Treasury Career Corner LIVE in London

So, welcome to Treasury Career Corner Live. We've got the lovely Hemi Balarin. Hemi is the European Head of Treasury for GXO Logistics. Anthony Buchanan, treasurer of Asahi Europe and International. And Emily helps treasurer ams. So I'm going to kick off with Kemi now. It's a little bit strange for myself. Kemi was one of my first ever placements 20 plus years ago.

Thank you very much. You give that away, Mike, you shouldn't have mentioned the years, you know, make you pipe. But then, you know, I. It's. Mine is a typical story of people that found their way into. Into Treasury. Um, I studied accountancy. I started out as an accountant, qualified as a chartered accountant, but then was lucky enough to have a year's internship at Anderson Consulting. I think I'm giving away the years as well for most people. Um, so it was during my stint at Anderson Consulting that I came across treasury, the world of Treasury. I was involved in a lot of treasury analytical work and that, in a way, inspired me to remain within Treasury. So I had a couple of stints with a couple of investment banks in my native country, Nigeria, but then relocated to UK 1997. And my first role was as a. What was it? I think it was a contract role as a Treasury and Insurance assistant. And here I am, you know, today. My boss then said, well, Kemi, if you're interested in treasury, you know, you might as well take on the ACT examinations. And that was it, you know, I sat the exams, 2000, I passed the exams and I've never looked back, you know, from Treasury.

And then with your career path, talk us through some of the other roles and the decisions you've made from there. So we're going to go through this with each of the, you know, analysts. So you then join Charter?

Yes, yes, I, I joined Charter was a very. It was, it was a stint. And that was the, the role that you got me went over to Mike Richards. Was that Robert Walters?

You were.

I think I shouldn't talk about that. Okay, we'll call that later. Cut that out. Okay, we'll do that. And, yeah, did I had a state of Charter? For me, it wasn't really. I can't say that it was a planned journey, as I said, you know, from accountancy to treasury, but then one led to the other. I think for me, you know, the light bulb moment was my boss, Hecky Multiserve, that got me into the world of treasury and the ACT actually gave me the platform, you know, to enhance the sort of the technical knowledge as well as a robust opportunity to network with aspiring treasury professionals as well as people that, you know that are already established in the process. So from Charter I got a role with Southern Pacific Mortgage Ltd. Which was then owned by Lehman Brothers. Gone bust out since then. Then from Southern Pacific, moved on to Delta plc. Again, that was another good cotton teeth role in the world of Treasury. From Delta moved on to Travelport. Travelport was where I spent like a good 12 years and it was a good development of my role. It was working three companies in one really started out as private equity, went on to being listed on the Stock Exchange, then back into private equity. And that was the opportunity for me to actually get involved in a wide, varied, you know, aspect of, of, of Treasury. I did, you know, grow within the, the role. Um, but again, you know, I mean you're going to come through to, you're going to come to the aspect of challenges much later on. But then within Travelport was 12 years of just stabilizing, you know, my knowledge within Treasury. Towards the tail end of it, I got interest in technology. Of course, you know, there's a world of fintech out there helping us, treasure us, you know, to, to be better and be more efficient. So in terms of conscious decision, it wasn't really, it was pretty much going with the flow. But we'll come back to that later because I did learn later on in life that, well, you need to have a goal plan and you need to be able to manage your career structurally. But I must say that the few people that I've met along the lines have actually helped shape my growth within treasury and, you know, kept me here within the treasury professions.

And then you made the move to more recently to gxo.

Yes.

You explained you were this who GSO in your role there.

Yeah. So again, GXO was post Covid. I mean, Covid was a perfect opportunity for me to take my foot off the pedal. It was an opportunity for me to be self reflective and I think many people said that, you know, it was just that sort of quiet moment. And that's what I meant by the fact that my career within Travelport, I think I must have assigned my career development to somebody else unknowingly who didn't know that it was his job to make sure that Kemi was well developed. You know, I thought it was someone else's role. But the pandemic gave me that opportunity to take a look, take a stock, you know, of my profession. Where do I really want to go? What am I doing here? And that was the point where I was able to identify the gaps, even in my technical knowledge, my gaps in my sort of personality traits, the mindset change that I needed to implement just so that I could get to the next level. And in that short time, that lockdown during the pandemic, I was able to activate these positive changes that then immediately gave me the positive results. So I had a short stint with GTT Communications. That was the point where I said, you know, Travelport, think I'm building up. I risked being deemed institutionalized. You know, having spent 12 years in the company, people will start thinking, oh God, you know, how lazy are you about your career? So that was what, that's the reason why I activated that change. And the moment I activated that change, the opportunities were just, you know, at the door. So I got this short stint with GTT Communications to help set up the treasury team. Similar process. They were also going through a spin off and they wanted to set up a new treasury team for the new spinoff company. I thought, yeah, why not? I don't have that on my cv. I'd like to add this as a skill. And while I was working through with gtt, six weeks or so later, I got the call for gxo. Again, similar process. It was going through spin off and, but it was on a larger scale compared to gtt, so it was a no brainer for me. So GXO Logistics is contract logistics. I think through our acquisition of Clipper, we're probably the largest in the UK and second largest to dhl. So my role at GXO was to come in again, set up a Treasury team, do the lift and shift from the company that we're being spun off from, stabilize the treasury team and then think about the next step. So again, there was no mean fit. This time last year in July, it was just me, myself and I trying to do all that needed to be done. And of course we reached out to treasury equipment only because I knew that ours was unique. We needed a particular set of people that wouldn't be precious about rolling up their sleeves and then helping us lift and shift and then elevate to the next level. So here we are one year on, you know, we've got a steady team here of treasury professionals. The next step is where do we go from here? How do we transform, how do we change processes, how do we become effective business partners? You know, for we come back to.

A bit about working the remote, working how you went through that in a minute, but with the parts that are gross to Mr. Buchanan, over to you sir, Give us a run.

Okay. So many, many years ago, yeah I started work at a merchant bank back in the day when they existed. I studying, doing an economics degree and during the holidays I used to go out there and work in back middle office supporting them. I told you Swiss stepping up, it was sort of interbank FX trading and I was still doing my degree and then got chatting with the MD and the banking world yet again was suffering and basically said, I've got a choice to do an ma. Stick it out with you, do accounting, we'll take off around the world. So his full recommendation was to piss off around the world and actually go enjoy yourself for a few years, a year or so, save up travel. And so I did that, came back and then the banking world was in an even worse situation. But there happened to be an American oil company based down the road for me who was looking for a finance role. So I applied for that, highlighted the banking economics degree and they were interested to take me on to do cash management. Did that for through, well it was cash forecasting, some of the oil forecasting and so on. And then after a few years and I'll come on to this and sort of every three years I was trying to look for new opportunities and they were, I was doing accounting exams at the time, they talked about audit and I wasn't so keen on audit. So there was an opportunity at Grandma back in the day when it was Grandma to work in their treasury accounting team and their team was big. So you 25 plus years ago that having a large treasury team was somewhat unheard of. But to get a choice into the accounting world in treasury and I remember the head of the treasury accounting team said, you're not trying to get into the dealing room, are you? I was like, no, no, I didn't even really know there was a dealing room. I did all this research on hotels to find out actually that we're now a drinks business and then they merged with Guinness and then there was an opportunity to move into the front office as well. Okay, this is a bit more exciting. So I had to go back to my boss and go, you know what, I've changed my mind, can I look for a role there? And with that move I then decided I need to do act, bring it more in line for the front office knowledge and carry out. So I flipped out of acca, started doing the ACT exams and then after about eight years actually I was heading up the trading desk by that stage and we were doing FX and interest Rates and so on, and then cash, of course. So that gave me a great experience. I've then decided actually it's now time to look for a new opportunity. They had a good treasury consulting team, but then there was discussion around money and there was a tech company who some of you might know about, that I moved across to because they had quite an interest in sort of treasury consulting role where you do internal consulting for a very large global group. And they were. EMEA head office was based quite close to me. So I then, after moving into London, had to commute out of London to this place, spent a couple of years there and decided actually computers really aren't for me. So then there was a South African drinks business setting up close to home. So I went back into booze effectively and I've been there ever since in various guises. So SME Miller were just setting up a UK office. I was first of three people to join that company. By the time it got taken over, there were 60 people in treasury across the globe, front, back, middle office, segregation of duties and everything. But I did regional treasurer roles, looking after the Americas. I then took over Europe. I got nicknamed A and E because there was always an issue going on with one of the regions. And for my final part of my career there was. I went over to Switzerland, set up treasury and procurement and that's where I got more involved with consult with commodities and trying to again look for something new to do. I've been spent a long time looking at FX interest rates, M and A. So we went into that team, set up some working capital objectives, started commodity risk management and it was going great until the number one beer business decided to take by us and therefore you then looking around and thinking, well, do I want to work for them if I don't work for them? Actually living in Switzerland, it's quite expensive. So I moved back to the UK and ABI had to sell off a couple of their parts of the European businesses and one of them was Asahi Breweries, Sardi Breweries, Europe, very Eastern European focused. I knew some of the team already and applied for that role as the treasurer. Ironically, was sitting with the CFO of my last day in Switzerland and he said, well, how would you set up Treasury? I said, well, I think you need to do this and you're a small team, it's a small business. And then by the time I hit the uk, I got a phone call from HR saying, oh, do you want to apply for it? Send your CV in and go through the interview process. And lucky Enough to get it. Although it started from scratch, there was nothing there. Similar to your stories that there was no systems, people, policies. So we literally over a couple of years had to build that up and over that time period which is now almost five years, the company's growing. So it's Asahi, what was Europe is now European International. So it's the Asahi Group outside of Japan and Australia where we have two large businesses who sort of, they manage those countries. So it means we are a centralized team looking after fx, commodities, cash, looking after working capital with the procurement team and because there's only eight of us for a global footprint we have to be very reliant on systems and I'm not the greatest tech guy in the world but you bring in strong people around you so I think that's what's helped is I can do certain areas but you also need to recognize where you're not so strong and therefore need to bring in the right skill set.

We come back to that and also to education moments. We'll hand over to Emeraldine, maybe give a run through and then talk act.

Yeah so I've got quite an international background. Half French, half English, studied in Germany and then did did my MBA in Canada and sort of like as a lot of us, not very original, stumbled into treasury and it was a kind of lovers at first sight. So I sort of committed to treasury since I graduated basically. So in my last 15 years of my career worked myself through the ranks so probably held every position you can think of. Starting off analyst, manager, senior manager, deputy treasurer and now head of Treasury. Worked across few different industries, not for profit, biotech, infrastructure and now recruitment. So I started off with my mba, did my qualifications with the act and then sort of worked myself through up through the ranks. Started with the Salvation army in Canada, wanted to be make a difference to start my career in not for profit and I was attracted to the role really because of the change that was going on. There was a new treasurer, the treasury department was new and she basically wanted to change everything within Treasury. So I was leading treasury projects quite, you know, high level for an entry level position. Bank migration so moving across 250 bank accounts to one central bank, a merchant acquirer change, changing of 150 merchants to, to new point of sale terminals, changing the whole credit card program and putting all the checks and balances that you would expect in a new treasury function. So I felt quite fortunate to have that as my first job. Then for personal reasons I got a deposit from Canada. No, just I just wanted to Move closer to my family and decided that London was probably a good place to continue my career. And so I joined a PLC called Genus and FTSE 250 Biotech. What Genus does is probably not really PG for this audience. I'll let you Google it after that. But very, very successful company. They had a new CEO at the time, so heavily involved in growth in Asia. So I had my first taste of sort of M and A complex technical issues, kind of like hedge accounting, a big FX program, a lot of cash management, another bank implementation with notional cash pooling, cash concentration and some funky commodity hedging as well going on. So I would stay with Genus around three to four years and that's when I qualified with the actual. And I felt what was really missing from my CV was sort of the DCM State Capital Market and credit rating agency. The bank relationship more the sort of like the front office cpa. So that's when I joined Evershot Rail which is sort of an infrastructure company, part of a large Hong world infrastructure group based in Hong Kong. So went through an acquisition with them. They were initially PE back then got acquired by the CK Group in Hong Kong which was an interesting process and then was involved in financing so over a billion pounds worth of finance. So sing around all of the bond market, private placement market, managed quite a heavy derivatives program, got to manage the bank. So really rounded up my treasury knowledge, stayed with that for short seven years, had two kids in the process. And then I thought, you know, it's time for me to sort of consolidate that knowledge. And Covid was quite reflective for me as well. I'm like, I'm ready to really go on and get a new challenge and put my stamp on my, my own department. And then conveniently I got a call from Craig who works for Mike, saying listen, there's a, there's a position opening up at ams. You know, they're setting up. Well, they've got a small treasury function, the company's growing and they want, you know, you know, a first head of Treasury. So off I went earlier this year in July. So a small team of four, green team, one of the two of them is present today. So and we've. The company is really great. So it's a recruitment process, outsourcing. So we basically take large companies, so financial institutions, big farmers, big blue chip companies, recruitment process and we outsource it and run it from scratch from them to start, from start to finish. We've gone through two, we've acquired two smaller companies since I've joined one in India and one in Canada, so working on integrating those companies. So that's been really, really great work and different to what I've, what I've been doing so far. And also in charge of the insurance program, which has been a step up for me too. And I mean, in terms of my career, I haven't really been chasing the big names and I think that's probably what's helped me progress quite quickly, working for maybe smaller, smaller name companies and going for the breadth of experience and the breadth of projects after being involved in a lot of different areas, which then enabled me to consolidate that knowledge and go apply it to other roles and work myself, myself quite quickly up into the, the ladder.

In the room here, we've got quite a range of experience, so we've got people, there's some of the training professionals here, early stage in their careers. We've got prize winner mct. I'll introduce you to her later, again, just to announce it. And we've got the president of the ACT got his way in the room. So that's it. You know, we're pro education, we talk about a lot on the podcast. When I talk to people, I just want to ask you as a pal, what difference you think it made, not only to yourselves, you know, with your careers, we go through that, but also, you know, not just as an education, education to all the room, but more why, you know, people should think about it. They're not saying you have to do act, there's a variety of other things across Europe, but it's made a difference to both, you know, all of your careers. And we'll come back to you. You came in about mentoring as well, but starting with yourself, you know, why are you so passionate about it?

Yeah, well, I'm going to be heavily biased towards the act. I'm a strong supporter of the act. I mean, I actually, after my MBA back in Canada, I started studying for my CSA because that's sort of the big designation in North America. So I passed my level one and then I moved to the UK and my boss at Gina told me, emily, Emily, if you're doing your csa, it'll probably be an invest investment banking career. If you want to progress in treasury, in corporate treasury, you need to do your ACT exams. So I dropped my CFA and I focused on the act and I have absolutely not regretted it. I mean, it's an amazing qualification and it gives you a lot of practical experience as well, because, I mean, once I qualified, I got involved in a lot of their initiatives and when you're at the early stages of your career, that helps you with the practical experience. So they made me a head judge for their Wants to Watch awards. I helped audit some of their qualifications and shape their qualifications. I did some marketing material for the sort of uni and uni campus campaigns. I chaired their Future Leaders and Treasury Group for three years and now I'm chairing their membership advisory panel. So it's not only the learning, which is great and which I think you should really focus on, especially at the early stages of your career, but it's all sort of the practical experiences that you get as a result of that link with the act. I mean, also you get that huge network. I mean, the events are just great. I try to attend the ACT conference, the annual conference every year. They've got a lot of free events as well. The forum is up in a couple of weeks time as well as the dinner. So a lot of networking opportunities and networking with your peers because it's, it's sometimes a bit tricky to be able to tap into that network and the ACT really offers those opportunities. And you were saying, Mike, depending on the stage of your career, like, I mean, if you're new to Treasury, I would really put tools towards that. And I mean, it's, it tells a lot about someone as well when you're recruiting someone that's investing in themselves and investing in furthering their education. As a, you know, as a recruiting manager, hiring manager, you sort of, like, I always sort of lean towards that person that has that sort of, you know, interest in focusing in themselves. If you're later on in your career and you feel, you know, I've been finance treasury for 15, 20 years without needing the qualifications or maybe not, but I mean, the link to the ACT is still essential in my view. And you, you could access that link through other routes. I mean, Dino will probably be a better place than me to talk about it, but, you know, you've got E affiliationship, you've got other rooms to become, you know, associated to the ACT without going forward. Qualifications.

Oh, indefinitely. Qualifications. ACT. For me, my early days at Diageo made me realize I actually quite enjoyed the front office rather than the accounting side of things. So the ACT was better suited for the role I wanted to actually develop as a career going forward. So that's where I moved from the act, used some of those exams as exemptions to then carry on doing the act. And so for early days you can actually learn about stuff that you don't get to experience at that point, I mean, early days in Diageo, I'm not going to get invited into some secretive M and A deal, but I can learn about some of the valuation techniques. So one, when there's an opportunity and then you can actually demonstrate you have some of these skills, then you get invited onto the inside of some of these deals and then it definitely helped me sort of later life to understand other bits and pieces. I think also on the recruitment side, maybe a little less nowadays, but at least four or five years ago everyone's got a degree, so that's the starting point. Then you need to look for what else have people got, what have they invested into their career to make you interested to come and help and develop them going forward? So they're already doing act, especially for the front office. Back middle office, you could argue actually maybe an accounting qualification with all the hedge accounting, the governance and compliance that you need to follow, that might be a bit of a qualification to start with. But if you want to actually really focus on the, the front office, I think the act is where you need to be focused. It will give you that experience and then you take it into practice and develop your cv. The other thing I love about the act is that all qualifications in general, it's very easy for people, stuff for people to put stuff on a CV and it all sounds very good and sometimes the language varies by corporate, so you're trying to figure out. And then I did one recently where we're looking for a cash manager guide 10 on a trade FX. And so I've got HR saying, you need to talk to these people. He worked at the Bureau of De Charge. His CV was beautifully written but when you start getting into it and start breaking it. He was Central London bureau de Charge and that was his FX spot trade. And when he talked about cash handling, he was allowed to handle your notes. And so when I was asking about qualifications. Oh, I don't, I haven't done that actually. But if, if someone's doing the act, they're not going to be looking to do that. They want to go corporate. Treasury want to start with cash management and then broaden their CV and do that sort of three year cycle. And I think having these qualifications on CVs helps you. You can't hide behind a qualification because it's so easy to check have they got what they said? They've got some various projects and stuff. You can sort of hide behind it a little bit. Oh, until you start testing them and wasting an hour of your life to go through an interview to find out actually they were on the periphery of a project which looked really impressive and that's why you brought them in and find actually they sat on the sidelines and really drive it or have insight knowledge onto it.

But I mean, yeah, I echo, you know, all the points made by both Emily and Anthony there. And similar to what Evely said, you know, I was fortunate enough to have a treasurer who told me right from day one that if you're really serious in this career, you need to go for your ACT exams. And that was the best advice, I must say, in this profession. From my perspective as well, coming in as a chartered accountant and then entering the sort of treasury profession, sitting the exams was opportunity to access a broad range of topics that you wouldn't ordinarily, you know, be able to access. You know, in a corporate, I mean with corporates you have all sorts of specializations in different aspects. With banks as well, you know, you're probably just looking at your corporate finance and fx. But then with the ACT I was able to access that sort of broad range of technical skills and that would be my advice to anyone that is looking to, you know, progress within the profession. Not only do you have that sort of technical knowledge and I mentioned it at the start of this final session, there's even access to different levels of people, different stages in their career. I was able to take advantage of that as well. I mean, if I had issues, naughty issues within my role, I was able to access people outside people that I could be vulnerable with people whereby, you know, I could ask questions and I wouldn't feel like, oh, that's going to impact my performance appraisal maybe down the line. So again, it's that sort of variability in the benefits that you get. Again, it's an agile organization, you know, it's an organization that on a day to day basis you have relevant topical issues, you know, that are being debated, solutions are out there. So if again you're starting and you're not quite sure as to what aspect of pressure do I really want to specialize in? Again, that is a very good platform you feel for.

I touched on it before about this new post pandemic world. If you come to yourself about this. Absolutely. First of all, to start with, working from home, a number of you guys may have just literally come from your bedrooms, switched off your PC right after the session. Go on. I got to put a suit on and I've seen a couple of legal in slippers which a bit worried but I was going to say I'm working from home, remote working, whatever you want to call it. How have you guys. And can we touched on a period of reflection, both you and Emily, during Pandemic. But if we look at now, as we're returning to the world of work and how many days you were back in the office, at least. How were you? How did we do Emily and then back to Kemi?

Well, there was two areas for me for a beer business, when you've got no pubs, you're starting to struggle a bit. So we had the challenges going on with work. We were also trying to support our suppliers through working capital and then sponsoring pubs and just keeping them ticking over until hopefully everything opened up again. So there was. And it's. What I'm going to mention later is actually try and do stuff outside of Treasury. If you want to develop your career, develop your cv, you don't necessarily always focus on. I've done fx, I've done interest rates. And so I was working with teams, trying to support stuff outside of treasury. And then from the work environment now, I mean, early days, it was challenging. We recruited people who I'd never met face to face. And so we. I mean, we put them onto temporary contracts because it was like, they're great on tv, but how are we actually gonna. When you meet them face to face, is this gonna work? What we then found is actually when everything opened up, we're two days in the week of the week in together, because to be honest, my boss sits over in Prague, so everything I've always done with him is either me flying around all over the place or remotely. So he didn't know if I was in the office or not. His rule was you had to be in the office pre Covid and that's what he used to joke to. And it's like, you have no idea. We didn't have teams, we didn't have Zoom, you had Skype, wherever that is now, so. Which never worked. So it's like I could be anywhere and. But I was having to travel quite a lot, which isn't really sustainable either, so. And think about the environment. So with the sort of advance of tech, you don't have to be sitting next to each other all the time. And further into your career, as long as you've already built your network up, you probably don't need to be there. I do feel for the younger generation because how do they develop those opportunities? Meeting senior management, getting the face in front of them. When you're not invited to those sort of meetings, you actually have to be into the office and bump into them or grabbing a coffee and having a chat and then get, get yourself recognized and so on. That I think still is a challenge. If you're working from home all the time, you just don't get to see the right people who go, oh yeah, there's this role here, I met this person, they talked with really interesting ideas. So yeah, that's why I said we're in the office twice a week and we can all get to sit down. And then if you want to go more frequently, you can if it's better space, better tech in the office. Not always true in office, but it's easier to actually then to integrate and to network.

Millie working?

Yeah. I'll echo most of Anthony's thoughts. I mean our policy at AMS is that is fully flexible at the minute. So you come in a lot if you want to. You don't come in at all if you don't want to. With a global company, as I say, like located in 40 different countries. So and the fact that the tech works well, actually, you know, it just works for my team. Some people like coming in a lot other less. And I mean it works and it works with the work life balance, it works with, you know, people's personal preferences and at the end of the day, from my perspective, so long as the work gets done, I'm fine. We take time to, to do things together as a team so we get to know each other wearing this turf. It's for people, you know, just starting out and I think it's good to have, you know, the face to face interactions once in a while. But I think, you know, the hybrid working for me is probably the only silver lining that we got out of the pandemic. And I would never go back to being in the office nine to five, five days a week.

For a past cameo. It was just an observation, just a reflection from some of the sessions I've been done. I do want to risk with the NACT in the US and I was talking to some of these very senior treasurers and they were incredible people, you know, running global treasury department. And I talked to one in particular, I was brilliant in the office. Oh, wow. How are the team enjoying it? Is it really good? So, well, yeah. But we would come back and it was five days a week, like gross.

Wow.

Okay, that was. And it was quite a stretch and I sort of started to say, well, when you're seeing, you know, you're back in the five days a week, are you seeing it? Well, oh, no, not really. Said, well, listen, we'll see all the parents, we're seeing all, you know, relationship. I'm out in the business. And actually I then put this question to the, the, the panel, the people that were there. I said, can I ask, are you seeing your team more or less now? And they actually, there was this, oh, I'm actually seeing less than them, you know, by the, the, you know, previously this from Belgium, amazing guy. And he said they used to have this virtual coffee break for the time where they go around the water schooler and everyone got to know each other and everything else. And actually he was reinstalling it in the physical world as well. He was getting people in and said, right, we have to sit down as a team and just talk about our lives because it really helped them with their development. But Camille, I know you and I have talked about this. What's it been like for you?

Cami? It's been, it's the same for GX or runs a hybrid working culture, as you say it, and it's pretty flexible. We don't have confirmed number of days. We, you know, we leave it to people to do as they wish. But I think the nature of the treasury professional that have working in my team is I think they really like having people around. So within our sort of DXO treasury team, we're always in the office like four or five days. I've got a couple of them here. I think they just enjoy the human interaction. However, they know that, you know, they can work from home however they wish to do that. But my perspective, echoing what Anthony and Emily has said, is I've had to look inwards and make myself a better manager operating within a remote working situation. The human interaction just needs to continue and as you rightly said, you know, we just need to make sure we bring it out of ourselves, make sure that we stay connected within our team and we do that one to one, regardless of where you are. So the one to one will happen in the physical, if you're in the office, we encourage it to happen in the physical where you're in the office. And even if you're not able to make it to the office, then the one to one will be as a virtual, be on a virtual medium again, you know, we try to try to make sure that we stay connected as well. Checking mental health, because I think that's a big issue with Pandemic and working from home. People can easily, you know, settle into themselves. It's the change in the mindset that I Think we all need to be really conscious of making sure that all the voices are given the opportunity to be heard because some people are quieter than the others and the quiet ones will probably just become faceless again. What I try to do as well is make sure that my direct reports are in touch with the leaders. One step up, two steps above they have interactions even if it's virtual. Yes, my boss as well is in the US but he also encourages that one to one. So my boss actually has interactions with my direct reports. So it's just being conscious and making sure that anything social, we're encouraging it as well. We're thinking about tackle Tuesdays to get people to come into the office because occupancy my office about 5% mainly treasury and FBA. So what can we do? Gin and tonic Fridays maybe. But again it's just bringing the human aspect, you know, into managing our team.

Go to Q and A, surely. I'm going to go back to the panel and ask them some challenges before we do a wrap up post Q and A. So get your questions in if you would. When I do the podcast each and every week talk to treasurers about their careers. Then we get to this stage. I said look now as you before we wrap up that show each week, I say no, what are the key things keeping you awake or you know, issues if you like you're facing? You know, we've talked about people issues, you know, things like that remote work and balancing that and as treatment professionals, how are you coping and planning or what are things affecting you? Emily and then we'll come down feeling coming again view your thinking. We need to think about. We touched a bit on the people aspects. What other things do you think these guys need to be thinking about as well?

On the technical aspect, probably the volatility of the markets. I mean the rating markets and the FX markets are a bit all over the place and extremely volatile. So obviously it's a difficult environment to, you know, navigate through, especially when you're setting budgets. So it's all about, you know, having the right frameworks, future proofing your business, having robust policies and procedures. But I'd say at the minute, yes, it's just the uncertainty and the volatility of the markets.

I mean we've got Eastern European effects, we've got commodities, including energy for brewing and distribution. You've got inflation. Yeah, inflation, wage inflation, which treasury can't help as much but lots of those other areas people are focused on. So have monthly calls with the cfo. We have a team that does a risk management committee. I'm now getting weekly after sort of chit chat about okay, what's going on here? What should we do different? The cost of hedging has gone through the roof because of interest rates and inflation. What can we do different Now I've got the CEO every now and then going all right, so what are we going to do? And it's like well I can't change the market but we can do thankfully, I mean we've done hedging has actually really shown to be the right thing to do when things go crazy. So four years worth of value hedging and it's actually starting to pay dividends. So yeah, the crazy markets, which they're not going to go away anytime soon. I mean on the flip side, it's an amazing time to be in treasury because all of a sudden you're front and center with some very senior management. And it's an interesting, exciting. This whole black swan scenario once in 10 years is utter rubbish nowadays. So from 2008 it's literally if you go through it, it's every two to four years something blows up. Either European credit crisis, Brexit, then we had Covid and now unfortunately European war all is creating volatility which we need to sort out and manage as best we can. So interesting but scary.

And I agree, you know, pre Covid I think in my, in my opinion I thought you know, treasury was tailing towards that sort of line of obscurity within the finance department. And then we had Covid, you know, Covid was the opportunity for the treasurers to emerge and you know re pretty much, you know, reimagined their role as strategic allies and then with all the macroeconomic issues and you know, energy crisis, as you've said, it's enabled, you know, treasurers to continue to ride on the success. I mean for as well we talk about, you've touched on recession, you've touched on inflation. We, we think about the credit profile of all the customers and all the counterparties that we are, you know, that we are facing, you know, how well are they doing, how what are the indicators that are out there? So it becomes a constant watch. There's a constant reading of materials out there who are our major counterparties. How is all this inflation, recession, energy crisis impacting them? What's the exposure that we have? Also talking about credit insurance, thinking about credit insurance just to make sure that whatever the risk is, whatever the exposure is well managed from that perspective.

So I set the pool. Now Sophie and Holly are going to come around with some microphones, put your hands up some questions, if you would, because you've got three incredible treasure here. So you're going to get a chance to actually ask them sort of. And then we're going to do some takeaways for you guys. What, what questions have we got from you lot? Come on, get those handed up. Oh, there we go. You're allowed. There we've been ladies with the. Well all going to shout out it's no less. Thank you.

Very interesting career as well.

What have you set your finish? Oh, definitely something.

So I touched on it as a wrap up. So early days of Diageo, you're expected wherever you are to know about everything. And I tried to do that and so I bumped into our group treasurer with the CFO walking down Oxford street and goes, where's cable? And it's like I'm doing cash management and it's just not having that answer. And I tried to make something up and it just went really badly, pear shaped. So it's being able to say, look, sorry, I don't know but I'll drop you a note. I've just walked out of the office or I've been out for 40 minutes and you know everything's going crazy but you need to have an underlying knowledge of is it going up or down at that moment. But yeah, not having the confidence to say, look, I don't know but I'll come back to you. Was there was a few mistakes and then not so much, but there are mistakes but it's actually owning up to the mistake and then finding a solution for it. They happen. It's a human nature unfortunately. Try and make, not make them too expensive but make sure you get out in front, say, look, we've got a problem here, we're trying to sort it and we're going to resolve or come with a solution. There might be an expensive decision but we'll come back to you on it.

Emily was stating never.

I never said I. It might be a cultural thing but I am, I'm a bit direct in my communication style. I think it made me working in America, sorry in North America and being French, you know, you don't really mince your words. So I have had a tendency in my early years to be a bit too direct and to sort of maybe not be as empathetic as I could have been. So I sort of learned that to sort of tailor my answers, answers on my style, my communication style to my audience and actually that was quite a valuable lesson. Because it's all about relationships and it's all about learning how to communicate with people and adapting to their, your style, to their style. That way, you know, business relationships are smoother and you can sort of work better together.

Well, I'm the opposite to every leader, that's what I would say. I think for me it's not being bold enough, you know, to take certain things and you know, put across my ideas or my opinion about anything. And for as a result I must have missed out on a couple of growth opportunities and in my sort of self reflection I realized that, well, I wasn't doing myself good service. I just needed to be bold and more confident in what I know how to put my ideas across. I call them lessons learned really to be honest. And it's just ensuring that we stay connected to ourselves as well and just audit ourselves. What's the limitation, what's the gap and just make sure that we top upon it. So communication was one of the key skills that I had to top up on in my self reflective period.

Hello, question here. Come on. Jogging or in just.

Experience.

Can be first?

Yeah, I can make a start. I mean it's for me, if you've got a confirmed, if you've got aspiration in treasury studying act, a qualification is a good one, indicating that you are actually on the path of studying for ACT is also one that we will consider. For me, it's around, you know, what is the. If we're going to take you on into a role, we're looking to develop you in the role but you need to show commitment, you know, to the profession. So I would strongly advise that anyone starting in treasury should consider act. And when I'm recruiting, I do look for those. So it's either you're telling me that you're qualified or you are on the path to qualifying. I will be open. Because it's a mix, isn't it? It's a healthy mix. You know, we've. You do come across some experienced treasury professionals, you know, that have done a good 10, 15 years in Treasury. So by that, you know, they've accessed a broad range, you know, of skills with access and fraud rate and they've also been in that, you know, they've sat in that state of decision making, strategic thinking. So it will be a healthy balance. It depends on how advanced and how senior they are. If you're a starter, then yes, you know, we can then start, you know, shaping that thought around it. But in terms of a more senior role, yes, you know, we were, I'M going to. I will weigh that all, you know, to, depending on the experience and as you said, also maybe try to, you know, guide that person, the candidates, towards another route to having those letters. At the end of the day, the letters get you through the door. It's a discussion that, oh, yeah, 15 years experience, people will look at the letters and it's quite seen as beneficial to have.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, they're slightly different. So if you're recruiting. Yeah, you're going to look through the letters. I mean, the years of experience. But like I said earlier, it's sometimes what's written on the CV is hard to decipher, so knowing someone's actually qualified or doing the qualifications definitely counts. And actually our head of talent, she works with the ACT quite closely, so if I'm looking at a cv, she'll come up to me and go, oh, hang on, where's the ACT qualifications? She doesn't know much about Treasury. She sits quite close to us and hears us chat, but she's interested in qualifications. Something that demonstrates that you've got a level of understanding if you're internal. We've got a very strong ACT supporting for treasury and even people who are looking to get into treasury, we'd say, look, you can get time off, full financial support and so on to do those qualifications. So you could get promoted from. Without having it because you know the person a lot better. So we've had people come out procurement into treasury because they want to broaden their skill set, but I think once they're in treasury, there will be that push to say, although, what about doing these exams to. We only do certain things in Treasury. You can learn a lot more by doing this codification.

If I echo all those thoughts, the only point that probably adds on the deputy question is that I would probably be open to interviewing a person that doesn't have an ACT qualification. However, I would quiz them very hard as to why they don't at that level, and it would have to be quite a compelling answer for that candidate to be successful at that level.

Maybe you can almost.

There's no tech there.

Yeah, I can take that one. Probably. In my previous role, I had the pleasure of taking the lead on a TMS implementation. Just a good one to have on the cv. A bit of an excruciating exercise. However, the benefits were immense. I mean, especially around hedge accounting. Not having to do all the regression and analysis from scratch, having all the journals be hosted automatically in the erp. Refrigerant payments go through Banking cash reconciliations, that was probably the biggest win from a tech perspective in my career, I think.

Yeah, that looks very tms. I mean I was thinking about that. So I mean our tms, we could take the full cost from the business, the system will throw out the variances against our policy and then we'll put an argument to say whether we should hedge or not. And so having that visibility and then that goes straight into a trading solution, except for quadties because I haven't found one yet. And with the auto match with the banks and then into swift. So on the flip side of that, I think early days when we were setting up it was having a single bank, multi currency cash pool solution. Just have the visibility of cash early days, tms, you can get set up in the future. But actually knowing where your cash is and the risk you have with banks outside of a direct visibility, I think was we focused on. First off.

My case, you know, we went through a transformation in my previous role and from then on we were able to actually implement bots for payments which again brought in efficiency in our payments landscape. Now in my current role we have fragmented systems and I think it's not, it's not unique to gxl. We also have multiple banking partners and we know how expensive it is to consolidate your ERPs, how expensive it is to short a bank account and open another bank account. So my interest as an API is, you know, what sort of middleware can we implement that will enable us actually fuse the various fragmented systems that we need to work for and then give us real time data. My passion is in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics. But then, you know, what's the middleware that will enable me achieve the various efficiencies that's out there by fintechs to.

Run to start with, you know, one more question and then we'll get each of the panelists and give you some amazing takeaways. Ali, you can do some as well. I'm sorry to cut over everything. What were yours? This is.

We. Oh yeah. I think communicating in a language that people understand you treasury is brilliant to have really techy language which only a bank and other treasury people understand and actually sitting with the businesses FDs have no knowledge that there's an element of go do your job, sort it out. I need a. Give me a number and there's elements of we can't sort it out how you want it, so you need to be able to explain it into their language. And actually yesterday we were doing a presentation to our EMEA business On this is what treasury is all about and breaking it down into plain English. So when my old treasurer is back in Diageo said you can explain it to your grandmother, you can explain it to anyone. And it's having that, that level of communication to take all the interesting language out of it and just make it plain. So we were talking about FX as far as going on holiday to buy a chalet and then mortgages and to take it down to that level of understanding when we're talking interest rate risk or FX risk.

Kemi, or do you say it is.

It's the same thing. You know, just making sure that we are speaking in plain simple terms and English, being able to break things down most importantly I think is around distilling what's happening out there in the current market to how it relates to people's day to day jobs. So we sit there in the middle when I say we treasure sits in the middle and interact with, you know, all sorts of business units. We're talking about the, you know, FB and A team procurement, people that manage our fleets, people that manage our energy within the group. How does what happens today, you know, translate or impact their role? So he's been able to distill those technical terms. Think, think outside, you know, the box and then ensuring that, you know, they understand what we have to manage in terms of risk for the business.

Yeah, tailoring your communication style to your audience is really key. Like pitching it at the right level, you actually talking to the CFO here or to, to an analyst. But going a seven forward and that sort of segues into the top tips. Relationships are really everything in my view. You have to be strong technically but you also have to make the time. I think as a human, you know, like taking time for a 30 minute coffee with a colleague or with a key stakeholder can change everything in terms of how you work going forward and the value you can add to your day to day job. So really making the time for those conversations casually as well makes a whole lot of different and that sort of feeds into the communication piece.

Right, so we're going to come to the key takeaways and also the panelists will be frequenting the bar in there so you can get your one to one questions with them. So I'm going to skip through these so Choplift questions with Albrecht Kemigan. All right, I cover these. So now repeating them, shall we? Yeah, fully yours.

The key one here is the mentor, sponsor and coach. You know, going through my career, I didn't even think that there was anything like that. But of course later on the current day sort of professionals have it pedals, you know, to them every day. Seek a mentor seeker, sponsor seeker coaches, knowing who is doing what in our lives. Project managing our career as well. And I think I mentioned it earlier on that, you know, I gave that role to somebody who didn't know that that was his role to project manage my career. But it's been intention, intentional about our career. What is our goal? Having a vision board as to this is where I am today, this is where I intend to go. So in terms of takeaways is project managing your career, making sure that you have those goals clear. Mentor, sponsor, coach. You know, look for somebody that will speak for you, you know, when you're outside the room. Just like you rightly said, Emily, it's about breaking that relationship. Having people that we speak to generally continuous learning. I'm very big on that. You know, any day, 30 minutes. LinkedIn learning. There's a lot to glean from LinkedIn in terms of even personal development. And I say as a growing treasury, it's thinking outside treasury, you know, what else can we bring into the community? How can we give back into the community? We all have authentic stories to tell. I just never know who is listening. And that story can help somebody else along the line and most importantly, have fun, be authentic and be real.

And I'm just going to reflect back on the mentorship. One of our early episodes actually we're going to recap. It's Carol Van Den lady and one of the things that have jumped out and she. She talked about having a mentor and there were three or four major points. One of the months she said she can be mad was a right, okay, so you know, idea could this work? Could this. And she said she would talk to her mentor and I had a crazy idea that might the heart of it have a really good. Something really good in there. But it's a safe environment. So by having someone like that you run the mousey idea what this? I was a bit mad but oh actually and that she's got so much value and she, you know, did a lot of that. So over to Anthony's, now yours. I've got them there. If you want to.

Qualifications. I think we've touched on it multiple times. It gets you through the door in your early part of your career. The qualifications help and then you start getting the diversity. One thing I promised, I said for Mike, if you're looking for a new job, use a recruiter talks treasury because early days, I've used guys who put me in front of roles, which was not a Treasury role. I didn't have the qualifications and it was a waste of time. And I've had CVs sent into me and HR love this, they've got their set recruiters and they send you all this stuff. Classic one. I was looking for a manager and it was a restaurant manager from the Pizza Express in Woking, the infamous Pizza Express from Princeton. But anyway, it's like, why am I looking at this? It's wasting my time. So get people who speak the right language, diversity of experience in your cv. And we talk with. We work with tax, we work with legal, we've got opportunities within Treasury. Try and get out of that sometimes. So I've been lucky enough to do projects with hr. If you're going to complain about stuff in hr, you might have to step up and try and change it. So I was always moaning about something and then I got dragged in to do a project. I've done an office build project. So trying to get these different things onto your cv. Sustainability is a massive thing right now as well. So there's lots of opportunities there. Learn from strong leaders. I mean, there's a lot of political minefields within corporates and I was a definitely no different. So learning how people work, speaking with, trying to learn sort of the experience of how to interact with people, the languages they like and what are their focus points. So you can then sort of target your discussion on the particular thing they're worried about. And as I touched on, make a decision. No one knows the answer in financial markets. As long as you can support it, be strong enough to go out and say, I think we should do this. Too often you sit in this meeting, goes round and round circles and no one, you walk out of it, it's going, that's just wasted 40 minutes of my life. So make that decision, but also remember when to step out and say, look, I'm not sure. I'll have to come back to you on that early mistake. It's like, if you're not comfortable with your decision, knowing full well it's going to be wrong, it'll never move exactly how you think it is, but if you can't support it, turn around and say, look, I'm going to have to come back to you on that. I'll drop you a note, we'll work with the team, because you always work in teams, so it's like, we'll come back to you, Emily.

So the first one I sort of touched on have develop a solid network. A lot of the jobs aren't necessarily advertised and you might be able to access them through your networks and leverage the link with industry bodies such as the act. I wouldn't say approach sort of career decisions in, in the same way as you would approach a business decision. So learn to quantify risk, build models and it'll just make taking risk a bit easier. When it comes to moving roles or asking for a better package, just having everything to change your decision. Keep an open mind. So, you know, for me it's worked well to sort of consider smaller organizations, smaller teams. That gives you sort of the breadth of experience. So don't go necessarily chasing those big names. That will then mean that you're sort of siloed in a role and not allow you to progress as, as quickly as you. You would hope for. A practical tip, don't, don't procrastinate. Sometimes a task might look very challenging like make it, tackle it in manageable phases, make it more like bite size phases and then it'll make it look less overwhelming and allow you to be successful in, in taking on a challenge. And finally that's maybe personal to me being a bit direct. But don't get too emotional about work like I mean just have fun. It's just business after all.

So I'm going to give you some final words from me as well. When you give these amazing people around the doors in a minute, which you will and really put your health together. But also think about doing it for yourselves because it's a Thursday evening. Yes, there's a free drink, I joke about that. But you've actually invested an hour of your lives in improving yourselves in the treasury careers. Yes, there's been lots of it, sunny and nuts of it's changed. But there's also all the other learnings you got from Amazing three training professionals. But you've also turned up and it's about putting in that work. And the way that again I was talking to the audience yesterday, don't we know I was talking then. And it's about. I also sometimes think of it as standing the or the wrong way around on that travelator of the airport turned around and it's taking you backwards. The funny thing is people are still walking past you. Other people are developing themselves, they're influencing themselves and it's, you know, it's not all about competition with everybody else but if you don't develop, if you just sit still in treasury, you go backwards because you've got to obviously there's an amazing podcast you listen to people listen and later. This is about the minute you're going to go out there, someone's going to say, what do you do? I'm in treasury and I'm good. Cash management ready. Anyone doing cash management in this room? So thrashing of drops yeah. Means nothing. What you need to do is say I do cash method for X, Y, Z or whoever it might be and what I do differently in my job and what I do is make a difference. Where do you. And then tell someone that, just tell them that oh I do this or I work for them and blah blah, blah.

Sure.

Elevator pitch, that's what we're talking about. That the time it takes to go down in and out. Going to three or four floors we've remastered just through now in a moment as someone says, oh, what do you do? I'm with such and such. I'm the treasury dealer xyz. Yes. So what? Tell us what you do. How do you make a difference in your day job? You've implemented gms, you've saved lots of people times and that's what you need to do. The final tip is actually from Chris Fulton, American guy and I see him all the time. When you walk away from here, you have a nice networking session. It was actually a giant old guys business. Oh. And he, what he does, he makes these really good notes and he'll say go to a conference or something. And it's a great tip. I do it now as well. You take that business card if someone hands it to you or just literally jot it down and say, oh yeah, I help each other. Son, daughter, go to university. I went there. Oh, just send me a couple of recommendations. He does it all the time. See he's made two career moves that he's been approached for completely out of the. He never actually rolled twice. Rob's come looking for him. So that's one of the key figures. So. So as I say we want to chat further. See put your hands together for these amazing three fin. Thank you to Kevin, thank you to Anthony, thank you to Emily, thank you.

To D.

Me Now Andy Wing, this is the guys from IF I S as well. Thank you very much everyone.