Treasury Career Corner Live in London

So welcome to Treasury Career Corner Live. Before I start and introduce you to some amazing guests, I want to thank our amazing host, Herbert Smith Freehills. So where are you guys? Hands up, please. Amazing. Be nice to them. They'll be handing out free drinks afterwards as well. The lovely Darren and Patrick from FIS and State Street. Where are you guys? Say thank you to those at the end, otherwise they will take the drinks away from you. I also want to say a massive thank you to Craig and the team. So we've got Craig, Sophie, Ollie, Joe, Carly, Rebecca. As they've got all of you lot in a room on a Thursday night. I know it's just the free drink speaking.

Anyway.

This is the team to look.

Out for them as well. You have treasury proof needs or needs advice and everything else.

Haven't also forgotten the lovely Katie standing at the back of the room. She was my stand in if I got stuck with too many Guinnesses in.

Dublin at the Dublin Treasures conference yesterday.

So what I want to do, I'm Mike Richards. I run the treasury recruitment company, Basil Radio. We'll talk about that in a minute. All we do is recruit you lovely people from Treasury Assistant to Global Treasurer. I've done for 25 plus years through the US, right the way through the UK, Europe and Ireland. I also host a weekly podcast, a couple of amazing guests here. Anthony's been on it. Lovely Kemi. Emily will be on it soon. There you go. I've got it on tape. I thought when I started to host the Treasury Career Corner, it would be maybe 10 episodes talking to amazing treasurers about their treasury careers. Well, we're at 240 episodes, a hundred thousand downloads. People are interested in Treasury. I was actually asked a question yesterday and it came on a slido there. How do you make treasury sexy, Mike? Whoever's done that, it said anonymous, I'm getting you afterwards. Thing was, I said 100,000 downloads proves treasury is sexy. People are interested in it, they're interested in your treasury stories. That's what we're going to do. Bring it to life here. All of you must be subscribing on itunes. Today. We're going to go through these topics, do an introduction to these guys and their careers. Thus far, very successful. We'll then come to the power of qualifications and the differences it's made to their careers. We'll also talk about. It's not on the screen necessarily, the new way of working, they say, working from home. I call it more working remotely. And also what it's like now in a post Pandemic world of court treasury, is it here forever? Is it here to stay? What's the balance? How do these guys manage it with their teams as well? We explore that a little bit, we talk about some of the challenges they face as treasury professionals and we live in interesting times, as you well know. Global events and everything else. We'll then wrap up with some Q and A, make them nice questions, otherwise you'll not be getting free drinks, they'll be cancelled. What I'd also add is if you don't ask questions at the end, when did you as an audience, when did you get come here, meet three amazing treasury professionals, wisdom about their treasury careers. The answer is never. If you don't ask the Q A and you don't get involved, law for you. So we're then finished with some final key takeaways for heading out to the bar. So with that front of our minds, we've got the lovely Kemi Balarin. Kimmy is the European Head of Treasury for GXO Logistics. Get all these exactly right. 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.

You're giving it away.

The fact is, Kemi, if you would, you'll explain for the audience how you first started in finance and then Treasury.

Over to you, thank you very much.

You give that away. Mike, you should have mentioned the years, you know, make it five. But then, you know, I. Mine is a typical story of people that found their way into Treasury. 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. 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, panelists. So you then join Charter?

Yes, back in the day, yes, I joined Charter. Was a very. It was, it was distinct. And that was the, the role that you got me went over to Mike Richards. Was that Robert Walters? You were. I shouldn't talk about that. Okay, we'll cover that later. Cut it 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, Hecki 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 Limited, which was then owned by Lehman Brothers. Gone buster 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 be 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 Treasury. I did, you know, grow within the role. 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 treasurers, 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 had actually helped shape my growth within treasury and, you know, kept me here within the treasury profession.

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

Yes.

Can you explain to the audience who GXO and your role there?

Yep. 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 change results. So I had a short stint with GTT Communications. That was the point where I said, you know, Travelport, I think I've done enough. I risked being deemed institutionalized. You know, having spent 12 years in a company, people 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 spin off company. I thought, yeah, why not? I don't have that on my cv. I 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 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 acquisition of Clipper, we're probably the largest in the UK and second largest to dhl so my role at GXL was to come in again, set up a Treasury team, do the lift and shift from the companies that were being sponsored from, stabilize the treasury team and then think about the next step. So again it was no mean fit. This time last year in July, it was just me, myself and you know, I trying to do all that needed to be done and of course, you know, 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, 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.

Come back to you for a minute about working the remote, working how you went through that in a minute. But yeah, I'm going to pass it across to Mr. Buchanan. Anthony, 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 was studying, I was doing an economics degree. During the whole days I used to go out there and work at back middle office supporting them. I told you switch it was so 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 or 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 from 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, well it was cash forecasting, some of the oil forecasting and so on. And then after a few years and I'll come onto this and sort of every three years I was trying to look for new opportunities and they were, I was doing accounting examination 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 25 plus years ago, 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 accounting team said, you're not trying to get into the dealing room, are you? I. 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. I was like, 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 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 interesting 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 treasury roles, looking after the Americas. I then took over Europe. I got nicknamed A.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 buy us and therefore you're 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. Asahi Breweries, Europe, very Eastern European focused. I knew some of the team already and applied for that role as the training 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've got a phone call from HR saying, well, 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's starting 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 grown. 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 recognise where you're not so strong and therefore need to bring in the right skill set.

We'll come back to that and also talk about education at the moment as well. We'll hand over to Emily, maybe give a run through and then talk more about ACT as well.

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 a lot of us, not very original, stumbled into treasury and it was a kind of love 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 as 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 up through the ranks. Started with the Salvation army in Canada, wanted to be able to 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, 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 up 150 merchants to new point of sale terminals, changing the whole card, 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 divided from Canada. No, just kidding. 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 C250 biotech. What Genus does is probably not really PG for this audience, so 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 stayed with Genus around three to four years and that's when I qualified with the Act. And I felt what was really missing from my CV was sort of the dcm, the capital markets and credit rating agency, the bank relationship more the sort of like the front office Y bit. So that's when I joined Eversholt Rail which is sort of an infrastructure company, part of a large infrastructure group based in Hong Kong. So went through an acquisition with them. They were initially PE backed, 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 over the bond market, private placement market, managed quite a heavy derivative program, got to manage the banks, so really rounded up my treasury knowledge, stayed with Ever Schultz seven years, had two kids in the process and then I thought, you know, it's the Time for me to sort of consolidate that knowledge. And Covid was quite reflective for me as well. 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 what they've got a small treasury function, the company's growing and they want, you know, a first head of Treasury. So off I went earlier this year in July. So a small team of four, great team. One of them is present today and we've. The company is really great. So it's the recruitment process, outsourcing. So we basically take large companies, so financial institutions, big pharmas, 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. So 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 quite quickly up into the latter.

In the room here we've got quite a range of experience, so we've got people, some of the treasure professionals here are early stage in their careers. We've got a prize winner, mct. I'll introduce you to him later.

Just to embarrass him.

We've got the president of the ACT got his way in the room. So that's it. Pro ACT now we're pro education. We talk about it a lot on the podcast. When I talk to people, I just want to ask you as a panel, what difference you think it made not only to yourselves, you know, with your careers, we'll 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?

Yeah, well, I'm going to be heavily biased towards the act. I'm a strong support of the act. I mean, I actually, after my mba, back in Canada, I started studying for my cfa, 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, if you're doing your cfa, it'll probably be an 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. 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 their sort of uni and uni campus campaigns. I chaired their Futures 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 also 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. Like, I mean, 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 sometimes a bit tricky to be able to tap into the. 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 push towards that. And I mean, it tells a lot about someone as well when you're recruiting someone that's investing in themselves and investing in furthering their education. 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 finding 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 affiliaship, you've got other routes to become, you know, associated to the act without going forward. Qualifications.

Definitely qualifications. Act for me now. So my early days at Diageo made me. 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. 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 a subsequent 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 if 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 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. And the other thing I love about the act is that all qualifications in general, it's very easy 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 management guy said, I 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 Charges and that was his FX spot trade. And when he talked about cash handling, it was like handling notes. And so when I was asking about qualification, so I don't, I haven't done that actually. But 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 change. Have they got what they said? They've got some various projects and stuff. You can sort of hide behind it a little bit 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 or have insight knowledge onto it.

Yeah, I echo all the points made by both Emily and Anthony Journey there. And similar to what Emily 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, 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 panel session, is even access to different levels of, 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 treasure do I really want to specialize in? Again, that is a very good platform to go for.

I touched on it before about this new post Pandemic world. If you are going to come to yourself about this Anthony Festival, 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've got to put a suit on and I've seen a couple of people in slippers, which is a bit worried. But I was going to say working from home, remote working, whatever you want to call it. How have you guys and Kemi 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're back in the office and things as how are you handling it, then we're going to 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, oh, 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 working 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 he had to be in the office pre covert. And I used to joke to him, he'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 I was having to travel quite a lot, which isn't really sustainable either. So 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 our place, but it's easier to actually then to integrate and to network.

Emily, welcome.

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. We're a global company, as I say, like located in 40 different countries. So and the fact that the tech works well, actually 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 where it is tough, 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, once in a while. But I think, you know, the, the hybrid working for me is probably the only silver lining out that we got out of the pandemic. And I would never go back to. To big being in the office nine to five, five days a week.

Right.

Pastor came here. It was just an observation, just a reflection question from some of the sessions I've been done. I did one recently with the NACT in the US and I was talking to some of these very senior treasurers and they're incredible people, you know, running global treasury departments. And I talked to one in particular. I was brilliant. We're back in the office. I mean, oh, wow. How are the team enjoying it? Is it really good? So, well, yeah, we come back in the office five days a week. It was like grumpus, 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 everyone? Oh, no, not really. I said, well, we're seeing all the banks, we're seeing all, you know, relationship. I'm out in the business. And actually, I then put this question to the panel, the people that were there, I said, can I ask, are you seeing your team more or less now? And they actually notice. They said, oh, I've actually seen less of them. You know, by the, you know, previously, they had this Luke Leming from Belgium, amazing guy, and he said they used to have this virtual coffee break all the time where they all around the water cooler 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. Kemi, I know you and I have talked about this. What's it been like for you?

I mean, it's been. It's the same for gxo. Runs a hybrid working culture, as you say it, and it's pretty flexible. We don't have confirmed number of days. You know, we leave it to people to do as they wish. But I think the nature of the treasury professionals I have working in my team is I think they really like having people around. So within our sort of GXO 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 they can work from home, however they wish to do that. From my perspective, Echoing what Anthony and Emily has said is I've had to look inwards and make myself a better manager operated within a remote working situation. The human interaction just needs to continue and as you've rightly said, 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 the 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 in my office, about 5%, military and FBNA. So what can we do? Gin and tonic Fridays maybe. But again, it's just bringing the human aspect, you know, into managing our teams.

I'm going to go to Q A shortly. I'm going to go back to the panel and ask them some challenges before we do a wrap up post Q A to get your questions in, if you would. When I do the podcast, each and every week I talk to treasurers about their careers and then we get to this stage. I said, look, now as you, before we wrap up that show each week, I said, look, what are the key things keeping you awake or you know, issues, if you like, you're facing? You know, we've talked about the people issues, you know, and things like that, remote work and balancing that as treasury professionals, you know, how are you coping and Planning or what are things affecting you, Emily? And then we'll come down to the link Kemigan next know you're 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 aspects, probably the volatility of the markets. I mean the rates markets and the effects markets are a bit all over the place and extremely volatile so obviously it's a difficult environment so 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 said the minute. Yes, it's just the uncertainty and the volatility of the markets.

Yes, totally. 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 a lot of those other areas people are focused on. So I 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? But 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, and it's 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 a 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, reimagine their role as strategic allies. And then with all the macroeconomic issues and you know, energy crisis, as you said, is enabled 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 think about the credit profile of all the customers and all the counterparties that we are, you know, that we are facing. How well are they doing, how what are the indicators that are out there? So it becomes a constant watch is a constant reading of, you know, materials out there who are major customers, counterparties. How is all this inflation, recession, energy crisis impacting them? What's the exposure that we have? Also talking about credit insurance, you know, you know, thinking about credit insurance just to make sure that, you know, whatever the risk is, whatever the exposure is, is well managed from that perspective.

So at central 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 treasury professionals here. So you're going to get a chance to actually ask them some questions. Then we're going to do some takeaways for you guys. What, what questions have we got from you lot? Come on, get those hands up a little bit. Oh, there we go. There you go. Quickly ladies with the. Well, I'll shout it out, Mr. Norris. Oh, they'll got it. There you go. Thank you. That was really interesting.

Thank you. Very interesting careers as well.

What would you say if you're willing to share your biggest misstep in your career would be. I would definitely start with that as.

A leaf lash missteps. So I'll touch on it to 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 a group treasurer with the CFO walking down Oxford street and goes where's cable? And it's like I'm doing cash management and 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 that everything's going crazy. 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. There was a few mistakes and then not so much 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 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 come back to you on it.

Emily, you've never made a mistake.

It might be a cultural thing, but I'm a bit direct in my communications style and I think it may be 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 sort of learned that to sort of tailor my answers and 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 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 Emily there. 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 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, we top up on it. So communication was one of the key, you know, skills that I had to top up on in my self reflective period.

Got a question here, I think. Yeah, yeah. Come on guys. That's it. Jogging. That's right, just run. When you're recruiting people or when you're from housing people within your teams, is there a certain level about which you require either an ACT or different type of qualification or is that a nice path? It's Just preferable. But you are putting a lot of weight on experience as well. 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 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.

Would you require duplication or would you be open to, you know, whoever would probably be able to.

I would be open because it's a mix, isn't it? It's a healthy mix. You know, you do. 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 of skills. They've accessed a broad range and they've also been in that. They've sat in that seat 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, in a week and 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 up, you know, to. Depending on the experience and as you said, also maybe try to, you know, guide that person, the candidate, towards another route. So 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, you know, it's beneficial to have.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, they're slightly different. So if you're recruiting. Yeah, you've got to look for 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 are. 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, there's. You can get time off, full financial support and so on to do those qualifications. So you could get promoted from when 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? We only do certain things in Treasury. You can learn a lot more by doing this qualification.

I'd echo all those thoughts. The only point I'd probably add 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.

Probably got time for one more. More question. Well, again, maybe you can arm wrestle every day.

Just wondered, in terms of technology, I.

Assume it's changed a lot since you started your careers. Which area of it would you say.

Has been most helpful to you in.

Terms of transforming the Treasury?

So payments or Swift or Treasury systems or reconciliations or commodity hedging?

There's no tech there.

Yeah, I can take that one. It was probably in my previous role I had the pleasure of taking the lead on a TMS implementation, 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, you know, the regression and analysis from scratch, having all the journals being posted automatically in the erp, treasury payments going through bank and cash reconciliations, that was probably the biggest win from a tech perspective in my career.

Anthony?

Yeah, I agree. Tms. I mean, I was thinking about that. So, I mean, our team is. We could take the forecast 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 commodities, 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 direct visibility I think was where we focused on.

First off my case, you know, we, 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 shut a bank account and open another bank account. So my interest is 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?

This time we're going to have one more question and then we'll give. Each of the panelists will give you some amazing takeaways. I'll even do some as well. I'm sorry we can't have everything. What were your answers?

Hi, my name is David.

So kind of sentenced to the first question but Emily and Kennedy mentioned communication is one lesson they learned. Do you think? So what will be the most important skill that you use on a daily.

Basis for your job? 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. 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. 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 at Diageo, said you can explain it to your grandmother, you can explain it to anyone. And it's having 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, what would 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 sit in the middle and interact with all sorts of business units. We're talking about the FB and a team procurement, people that manage our fleets, people that manage our energy within the group. How does what happens today translate or impact their role? So how. So it's been able to distill those technical terms, think outside the box and then ensuring that they understand what we have to manage in terms of risk for the business.

Tailoring your communication style to your audience is really key. Pitching it at the right level, if you're talking to the CFO or to add to an analyst goodness, step 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 difference 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. We're going to skip through these so feed topics questions done. Right Kemi. All right, now we have covered these a little bit so without repeating ourselves a bit but yeah, what are 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 the current day sort of professionals have it pedal 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 the growing treasury is 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 and 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 recatch up is Karen vandendreche, amazing lady. And one of the things that jumped out and she talked about having a mentor and they were having three or four major points. One of the months she said, she said, you can be mad. Was that right? Okay. She went up a mad idea, could this work? Could this? And she said she would talk to her mentor and have a crazy idea that might at 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 about the idea and go, what do you think about this? I was a bit mad, but 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.

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, user recruit who talks Treasury. Because early days I've used guys who put me in front of roles, which was not a Treasury role and I didn't have the qualifications and it was a waste of time. And I've had CVs sent in to 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 as wasting my time? So. So get people who speak the right language, diversity of experience in your cv. And we work with Tax, we work with Lee, 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 corporate, and ours is definitely no different. So learning how people work, speaking with, trying to learn 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 I touched on earlier, 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, I 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 from 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. Or 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 developed a solid network. You know, a lot of these, the jobs aren't networking 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 would say approach sort of career decisions in the same way as you would approach a business decision. So learn to quantify risk, build models, and it'll just make taking risks a bit easier. When it comes to moving roles or asking for a better package, just having everything to some stage your decision, keep an open mind. So for me, it's worked well to sort of consider smaller organizations, smaller teams that give 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 quickly as you would hope for. A practical tip, don't procrastinate. Sometimes a task might look very challenging. Make it, tackle it in manageable phases, make it more like bite sized phases and then it'll make it look less overwhelming and allow you to be successful 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.

Good.

So I'm going to give you some final ones from me as well. When you give these amazing people a round of applause in a minute, which you will, and really put your hands 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 and your treasury careers. Yes, there's been lots of it about study and lots of education, but there's also all the other learnings you got from amazing three treasury 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 in Dublin, I was talking to them and it's about. I also sometimes think of it standing the wrong way round on that travelator at the airport. Turn around and it's taking you backwards. The funny thing is people are still walking past you. Other people are developing themselves, they're investing in 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're going to go backwards because you've got to keep going. Obviously. There's an amazing podcast you listen to, Elevator Pitch. This is about developing your value. In a minute you're going to go out there, someone's going to say, what do you do? I'm a Treasury and I do cash management. Really? Anyone do cash management in this room?

Such cash in your jobs.

Yeah. Means nothing. What you need to do is say, I do cash management for XYZ or whoever it might be. And what I Do differently in my job and what I do is make a difference. Where do you add value? 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. The time it takes to go down in an elevator three or four floors. Quickly, master. Just think it through now in a moment as someone says, oh, what do you do? I'm with such and such. I'm the treasury dealer at xyz. Yes. So what? Tell us what you do. How do you make a difference in your day job? You've implemented a gms, you've saved lots of people times and that's what you need to do. The final tip is actually from Chris Fulton, a great American guy. I steal it all the time. When you walk away from here, you have a nice networking session and who's that great guy? Oh, got his business card. Oh. And what he does, he makes these really good notes and he'll tell you, go to a conference or something and it's a great tip. And I do it now as well. You take their business card. If someone hands it to you or just literally jot it down and say, oh, yeah, I helped. They talked about their son, daughter going to university. I went there. Oh, just sending a couple of recommendations. He does it all the time now. The fact is he's made two career moves that he's been approached for completely out of the blue. He never actually was looking for a role. Twice roles have come looking for him. So that's one of the key things. So, as I say, want to chat further so you can put your hands together for these amazing three people. Thank you to Kemi, thank you to Anthony, thank you to Emily, thank you to Darren. I can't believe I'm saying that. To Darren. Killing me Now, Andy Winders and the guys from FIS as well for taking some drinks. Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you.

It.