how do you manage it? How do you do it?

Yes, it's both ways. It's both ways and it's not just the cfo, it's the whole management team, it's with a peer. So you need to have an open dialogue with all the functions and be closed. Otherwise you really do not have a good sense of the business. So I think it's key to have the treasury being open and understanding where the business is going and be ready to provide support.

Yeah.

And just before we move on, you touched on it there. I think it's worth exploring. We had our discussion before this and you said about how your role had changed a little bit, had expanded to all touch points on cash, a little bit more, and that had really enhanced your role as a treasurer. Can you explain that for the audience and how you now. Because if I'll wind it back and make it a bit easier, maybe Treasury 20 years ago became this specialist function. Look at us, we're all special. Look at this. And then it spent 20 years battling to get back out of the corner office to be accepted by the business once again and be part of it, which I think it is doing now. You're very much doing that with your role, where you've really got a touch point. Everything cash wise.

Yes, definitely. I think the treasury over the years is moving away from the transactional task and becoming more strategic, more data driven, providing insights to the business and enabling decision making. In my role now, because I'm closely monitoring cash generation process, the inflows, the reaction of the customers, the delays in potential delays in paying their bills and why this is happening, the financial solutions that are offered to our customers. And how they react are more able to identify trends and I'm more able to understand the cash flow generation and to steer accordingly. So it's. It has helped me a lot become better in my treasury operations.

Yeah, what do you like as a boss? And we've got some of the team here so I'm going to be.

Yeah, they know what I like. Listen, I like them to have the initiative and when this time of the year comes that they have to evaluate them among other things. I use three indicators. What people inside of the organization think of them, what people outside the organization think of them and the amount of work that they kitted to themselves doesn't reach me. So they have the general outline of what we have to do but they don't have the step by step way of doing things. This is something that they have come, they have to come up with. So I like them to have the initiative and like people that they are not afraid of doing, of making mistakes. Mistakes are a learning process. They are inevitable. But if you are afraid of making mistakes you are never. You end up doing nothing.

Trevor is a zero mistake environment. If you may press the wrong button.

Listen, there are processes and procedures and there are things that limit the amount of damage. You don't need people that just press buttons because maybe in the future actually you will not need people actually to press buttons. Something someone else will do it. But I believe that mistakes make you better. I don't think that you are working in an environment that no one is ever going to make any mistake. But it's my role to see a mistake coming and to see if someone deviates from a specific process of a specific way of doing things increases the risk of making mistakes. But I don't want someone to be afraid of making mistakes and end up doing nothing. Finding a way of doing things and following the same way for the next 10 or 15 years.

So you've touched on there about mentoring your team and leading your team. I'm going to go to Dimitris now. How he does it and why you see yourself as being a. What makes a good boss to you? What and what makes you a good boss?

I think it's important for people working in a team to give the chance to be interested in what they're doing. Do they save only operational stuff? Do they save only day to day pressing buttons, making payments, type of things? It's your job, it's my job and the manager's job to find things that can actually add value on what they do onto over and above. Let's say the operational stuff. So people need to grow. If they cannot grow, they will live, they will get bored to death and they will live and you may lose money. Right. So one important thing that is for that makes a good boss is to be able to grow the people working for the change. So that's one thing. A second important thing is to be able to give the right level of visibility effectively of the work that the team is doing to the various stakeholders, internal, external stakeholders, et cetera. So it's very easy for a boss to receive, underline analysis, paper, et cetera, and just present it as somebody did it. But it's me delivering it effectively to the stakeholders, giving the candidates to people and recognizing the job, I think it's extremely important and capping it with the growth that you need to work on terms of growing, let's say the people in the team, I think then can create a good mix of formulas.

Yeah, and we talked there, I touched on treasury being this specialist, amazing area and everything else. But then I've seen in particularly the past five to 10 years, treasury getting back out into the business, getting involved in supply chain financing, involved in all the other areas and showing the value. And then we've got all the other things about blockchain AI.

We'll touch on that a bit later.

But how do you do it as a treasurer and encourage a team to do that?

So there is a technology part, right? So you need to be close to the technology evolution and usually we're going to cover it later. But the people will be looking at you to find the right solutions. For instance, for some companies the B2C channel is very relevant, right? You, they will be looking at you to find the right solutions for the B2C. If you don't come up, somebody else, your competitor will come with the solution, the payment solution on this channel. And effectively you didn't provide solution where you could actually change things for the business. But it's not only the technological part, it's also we deal a lot with emerging markets and frontier markets. If a lot has to do with how treasury deals with currencies, liquidities, et cetera, and the business cannot grow in such markets like emerging markets without treasury doing his job. For developed markets, leisure job is given. For the emerging markets, it's not given, it's you need to do the right things, your business can actually grow. So I would say these are two dimensions effectively where we play as a role, a bigger one which growing the.

Business in question, technology. And how are you seeing that Impact, if you like, we'll start with that, but also then managing the team as well.

Okay. The telecom sector does not have the growth that maybe you have at Coca Cola. It's very important to be open to monitor the trends. For example, lately, the last years at Aute, we launched Paze. It's through Cosmote Payments, it's wholly owned subsidiary, which is licensed to provide electronic payments as a financial institution. That is completely new. And it's completely new also for the treasury team. We had to learn how to become a financial institution. And we had to learn also the technology and talk to vendors. And you run all the operations of that. It's a constant learning and unlearning, I would say. And there is not one recipe to that always works. You have to be open and exposed, talk to vendors, talk to banking partners, talk to your peers, and gradually try new stuff.

Very few to add. You have to know what is out there, because maybe if you don't need it today, you may need it tomorrow. And you have to also know the timing where you increase your possibilities of being successful in implementing something new in your organization. Something that works for you or for me. This may not work for me. Not because it's something that it's outdated or it's wrong or whatever. Because there are special things, special ways of doing things in your organization. So you have to have an open eye and see all your options. You have to know how your peers have implemented the different options. And then when the time is right, you can choose what you can bring inside in your organization. But there is no such thing as one solution fits all. And we all have to go to all corporates, move to one system or to one way of doing things.

Yeah.

And to be adaptable things and talk about being adaptable. We've been through over the past five years a seismic shift in the way that we work, remote working. Five years ago it was everyone in the office every day. That's what you did, you worked in the office. And then it leads into technology, leads to a lot of these things. Covid came along and as one day you're in the office, the next day, that's it, you work from home. And we don't know when it'll be over. How did you guys go through that? And then I'll come back through the panel to ask about that as well. So what was it like for you? And then what's the new way of working for yourselves? Because as a recruiter now, people say to me, you know, I've had A couple of clients recently. Oh, we're back. We're a bit more traditional. We're five days a week in the office. I'm like, brilliant. Oh, great. I said, I can't help you because there's no point. No, people don't want. Hybrid exists remote. For some clients, that does work, trizzy, by its very nature, collaborative. So I would say generally it's more hybrid. What about you guys? What was it like for you? And then we'll come back through the feature.

For me personally, it was very easy because I used to work for 11 years in a company that had offices in 10 different countries and I was traveling every weekend. I was working outside the office for 11 years. So it didn't make any difference. For me personally. When Covid came along, it was a bit boring after a couple of weeks or months, whatever, but it didn't make a big difference. So it wasn't new for me. Of course, we had to adapt to the new virtual meeting rooms and all these things, and how we are going to sign documents and how we organize the everyday routine. But it wasn't so difficult. And keep in mind that you had other things at the back of your head back then. Covid and the health and all this. At first, I have to say that I enjoyed it working from home because I didn't have to commute every day, which is a nightmare here for us in Athens. Okay. And today I don't have a strong opinion on it if it's better working from home five days or five days from the office or a hybrid. I'm not sure that the best solution is to come up with a strict policy. Work like this all days in the office or all day from home, or two specific days in the office. I'm afraid that you may end up in a strict schedule. Even if it's a hybrid, it will bring you to where you were when you were working five days from the office. My team can work in the office if they want. Some of them want to come every day, others want to work one or two days, but not specific days when they have other things to do or whatever. It's fine for me.

For me, it didn't work that well because I got my new job in my expanded role the week we went into quarantine. So I had to learn a lot of new stuff and at the same time, guide, coach, navigate my team through this pandemic. So it was really stressful. Now we are back in the office. As a policy, Aute has 20% work from home, but Some people are eligible to more remote work depending on the circumstances, if they are parents of young children, etc. I think all the digital collaboration tools have helped a lot. It's very easy to meet. The peep side of this is that there are too many meetings in my view, and some of these are maybe not so well prepared. Our job as managers and leaders is to put some discipline there and I think it's also. Our job is also to create a safe environment where people can continue to meet and bond as a team, brainstorm and innovate. Because I think if everyone is at home, it's not so innovation, it's not so easy. You can do your daily work, but at some point the team needs to be together. Yeah, this is my experience, but I think hybrid is here to stay. If you ask me, I think it's here to stay. And even maybe in the future you will see more remote work given the scarcity of resources in some of the professions. Like for example, it you may see companies starting to hire from a global talent pool. I don't know.

Yeah, the hybrid is here to stay for us it's 50% is the average. It is expected for people to come at the office, but there are deviations. People can talk to their managers and find a way to do it. Potentially 100% or less than 50% etc. So there is flexibility, but there is a benchmark that says 50%. Personally, I believe that the 50% is the right benchmark because it gives you all the goods from both worlds. You come to the office, you socialize, you meet your team, you strategize, you socialize all the good stuff that the office brings. But at the same time you do have the flexibility to work from home. And I think especially when we're looking on a pool of talents that is relatively scarce. The I think if you don't offer this, you will lose a big part of the talent that is out there that doesn't dream to do treasury. And they can equally do all sorts of other things if they realize that the finance world and the treasury world demands people to be at the office. Show you need to be flexible. The last thing and important thing is from working, let's say all the time from home. It's. I see a number of risks there. I realized it over the COVID period. People become more distant, people do not understand the strategy of where you're heading, etc. Now that we don't have Covid in the way that we had a few years ago, everything will need to make an effort to bring people to the office, talk to them, design how we want to do things. But people need to come together at some point, otherwise you're losing your day.

Hello, lovely podcast listener. Sorry to interrupt today's episode, but it's worth it. This is your secret extra discount code that will save you even more on the upcoming Euro Finance conference. That's right, you can save even more by being a podcast listener. Thank you for listening. So for LinkedIn audience members, we gave them a 10% discount. That's okay. But you're special, you are a regular podcast listener. So thank you very much. We love you guys and thank you for all your support. But you also get to save 15. That's right. 1 5. So 15 entry to the amazing 33rd Euro Finance International Treasury Management Conference. The code you have to use when booking and that you just use the same booking link that's in the show notes. But the code you have to use is MKTG, like marketing without the vowels. MKTG forward slash TCC. That's Treasury Career Corner TCC. That's what you're listening to. Thank you. So, MKTG forward slash TCC. 15. I know it's a bit of a mouthful, but it's worth it. 15% saved just for listening to today's podcast. Thank you very much. Thank you for being a loyal listener to the podcast. And anyway, as I say, let's get back on with the show.

So we're going to get some questions that you get to ask our panelists and shortly. But before we do that, I'm going to ask them a couple more. But ask questions. When was the last time you got to see three amazing treasures and were able to ask these, make them good questions, but actually ask in an environment like this and get three amazing talking heads from this, you don't. Then we're also going to have some takeaways. But before we get to that section, the takeaways, I was just going to say motivation, if you like, for you guys, your successful treasurers. Many of the audience would in the nicest way like your jobs. They would like to get your roles that in a nice way, they would like to achieve that level of success. Looking at yourselves. What's key do you think? What choices do you make? Or again, what are the secrets, if you like.

Yeah, I think in this lets me to one of the tips that we'll share afterwards. Being curious and try to find, let's say, areas of growth. It's an important item coming to the office Every day and say, okay, 80%, 70% of the day, same as the previous one. We have all the operational stuff, the meetings, as I mentioned, a lot of meetings. But can I save 20, 30% where I can potentially learn something and attempt to grow? Even for people that are seasoned in what they do. If you don't get this 20, 30% and you don't give yourself the ability to grow, you will get bored to death. You will and you will stop being. If we can call successful, I won't use that word. But enjoy what you're doing. If you enjoy what you're doing, then probably you will do it in the right way. So I would say that we need to safeguard a minimum 10, 20, 30% of the CHO vai. I don't know how you do it during the week. You say Friday, you save half of the Fridays or you do a 20% every morning, let's say the first couple of hours. But you need to save time for your own growth. That's how I try to do it. Otherwise I would enjoy what I'm doing.

So the question is what key to success? What is key to success?

Whichever way you interpret it, because these are an audience that are looking, thinking, actually I'd like to make some choices. Maybe it's the choices you made or if you like.

Yeah. So I guess each one of us is the CEO of our careers. So it's. We shouldn't wait for from someone else to find the solutions for us. We take initiatives. Personally, I'm an ambitious person, but also have my feet on the ground. I've worked really hard and I would like to believe that I'm also a team player. I think one's credibility follows herself or himself throughout his career. So you should not look for a shortened win, but you should be a person with ethics and integrity throughout your career in whatever you do. Be transparent to your stakeholders and hopefully this is it. There is not one recipe because we are different personalities and each one has done different stuff. But I think it's mainly hard work and treat your team as you want to be treated.

The most interesting part in my everyday routine is when having also a strategic dimension in my role. When I come up with a situation where everybody believes one thing and I believe something else. And then you have to raise your voice politely explaining your concerns and where you see potential risks. Even to hire executives. Making a presentation explaining your concerns when you see the risks and offering solutions. This is the best, the best part of your. It doesn't come up often, but when it comes you should don't leave this opportunity to and my advice would be always speak up and follow up because even if you do all these things correctly, you probably will send an email to someone who has 100 other things to do and will not read it or will not give the attention that is required. So the things that will drive you through your career and will make you move to the next level is this tool she pick up and follow up questions.

So I'll come out to the audience, we'll grab that for a moment. Some questions of the Here we go.

At this point we went to questions in the audience however the sound wasn't strong enough. So I'm reading back the question we had John the BP of sales for data site across head of Middle East, Turkey, Greece and one of our sponsors. So thank you very much John. Question from him was from a management perspective.

He had a key question he was.

Wanting to know if any of the.

Panelists had and his second question at.

The same time was would you have become who you are today because of a previous manager who was your manager back then? Has it contributed to your success today? So we had some great answers from our panelists and here you go, you.

Get to hear them. Great question. So who wants to take that one first?

I can take it. I don't have a mentor but I have a great support team at home, my family, I talk a lot to them and I feel them like mentors. And on the second part, I have been very lucky in my career. I always worked with people who I looked up to, with people who I could learn from and who helped me grow. So actually this is I consider it one key to my success. The fact that I was always in demanding environments with great people, experts in their field and very good role models.

I think if you're lucky enough like Eliza to have always good bosses and managers that can help you grow, that's a plus, right? You shouldn't count on it. Right. But if you get that lucky then it's great. Right. And you should get the most of it. Having a mentor. Yeah. Various people help us to grow and you should always be looking family, great place to look for help. Bosses certainly should make an effort, let's say to listen other viewers in terms of this how we do stuff.

Right.

And mentors play this role. Right. So if we don't have one, we don't have somebody, let's say to discuss effectively what we're having and not to potentially find solutions where there are there and you may not be able to find them. That's all. Yeah.

So my mentors, my father, of course, and my wife, because she sees the world in a completely different way than I do. It's like an airbag. And the most important thing, looking back in my career all these years, apart from the mentors, are what has given me a lot of ideas of how to move on is when I have small talks with all these guys here because I know most of them personally and whenever I have a problem, I call them and ask for their opinion. He knows better, Apostolo or Nikos or whatever. So I think there is tremendous knowledge in this room and they are, they have faced successfully the same things that I'm facing today. And they are like a library book yet. So my mentors and my consultants.

Other questions, but we got time for one, maybe two more. Who else?

And then we were asked another question by the audience again. This time Sarah Billingham from Chatham Financial, one of our sponsors, managed to get in there and she wanted to know a little bit more about technology. And obviously AI is a bit of.

A buzzword, but how the panelists thought.

That might shape treasury and the things that they're actually doing and using technology within their day roles, if you like. So great question from Sarah. So here you go, some of the answers.

I think we can all bet that in five years from now the treasury will be both of the finance functions and many functions will be completely different because of AI. We can bet on get it right. I think many processes that we do have now, they will either stop existing in five years from now will be replaced. Instead of having an analyst doing the job, you will have Microsoft doing the job for you. So I think it's there, it's coming. It's already used by a number of most of the companies out there. Not that big as yet when it comes to Treasuries, but it's coming. That's one thing. The other thing that relates to you cannot call it technology per se, but I think it's, it comes as an evolution in the coming. Let's say yes, it's digital assets. This is the, the cryptos, the way that we use cryptos, we don't use cryptos now, but we will be using in the future is certain. So you call it stable coins, you call it whatever the currency, the digital currency will be, we will be using them. So being able to understand the custody of this, let's say digital asset, start building effectively the infrastructure, understanding what it means in terms of safekeeping of this asset, it's Some sort of technology as well that you need to start understanding. So digital assets, safekeeping of digital assets. And I think they will transform the next five years the way that we do business.

I have little to add to that. Maybe just one point. It's the cybersecurity threats. The attacks are getting more serious and frequent. So I think taking measures against cybersecurity will be very high on the agenda in the next years.

Of course, we all understand that big changes are ahead in AI, big data analytics with blockchain. Maybe we see treasurers being more specialized in the future in fields that don't exist or start saving of this change. Maybe we will see that you need also other skills like the ones we call soft skills. Communicating, leading. We are interested. So risk and uncertainty every day with us.

Cool.

And also the panelists will be around afterwards. Enzo, all bar, all day bar or whatever to have a drink. So you can also quiz them. But we have got some great takeaways. We'll start off with Demetrius. Do you want to have a look at which ones? Maybe pick out a couple or the ones that you prefer. All of them. It's up to you. We've got time.

Yeah, I think we. I did talk about the first one, the growth and how you manage to grow that you need to be in places where you know out of your comfort zone. No matter if you are 50 years old or 40 or 30, you need to move out of your comfort zone. Otherwise you won't grow. Now this is a well known motto. No pain, no gain. I think we all know it. So it's there, it's given as we become more seasoned. And I think it's relevant for all type of seniorities. Indeed. But having meaningful relationships, it's an extremely important item and it is over and above the day to day stuff. So we need to pay an attention on that one. It's soft. Okay. But it is important in order. And as you go grow older effectively, this is what keeps you happy to a big extent. Let's say when you come to the office having meaningful relationships. And this means day to day, but this means strategically as well. You may find a job, let's say from an ex boss or somebody that you had and meaningful, trustful relationship. Right. So I think this is extremely relevant. And a tip. This is something that I've been doing the last 20 plus years. Journaling, keeping good notes of the day to day stuff, but also strategizing pretty much on a daily basis. What is important, what is less important, what do I need to do in this week, next month, next quarter, et cetera. I think keeps you disciplined in terms of what you want to achieve in the in the future. So my advice, especially to young people, is to journaling and keeping good notch. It's an important one.

Okay. I think we've talked already about being curious and learning and I think it's also important to understand, to be conscious about what's happening in the world because global politics matter, demographics matter. These are important trends. Maybe the second one Christos already mentioned, the importance of speaking up. I think it's very important to challenge our assumptions because on every decision that we take, we are actually based on some assumptions. And it's good later on to revert on this and see maybe some of the things we assumed were not valid. So it's important to revert and also it's important to stay close to people who dare to challenge you, who have different opinions. High quality work. I think it's important you talked about mistakes, but I have a different opinion. As we said, there is not one recipe.

High quality work and mistakes have it.

Okay. Learn from your mistake and feedback look, okay.

Mistakes being helpful to work.

Leave your ego behind. Be a team player. I think this is very important to be successful in every career.

So I think that's a few of them, but I think pay attention to detail. It's very important in what we do. And details may come back to hunt you. That's their special characteristic that cannot be avoided. Leaving something on the side today may hunt you three months or whatever you're for. Don't leave anything open. And what is really important is that I don't think that you can have any success alone. You have to trust your team and trust their work and be ready to share the benefits with them and be ready to allow them to grow. I tell my team that my goal is for them to replace me.

Cool. So my takeaways, first of all, as well as these amazing people. Well done yourselves. It's easy to stay in your home office. Not to make the effort particularly hot out there, as we know, but actually getting out and doing this, educating yourselves is half the battle. Then it comes down to connection. So it's about having these interactions. So I want to say a big thank you to Mariana. She's sorted all this out and done lots of this, but actually helped us make these connections. You're going to get to meet the panelists, hopefully. And that's one of the key things. Again, we've got taking notes. So when you go, I know a Lot of you know each other, but maybe you don't know someone tonight. So if you spot something, I don't know that person, go and say hello, make one extra connection and then follow up with that person. Don't just send them a LinkedIn request going, hello, we met. Great. And do the auto thing. Don't do that, actually make a moment of meaning and say, look, we spoke about this, I would love to connect to you, have you in my network.

Thank you once again for tuning into another great episode of the Treasury Career Corner podcast. We appreciate your support and enthusiasm and everything that you make it worthwhile by joining us as well as we talk to these amazing treasury professionals from across the us, the uk, Europe and beyond. We've got more exciting guests and live events coming up throughout the rest of the year, so going to go into that in a moment. We love doing this content, but as I've said to you, is this all we do? We do get asked this. Whilst we love sharing the tips for success, we want you to learn from other treasurers and their successful treasury careers. But at the end of the day, we pay for this podcast through hiring people, through recruiting people, through placing you in your next role. So if you're seeking to recruit, call us. If you're looking for a new role, call us or email. You can email in the US, contact Joe Grabowski, my colleague joe@treasuryrecruitment.com across Europe. Contact the lovely Katie K A T I e Katie@treasuryrecruitment.com or contact me. Mike Richards Mike treasuryrecruitment.com I help out both Joe and Katie with any of the roles they're working, but also focus a lot more on my efforts on the senior roles and across the UK markets as well. So reach out anytime if you need help. We're here to give it. But I mentioned we've had some amazing trips so far this year. We've been across to New York, we were then did Vegas, we did Texas, we then came back and did London. Just come back from another trip to Chicago. It's been amazing, but we have more. We are heading into Europe, we're doing Greece, we've got Dublin. After the summer, we got New York. I know, so good, they named it twice. But the fact is we're going there for New York Cash Exchange and also doing our own event, then AFP Nashville. Can't wait to see you. Europe. Don't worry, we're not leaving you alone. We're back. We've got Netherlands, we've got Germany. We've got the uk, so if you are interested, keep an eye on our events page where you will get emails about it, but do come and join us. And I thought I would also give a shout out to everyone that did our most recent salary survey. They went to treasurysalary.com they took part. Over 1100 treasury professionals participated, giving us and you the latest insights into the market, into salaries, into exactly how much you should be paid. A great benchmark. We ran it at the end of Q1, we're continuing to run the survey. We're going to release the next set of results at the end of Q3, so look out in your inboxes if you've taken part before.

We're going to get to update.

If you would like to be part of the survey, start to finish, less than two minutes, go to treasurysalary.com you get the most recent survey, you then become part of the ecosystem. We love doing it. It's great for you. When you go for your pay review, you know how much you're worth. It's amazing. So go to their treasurysalary.com but until next time, if you need help, call us. If you want to recruit, call us or drop us an email and I look forward to speaking to you soon or seeing at one of our events. See you soon, Sam.