Treasury Career Corner LIVE in New York with Luke Herbert, Burak Yildirim & Brian Harrison

Foreign.

To this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. And a special thanks to Flywire, our fantastic sponsors. If you've ever wondered whether there was a way to ease your international transaction hassles, they're the guys to talk to. If you follow the link in our show notes, you can see me talking to my mate Greg Levin, their Senior VP of Sales. I get to ask Greg about who are Flywire and how they can help you and your treasury team with your cross border payment headaches. If you follow the link in the show notes, you'll all see me talking to Greg. More about flywire but on this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast, it's a special edition. I recently hosted Treasury Career Corner live for two nights in New York. One of the nights with Dana Laidhold from NASDAQ and Chris Cochan from Endeavor. Listened to that one amazing conversation. They were very giving as panelists. Really enjoyed my conversation with them. Then on the other night I had the amazing pleasure of speaking to three amazing treasurers live in Times Square in New York on what was a night of torrential downpours. I did think, oh my goodness, it's going to be me and my panel of three. Well, you know, there would have been lots of beer left over, maybe we'll just see. But anyway, we didn't outnumber the audience. We were thrilled to be able to welcome 50 treasury over 50 treasury professionals to Times Square. We then talked about their careers and how they've developed. It's a great episode. We had Brian Harrison, Vice President of Treasury at NBC Universal. We then had Luke Herbert, Vice President, Assistant Treasurer at GXO Logistics and also the lovely Burak Yildirim, Vice President and Treasurer, LVMH in North America.

They were.

Well they are as I'm sure you'll hear three incredible guests in this episode. I hope you enjoy this podcast just as much as I did when I talked to Brian, Burak and Luke. And as always, let's get on with the show.

Good evening New York. Oh you're awake. Thank you very much. Right, this is my amazing panel. They will introduce themselves and they're give a bit pricey of their backgrounds. We've got Burak, recent podcast guest, got Luke from gxo. He'll give a good intro to himself. And Brian, well, Brian will do all the talking, don't you worry. So I was just going to say there are some ground rules here. If any of you have got this little known thing called your phone, switch it off, will you? You have got an hour and a great audience with these amazing gents. I was at AFP speaking in San Diego, but in the morning I went to a social media session and they said about engagement. Was I engaged? No, I wasn't. I was looking at my emails, looking at this and I thought afterwards, why didn't I just engage for an hour, just get. Why could I have got from that? So just give us your eyes and ears. There are. There is free booze and when I say free, actually I'm lying. It's sponsored by the lovely Kyriba. Where are Kyriba people? They're at the back. Be nice to them. And State street. Have we got any State street guys? I think they still. There you go, State street guys. So you have to be nice to them. MK in particular, be very careful. Bora was recently a guest on my podcast. This is how this all came about. So sorry about the big head there, but you can't have everything. So I'm a Treasury recruiter. I move you guys around the room and then I send out lots of bills. It works really well. But doing it 25 years, I then was enjoying it so much. About five and a half years ago, I thought, you know what, I want to create a podcast. I was going to do one at one stage on recruitment. I thought after four or five episodes I'd be bored of that, not doing that. I love talking to treasurers. So that's the team there as well. The Treasury Career Corner podcast was born. Now I've got some lovely listeners who have heard about it, which is lovely. Thank you very much. I thought maybe do 10 episodes. We're at 320. It's mental. One a week, every week for five and a half years. Oh, I say this again, not as a sales pitch, but more that it's then led me to talk to treasurers just like this and sharing their stories is why we do it. And that's what you're going to get from them. So this is the structure of the evening. I'm going to talk you through giving you some of the ground rules we're going to go through, how these guys started their careers, we're going to go through. We've also got some guidance here what part education has played, what do they feel has been key to their success. And actually I'm going to mention here as well. We've already done this. A bit of rehearsal as well with Brian. Brian very kindly stepped in. When we were in New York at the T Manny event back last year, one of our guys suddenly got trapped in traffic. He came on the panel and was amazing. But what we literally did. That's your warm up. Now you've done a rehearsal, so you've got to be brilliant. Okay, yeah, no pressure. We will then finish for Q and A at the end and then we'll do a wrap up. Make them good questions. If you don't, don't ask the good questions. Why are you here? You're taking time out of your evenings to give us your eyes and ears. So actually make the most of it. We'll start with yourself. Borac, if you would. Can you give us a precis of your background? But don't make it too short about how you started in finance, then treasury developed your career up to now and how come you're here in the street.

So Mike, thanks for having us here. It is a pleasure to be with all of you today. So, a little bit. So I'm currently the treasurer for lvmh. I'm sure some of you have heard of our brands that we have. I've been with the group for roughly about a year now. Prior to that I was at Campbell Soup Company. I was their director of treasury based out of Camden, New Jersey. Going back again one more time, I was at Henkel in Rocky Hill, Connecticut and also in Istanbul, Turkey. I was. I started off as their head of treasury in 2015. From there I became the treasurer for India, Middle east and Africa, which was a super fun job. A lot of the things that treasurers prepare for we live through. So things like currency devaluations, things like card currency crisis, a lot of fun stuff. From from there I was. I moved over to North America with Henkel in Rocky Hill. I was there for about three years. At the very beginning I started off at Turkish Airlines. I was there, started off as a specialist and then moved to supervisor with a cash management team. The airline industry is super fun. A lot of dynamics, a lot of changes, a lot of movements. So it's a good place to start the career. I accidentally got into finance. I am a poly sci major. I want to do diplomacy. I saved the world. World peace, didn't work out. Joined a career fair. They recruited me, became a Series 3 commodities broker, very random. Was there for about small boutique investment firm for about a year and a half in Los Angeles, in LA. And when the 2008 financial crisis hit, everything turned upside down. Decided to get my mba, realized that I wanted to get into finance. Was in Fullerton for about two years and then moved to Turkey and then came back here, etc. So it's been a fun ride so far. Treasury has been a great experience. I think you get to touch a lot of the functions, a lot of the businesses, a lot of the stakeholders within the organization. So it's been a, it's been a good ride so far.

Cool.

And if you want to hear more, it was a recent podcast guest. So we talked for about half an hour, 40 minutes. Right. All the way through that. Some of the other things we're not going to have time. You will have time over a beer later as well, which is good. Over to you Luke. And again, talk us maybe start at the beginning of your career if you would and then we'll go through that order.

So I mean similar to Barack, I sort of fell into finance. So I was in the army, went to West Point undergrad, was in the army for five years, did business school as sort of the transition from the army world into corporate. Didn't know what I wanted to do. Had a friend that was at one of the banks, so started working at the bank doing in a debt capital markets team and that was 2005. Made a jump to Lehman Brothers brilliantly in 2007.

It was your fault.

No comment, no comment.

So road leading through the bankruptcy came out of the other side with Barclays. So kept doing the banking thing for a number of years and I think most of you guys know the DCM bankers, they interact quite a bit with corporate treasury games and I was covering media, media, telecom. Eventually got into some industrial, doing some defense because of my background and then it was time to move on. I got the proverbial boot in the rear end from the bank when it was time for me to get promoted to managing director. It was not my time, so it was time for me to leave. That was one of those moments in your career where things don't really go as planned and it gives you an opportunity to say, okay, what am I doing? Where am I going? Is this where I want to be? Okay, what's next? Started looking at corporate treasury jobs. Found a job at a company called International Game Technology. They do slot machines, lotteries, fun stuff. Going out to Vegas, doing G2E, doing some fun stuff. But it was a great experience for me. It was a good match because they had big capital structure, they had about 8 billion of debt. I was Essentially their in house banker. It was fun. It was doing high yield debt. I was an investment grade debt banker so it was kind of a new world. It was fun but it was sort of my first taste of Treasury. It was great interacting with all the teams around the corporate finance, corporate functions. So investor relations, accounting, controllership, technical accounting, you guys know it. And it was a lot of fun. Realized it was a little bit siloed. I was basically just working on the balance sheet. A little bit of hedging, a little bit of effects raise, that kind of stuff. The, the cash management side of the business part of the team was, was a different, a different group and I knew if I wanted to progress I needed to get more exposure to that area. So an opportunity came up at GXO Logistics. It was actually Expo and I don't know if you guys have heard of xbo. It's a logistics company, go figure. And, and they were about to sort of carve themselves up and so I was part of SpinCo number one. I was the first treasury hire for, for SpinCo and I was hired as the assistant trader and so responsible for not just the capital structure and financial risk management, but now cash management. It was pretty interesting eye opener, you know, not something that I was good at but something that I had to pick up quickly. And I also didn't have a team so we hired a team. Happy ending still there. It's great. Based in Greenwich, Connecticut. So my treasury career has spanned just since really. I mean if you count my time as a banker for quite a while. But really corporate treasury is just as recent as 2017. So I'm still learning. I think we're all still learning. It's a great journey and really pleased to meet all you and hear from these guys.

Yeah, we quiz you more stuff about education, qualifications, but we'll go to Brian next. Go on Brian.

Is this thing on?

Yeah, it is.

I'll also start from the beginning because I think it helps tell the story a little bit better. Unlike the two gentlemen on the panel, I guess I'm a career treasury person. I fell into treasury right out of college and have been in treasury ever since. I had the opportunity to join Viacom, now Paramount, right after they split from CBS the first time and all of treasury went to cbs. So I joined the very junior treasury team responsible for functioning the Treasury Group at the new Viacom business. I joined there as their analyst and 14 years later held many different hats within that team and was ultimately running the international Treasury Group and Risk management and Touch Capital Markets areas as well. So I do like to think that I was part of Viacom over its infancy because I started at the beginning and then fast forward, CBS merger comes back together, CBS team comes back in and you know, I'm unfortunately looking for another opportunity. But it was a blessing in disguise because I think when you're at a company for as long as I was, it's almost nice to get a different purview and a different experience and it's probably one that, you know, we can touch about upon it later. But it was a change that I needed. I pivoted that into spending two, two and a half years at Nielsen iq which was the carve out from Nielsen Media. I was the assistant treasurer there. Really interesting situation going from big media, global media conglomerate to a smaller private equity backed company. And understand the challenges that you know, going from public to private. We were really global. So Nielsen kyuk is in 90 countries in the world. It was almost easier to figure out which countries we didn't operate in. So a lot of cash management, a lot of, maybe less risk management there because of the private equity piece. Most of that's handled at the private equity side and spent a good two and a half years there. It was fully remote and I had teams spanning from Beijing, India, Amsterdam and scattered around the US And I never met my team in person, which was also a challenge. So NBCU reached out to me about joining the team and leading their treasury team here in New York and it was an opportunity that shift me back to a big, large, you know, global media company. Obviously it's part of the Comcast family so it's a, you know, a large overall business and I've been there since June and it's been interesting to say the least. I think so far. We, there's obviously various challenges and just trying to build a team and just, you know, change the culture of our team. Excited to be here.

Excellent. Thank you. So we've got an audience here that is very much focused. Maybe the earlier stages. A lot of you in your treasury careers I wanted to explore with each of you. We'll start with Burek and then we'll work our way along the part that education and qualifications maybe have played in your own careers. And then we're going to transition as well. And it's not a double question. It's then do you feel that that influences maybe when you're recruiting, whether you're coaching a team, is that something that's in your mind or is that just, you know, is a qualification a Nice to have or a necessity and stuff. So maybe talk through your own qualifications and then we'll go along the panel.

So political science major, poli sci major, international relations on top of that, mba. Has that helped me with. Of course it's helped out. There's no doubt about that. But I think the biggest qualification is to be able to get that different vantage and the perspectives associated with different treasuries that function in different industries. Everybody has a different priority. In the airlines, it was managing the aircraft financing, which came with a lot of risk. Henkel in the chemicals, it was production management, supply chain and managing the effects associated with that. At Campbell's, it was commodities. At lvmh, it's all of the above. So it's a tough question, Mike, in all honesty, but it's a package per se. Right. So it's your past educational experiences coupled with your qualifications coupled with any certifications that you may have. Yeah, like the ctp, the cfa, maybe not so relevant.

Is that when you. But when you're maybe recruiting, when you're looking at bringing team members, are you going, right, have they got ctp? Are you looking at that first of all, or is that just a nice to have? Would you.

Something that we do look at, it's also nice to have. It's a balance. It's tough. I don't think it's a disqualifier if you don't have one. And I don't think it's something that gets you through the door if you do have one. Again, it's all the balancing out with the experiences.

Right over to you.

I was engineer undergrad major. And then of course I mentioned I did the mba. And so I view the. From my own career journey, I view the MBA as sort of my. A little bit of an insurance policy and a little bit, you know, when people see my resume, they say, okay, this guy got into the, you know, got into school, obviously went through the program. So he's like, okay, check. So it gives you a little bit of credibility. At least that's. That's how.

That's why they told you.

Well, yeah, that's why they talked. But I'm about to talk out of both sides of my mouth. So that's why I think people talk to me when I talk to candidates. I'll be honest, I don't really. I don't really care and I don't why is going to sound terrible. I don't really care about schools, both undergrad and mba. And, and I don't really Care about qualifications, ctp, cfa, that stuff. I have had some luck in the Europe in around London with true treasury qualified professionals and I found, found that to be a differentiate. But I just, what, what I find is people with experience, people that can articulate their experience and give me incredible examples of what they do. Like if I'm talking about cash management and you kind of talk super high level. Yeah, I know what cash management. No, like give me examples. That carries a lot more weight with me than seeing where they went to school. And I also, when I was at the bank, you know, I worked with kids from Yale and kids from Penn State. And I mean the guy from Penn State ran circles around the guy from Yale. And so it's, it's, you know, that's not a rule but it just, I think it shows you that I think Brad had a good point. It's, it's, it is a portfolio, it's a balance and at the end of the day it's, it's the individual. But when again, this is just my opinion.

Yeah, you know, I, I, I, I, I agree. I so I'm a finance econ undergrad and then shortly after starting working in Treasury, I realized that a lot of what you do in treasury is dictated by accounting. So I went back and got my MBA and, and with this finance accounting. So I' cpa, but I know enough to be dangerous, especially when we're talking about risk management, etc. I do have a CTP. I'm glad I took the CTP when I took the CTP because it's now it's becoming, you know, almost like a quasi, not quite the cfa, but it's getting very, very technical. But I think it is a blend. I think that when I'm looking, I'm in the process of building a team here and when I'm looking at candidates, I very rarely even glance upon where they've gone to school. I think I'm looking for experiences. I think the experience is at least get your attention on a resume. And then I think it's the discussions, the articulation and the fit for the team and the team culture and personality. And I think it's building kind of a blend of different types of people. So you don't have the same person on your team because you want a blended experience. So I would say that the education port is certainly important. Right. It's an investment in yourself and it kind of builds that foundation that you're able to be at least considered for a role and in some cases maybe gets you through the selection portion because I don't really have control of the selection portion. That kind of gets that whittled down candidate pool that gets, you know, in front of me. But when I'm looking at candidates, I'm trying to look for the experiences. And I think Barack mentioned it. I think the biggest advice and the biggest opportunity for education is to learn by your peers. You know, if you're a junior member of a staff and you're working for, you know, a really talented treasurer, get in front of that treasurer as often as you can and just observe how they handle situations. And those are the experiences you can't learn in a classroom. And I think those also propel you to be able and prepared for future situation that you may find yourself in.

Do you find that in the wider business sense as well with do you find your treasury team meeting other parts of the finance. So we do the podcast each week. You One of The observations through 25 years of treasury recruitment is that Treasury a number of years ago went and put itself in a corner, said it's great, I get, I get paid more. Look at me, I'm the treasurer. But then baby was put in the corner. You know, treasury was in the corner and it was like, yeah, just that treasury guy is over there. Treasury has now been fighting to get back out. How have you done it with it?

I think that you need to be out there, you need to be. You make sure, you know. The way I always have always viewed the treasury function is we act as the banker for the organization, the internal banking expertise and we bridge the gap between our business and constituents needs with what the banks offer to kind of whether it be everything from a cash management perspective, whether it be managing risk, whether it be capital markets, we're essentially that internal subject matter expertise that bridge between the banks. And I think it's important that especially in groups that, that I've worked within and the culture that I like to build is we also get a. There's also this kind of reputation that treasury is just this operational function that pushes buttons all day and they move wires and you know, they do all that stuff. Right. But if you think about it, treasury should really be a strategic resource for the CFO and for the executive team because you know, we should be understand our business better than others or at least as much as others in finance. And if you're not sharing that wealth with your FPA group and your accounting group and other various finance functions are along your business and getting the word out there that you're here to help them, I think that you're doing yourself a disservice. I think you want to make sure that you're not in the corner.

Like you said, you're out there, Luke, I'm going to come to you and carry on with that. You've got a number of treasury analysts, treasury managers in the room here. And yeah, it's all very well. You guys are senior treasurers. You know, you can go and knock on the CFO's doors if that's who you're talking to. But if you're a Treasury analyst and you're saying to your treasurer, hey, I want to get out there and meet the business and everything else, how would you, how do they approach it, the guys here? How would you, what advice would you give to the these guys? And again, and that will come to you.

Barack yeah, it's, yeah, it's a good question, Mike. And it probably differs a little bit industry by industry. I know in my current company, so it's an industrials company, it's a B2B services company that does logistics. And we're, I mean, we push our team to like, get out, get out and see the business, go out to a site, go out to, to see what's going on and when you're there, interact with people. And there are always constraints that you need budget to go these places.

You need to.

But I found it's doable. There's almost always a local site, there's something that you can do that's not going to break the bank and not going to give you too much. And usually when you go to the treasurer, the CFO and say, hey, I want to send so and so out to the business, they're like, awesome, that's great. Why aren't we doing more of that? Take someone from the tax team, take someone from controllership and so get out and see the business is step one. But trying to, I think Brian touched on it a little bit, you know, you have connectivity across the finance organization. I feel like that's really easy. And if it's not your organization, then certainly get out and do it, make it, you know, make it your priority to touch the finance function. But how do you get into, how do you get more exposure to the businesses is something that I would encourage you to do. And it's not easy. But find a way, find your relevance, your applicability to the business team and set up a meeting, set up a call and ask them how you can help. Ask them, just increase the connectivity and increase the interaction to make yourself visible and to get more familiar with the organization.

I'm going to share a very quick story on this. So I joined Turkish Airlines. Young out of college, out of NBA. It was a team of eight in the Treasury. No Bloomberg at that time. So we attended a few conferences and we saw the terminal, right. So this is back in 2010. So it's a cool device. Every treasurer should have it, every treasury should have it. Went to my boss, my manager at the time, he said, there's no business case, there's no reason for this. He's like, would you mind if I take this to the svp? He said, that's fine, take it. Because he didn't really believe in the case itself. Took it to the svp. He said, you know, it kind of makes sense, but maybe we need to present it to the cfo. It's one terminal, right. So it's. I mean, It's Turkish Airlines, $10 billion top line company. So. But it was such an uphill battle. Eventually we got the approval. Right. So without giving up with being a little bit disruptive with asking for something that hasn't been asked before, definitely played a good role. But in addition to the industry, it's also the culture of the company too. If you're allowed to do it in very hierarchical companies, it's a little bit of a tougher challenge. I think in more matrix organizations and linear companies, it's a little bit more of a balance and you're able to kind of take certain things forward. One thing that I also encourage is to take a current process and bring a Treasury perspective to it. And what I mean by that is there are tons of examples where procurement goes out and does purchases. Take a very simple example and say, listen, you went with the cheapest one, but it has the shortest payable terms. So maybe you might have gone with a little bit more expensive one that has the longer payment terms. Let me show you how it affects our working capital. Or taking a perspective with FP and a say, listen, this is what you forecasted for your currency. This is what we're forecasting. Maybe see what that impact is on the end result. So it's creating that different vantage point. And then next time you'll notice that you'll get more involved in these processes that they are asking for your opinion because you've provided a different perspective that they haven't seen. Because before.

So we can. We rehearsed. These guys said I had amazing handwriting when I sent my notes across to them. Yeah. That you can see that the, the laughs on their faces. But in all seriousness, I wanted to brief them about any challenges they face with maybe their careers, maybe past bosses, mentors and stuff. We'll go with Brian first of all and come back across. How have you coped, you know, throughout this? Because again, some of the guys here in, you know, in the audience will go, wow, I'm really facing that. How have you overcome challenges in your treasury career, would you say?

I think challenges. So the question is about, you know, current bosses is that.

Yeah, it can be about.

I think it's, I think you have to. There's always that period of time where you need to figure out how to work best with your boss because you could have different personalities and not everybody's the same. And I think there's that feeling out period to figure out how you can be productive together and understand each other's perspectives and appreciate people's perspectives. Because especially if you're coming from, if you're at one, if you're working under one person for a very long time, you get comfortable in that manner as well. And then you may shift to a different company and it's kind of, you feel like you're, it's a whirlwind like what. What the heck did I just get myself into? So I really think that transparency is important and trying to articulate if there's, don't let things linger. And I know that's hard, maybe managing that upward and that whole 360 review but if you don't address it then it just becomes a continual thing and you know, hopefully it can change over time and maybe it's just, it's almost like a prove yourself situation as to. Maybe it's just the, the nature of that person to chat. It's a challenging mechanism where, you know, I might be coming off this way, but it's really just a challenge to get more out of you. So I think every situation is different. I think I've worked for, you know, I've been fortunate to work for some really good treasurers over the years and I try to take bits and pieces of each of them, take the good, but also understand their perspective on some of their unique personalities because at the end of the day nobody gets to that treasurer level by not being, you know, capable of doing the job and they've gotten there doing it their way. So just trying to understand that there may be a better way or maybe a different approach or maybe to your point, different industries work differently and maybe they're just different Perspectives. So I think really just trying to create that transparency, that line of communication. And even with the junior members of my team, I don't like it to have anything linger. I like to address it. So it's not waiting for a boiling point, because at the end of the day, you need to be productive with that person.

Luke, I'll take the question a little bit differently. Was one of the challenges that I, That I saw in my career and I, And I see it in my team is you kind of have your. You have your role, you have your scope, but you want to do more. You want to expand your skill set, but, like, you need to stay in your. In your lane, right? Stay in your lane.

So.

So how do you. And that's something that, again, when I was at igt, I was just doing capital markets, and it was. I knew that I was limited, and that was something that. It frustrated me, but it didn't kill me. But I also knew that I had to grow, I had to diversify a little bit. And I see this in my senior manager of cash management. He really wants to learn about capital markets, about fx, about all the other things. And it's probably something that I would guess a lot of people here are like, okay, how do I get into different. Either different parts of treasury, different parts of finance, what have you? It's hard, and it's something you really do have to work at. You have to get a little bit creative. Always have to have your hand up and say, hey, can, you know, if anybody is asking for help on something, jump in, but being a little bit pushy. And, hey, can I get on that call with the banks talking about the revolver refinancing, your setting up a new lease agreement for that, that facility over there? Can I be part of it? Just, you know, inject yourself. Easy for me to say, because I know I struggled with it. I struggled to really, you know, get myself out there and get into different things. And I acknowledge it's. It's not easy.

So I think both Luke and Brian summarize this real well. For me, it was multifold, right? So it was a balance between the company culture, your boss's expectations, and your working style. Right? So I'll give you a few examples. I worked for a company that was very reporting oriented. If you took something disruptive to them, it was very offensive, and you would get shut down very quickly. So it was finding that balance, knowing that you had to change your focal points, right? So kind of stay in your lane. If you didn't take Something disruptive to a company that was trying to be innovative. That was also offensive, too. So it would definitely stand out, both in a very positive way and also in a very negative way. So just throughout the career was just a lurking learning process for me. In certain companies, you took a little bit more of a step back to be able to let the leader lead. In certain companies, you support the leader in leading, and in certain companies, you led yourself because they allowed you to do so. So it's all a balancing act. It's all being able to manage the environments, your execution, your boss sometimes, and see where that takes you.

Excellent. Thank you for coming very much so far. We're going to come now, we're going to talk a little bit about the world of work. Just got up there as well, about working from home, hybrid and everything else. Five years ago, hybrid was simply a car. That's what it was. You know, you, like, no one had ever heard of this. You know, three, two in the office and everything else within the past five years. Covid the Pandemic in February. Everyone's in the office. March, work from home. That's it, we're closed. Go away. And then we're now seeing this shift and I think there's this balancing, certainly with the US market. I think Europe actually got ahead of it quite a long time ago. UK followed suit a little bit us, I'm seeing some clients, they've got their heads around it. We've got three, two split. This is how we do it. This is it. This is what the staff want. This is everything else. So I'm going to ask each of the panelists, and this time we'll start here, move across. Because I don't want to start with Brian all the time. I like to pick on him, but I don't want to be too mean with him. So we're going to brush at this. But what's been your experience of the transition maybe over the past five years? What was it like before? What it's it like? I know you've moved companies and things, Brian, you working remotely for one of your, you know, one of your roles and things, but through you, first of all, Mike.

So has Europe accepted the hybrid model or are they moving back into.

They've accepted it. They. They accept. They. They pre accepted it.

Okay.

Before in Pandemic, there were already clients saying, well, we work three days a week in the office. And I was like, really? What's that? Yeah, I was just like. But then, as you know, it came out of Pandemic A lot of clients, they've closed their offices and they now, you know, they remote work 100, but then they're trying to get back. Treasury is very collaborative in the way. It's not just remote discipline. How do you guys approach anything? So what's your been your experience?

So during COVID all the way through. Yeah, all the way through.

Right.

So all the way through up to now. So during COVID I think Covid brought along a lot of disruptions in the way that treasurers do business. Things like sitting down in meetings and actually signing wet signature contracts was put in the back burner. Right. So we had things like DocuSign, we had things like Adobe Sign, et cetera. So that was a huge disruption along the way, and it was a horrible experience for everybody. But the industry or the function itself needed a disruption to enable everybody to say, okay, we can actually work like this too, and it's absolutely doable. We can come to decisions on virtual meetings, we can make big M and A transactions with zoom calls, et cetera, et cetera. So you definitely see a more agile approach to the way that decisions are being made now that we don't actually need to sit down under the same roof in a meeting room for us to make big decisions. So I think that was the biggest kind of learning for me during that time with the hybrid situation. I think hybrid's here to stay, just in my opinion. I think it's here to stay in the US also. I think when. When I first moved back in 2019 to Henkel, my boss told me, hey, listen, you can work from home on Fridays. I'm like, damn, that's pretty cool. We didn't have that in Turkey. When I was working out in Istanbul and we had free, free Fridays, where you didn't have to dress formally and you come in jeans and a shirt. But, you know, in the US it was an upgrade for sure. So. And then eventually. So that kind of culture was a European company also. So that culture was kind of embedded in there. Absolutely. And then eventually just became a part of the working culture too. I think for us right now, it's to be able to provide that right infrastructure for the colleagues in order for them to be able to grow and thrive, but yet have that flexibility and agility to work in an environment that they feel comfortable. It's about providing the right support both for them to be able to thrive for the employee, for the colleagues to be able to thrive in an environment that's hybrid, but also to be able to contribute to the function Accordingly.

So I'll pass across to Luke, and Luke, obviously, logistics business. So you've got lots of drivers, you've got people. You're saying to them they got to be back in 100%. How have you then balanced that out with maybe more finance and treasury and things like that? What's that been like?

Yeah, and this is definitely. I mean, the policy comes from the top down. Right. And our chairman, when I. So stepping back a little bit, I was at igt, the gaming and lottery company, when the pandemic hit. You know, obviously, everybody worked from home.

Yeah, 100%.

That's the way it was joined. XBO and five days in the office every day. And Mike, to your point, it was exactly that. It was. You know, we're at. We have 90,000 employees worldwide, the majority of which are hourly employees that are going into a warehouse, getting into a truck. You know, if. If we're asking them to, you know, be on the front lines doing their job every day, like, come on, corporate staff. You guys gotta toe the line and do the same. Right. I respect that. But now, you know, and I appreciate that that's permeated through the culture, but at the same time, it is a new world. And so we have to, you know, we're trying to recruit talent, we're trying to retain talent. And you're asking people to come in five days a week when a lot of other industries aren't. So how do you find that balance? And I think eventually senior management softened a little bit and said, okay, let's. Let's relax. The policy. And the official policy is a three, two. Three in the office, two from home. But what. What I found is a lot of. It's. It's also personal that there are people that, you know, particularly some of the. The junior folks, they said, look, I. I live by myself, you know, one bedroom apartment. I gotta. I gotta come into the office. This is where I see people. This is how I get out of my. Out of my bedroom. Like, please, can I come to the office every day? And. And then if. If my team's in the office, do you. I kind of feel like I should be in the office. So I go to the office. So I'm usually there four days a week. But I think some of the other takeaways is, I agree with bracket. I mean, it is here to stay. And so how do you find the right balance? How does your team find a way to work most effectively together? And then, of course, it's like, because it's the new world Order. Let's embrace it. Let's trust people. Like when somebody's working from home, back in the day that used to mean that they had an interview that Mike set up. Like nowadays it's, it's no, they, their kid's sick, they have to take their car into the shop. Like it's something. So let somebody go and do it. And even if it's not on the three, two, you gotta make it happen. Yeah, I think we should all embrace it.

I was just joking with somebody about that the other day. I think it was a former co worker. Where not too long ago, probably within the last 10 years, snowstorm, new York City. You didn't get to the office. You're like frowned upon that you didn't make it there. And you get into the office by 10, 11, work for a few hours, leave and get home at like 8 or 9 with all the traffic. And it was just expected. You've been there and now it's like you wake up, look out the window, oh, I'm just going to work from home. And I think it's just more acceptable in this day and age. I think I have an interesting take on this, especially as I mentioned my time at Nielsen, we were fully remote. They continue to be fully remote. And it's a unique organization because since you're 100% remote, geography doesn't matter. So it opens job pools, apps. If you're posting a managed job for that, you don't care where they sit because you're full of remote. And I think that's an interesting dynamic because at NBC we are hybrid, where the nice thing about it, the entire company is in the same day. So it's not like you're going to be in the office. I know some peers may have rotating days and maybe teams have rotating days. And that almost seems be curious to get people's take maybe at the cocktail reception. But it's almost one of those things. If you're not all in, what's the point of having being in the office? So we're in the office Tuesday through Thursday. I think it is here to stay. I think it's probably a factor when people are applying for roles, whether it's hybrid or not, and whether it's four days or three days and such. It does force you to depending if you're fully remote versus even the hybrid situation. It also changes your approach. Like you were saying, when people are home, there's a trust factor and there's a, there's a whole now workforce. Now post Covid that don't know that five days a week in the office. Right. So this is just normal to them. And I give the junior treasury people a lot of credit because I don't know if I would have that discipline. You know, 15 plus years ago, if you told me to work from home and my PlayStation or whatever was good at that, it was, you know, five right in the other room. You know, it takes discipline and dedication. And I think as a manager, especially depending on how often you are remote, if you're three days in your office, at least you have FaceTime. But when I was at Nielsen, I had to create opportunities to have those touch points because you're not seeing people. So I created this, you know, coffee break with Brian thing and it kind of stuck. And every couple weeks I would have a half hour with everybody on the team, just so that way there is some sort of touch point to kind of try to build that dynamic. Because depending on how often or how visible of a team you are, it's hard to build that culture in a remote world. Hybrid allows you to do it, but depending on your situation, it does force you to adjust, which is a good thing. I think we should be adapting, but it does present challenges. And then a question for you, getting back to one point. How are you seeing companies that are hybrid view geography because you may get a candidate that is top notch. But you're headquartered here in New York. Right. But they're sitting in North Carolina or they're sitting in Montana. Right. It seems like there's. I don't know if every company has adapted to that flexibility. But I'm just curious on what you're seeing.

The way that I'm seeing it is what is real hybrid, you know, what is unreal, what's pretend, you know, I saw an advert the other day, the job is 100 hybrid, you know, and it's. And it was, it was just quite funny. It was one of our competitors. But in order to apply, you must be based in New York State. Okay, so it's not really. Then it's going to be remote or whatever it was and you know, stuff. And I'm like. Even in the wording, you could see the subtext. I was actually going to bring up the point. We do our treasury salary survey, which you should all be doing. Go to treasurysalary.com one of the reasons we do the survey is to give you guys the knowledge. So when you go to your boss and you say, well, look, I'm being underpaid, that's one of the things. And they said, well, what brings you to this conclusion? Well, Mike surveyed 100 other treasury analysts and I'm below average. And this is the numbers and we can give you that. And that makes us powerful. It's not just a sales pitch for it. Because the other thing that we do, and this is my colleague Craig, he brought up, he said, look, can we ask people where they want to work? And in actual fact, before we did that, say how many days a week? And this was as we came out of Pandemic, are you currently going into the office? How many days a week is the company asking you to go in the office? More importantly, the key killer question was how many days do you want to be in the office? And there were some people that wanted to be 100 remote. I've already said, I've been interviewed on other podcasts, treasury and Remote working, I don't believe they don't play together. Treasury, by its very nature, you guys are here, you want to be back in person. It's a very collaborative discipline. You learn from others. Trying to coach a junior member of staff. I've seen this again talked on the podcast at 300 plus treasurers trying to show them, no, no, you don't press that button and you know, getting your zoom camera, no press this button. They need coaching, they need guidance and things. And also there's a culture as well. But the other practical example, because again, you brought some great stories, was a client of ours, they wanted us to recruit. No problem. They said, we're five days. We're a bit more traditional, mate. We're five days a week in the office. I'm like, okay, good luck with that.

That.

Oh, okay. I said we don't want to recruit for you. But I said no, because one, we've, we've discovered that only 5% of people want to be back in the office, you know, five days a week. And they were like, well, that's all right, we'll have those five out of 100. So you want me to go to 100 people? And the five that say yes said, yeah, that's fine. Okay. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure. And then the next thing said, we're a bit more traditional as well. We do a lot of paper based stuff. I was out of Hybrid. I was out my outfit. So yeah, so I know we've got Q A. So yeah, I mean the answer to answer all that is Hybrid is here to stay. Remote is dead. I think jobs are moving away from that. I think in Certain disciplines. Again when it's maybe tax or some specialist finance disciplines, it does lend itself a little bit more to that. That's not say you can't do it. And I've seen some, some of my candidates, clients, if you like, they, they are working 100 remotely in treasury but they're often one week in one week a month they're going and meeting as a team. They want to have some face to face contact. They have the water cooler moments. Treasury by its very nature is that as well. Now I do want to move to Q A because we've got some great wrap ups from these guys as well in a moment. So any questions from you guys? Anyone? Come on, give us a question. There we go. We've got one up here. And then I'll take one of the back.

Question for Luke, you mentioned that you joined Lima in 2007. I wanted to ask what helped you stand out in a company that like went under in a year and kept.

Your position.

Developed further in your career like in a time when, like during 2008. Good question. Am I lucky or good? I don't know.

You're both.

It's, you know, it's a really good question. I think one of the things that, it was an interesting situation when Lehman Brothers went over. I think you guys know the story. Barclays bought the North American assets of Lehman Brothers. And so we and Barclays had a, an overlapping platform. And so I was one of the newer guys on the team. So it was kind of a strike against me, but I was one of the Lehman guys and then there was the Barclays guys and it was kind of like, well, it wasn't me that did it, but somebody at the top sort of said okay, we have to have some sort of assessment of who do we want to keep and who do we need to let go. I think I had gotten into good graces with some of the senior folks at Lehman Brothers and I had a little bit of credibility even though I was only there for, and I was there for a year and a half. So it wasn't like it was just a year. No, it was a year and a half. It wasn't like that long. But I mean I, I had enough experience and, and I was showing some, I'd like to think I was showing some potential. So, so I was, I was held on. But you know we're, I think we've all been in situations, whether it's cost cutting situation or some sort of, whether it's M and A that happens and, and you Know, businesses have to make hard decisions. I think your question is a good one because how do you make yourself stand out? How do you be on the team that phase? And it has to be based on your performance and a fair amount of luck.

So hard work and luck. There you go. Matt, you had a question.

How do you think about how you use technology and what technology you use as a way to attract and retain talent?

Deborah, can we start with you, Matt?

Isn't the infrastructure we're utilizing just to kind of expand on the question to.

Yeah, like, you know, what kind of systems you might use or what kind of technology that you know, you might employ in the treasury group? Sure.

So I think one thing that we try to integrate a lot is using technology as an enabler rather than a disabler in the sense that creating the right platform to be able to utilize systems where decisions can be made, where the right type of information makes it to the right people for them to be able to make those decisions. So we have a variety of different infrastructures, right. So one, we have payments factory or a statement factory infrastructure where it removes a lot of the manual work for our reconciliation processes. So it enables colleagues to focus, focus on a lot more of the value, add a lot more of the non repetitive tasks within the organization. So that's very important. We use systems that enable dashboard utilization to make it nice, easy to read, understandable and again enabling everybody from the analyst level to the C suite to be able to look at the data and make quick decisions. And I think that's pretty much it, Matt. I mean to be able to provide that right infrastructure to remove redundancies from the processes and remove repetitive tasks to make the job a little bit more fun. I think that's how we use technology.

Mike brought up a good anecdote when he said he was recruiting for a company that wanted to do things. Yeah, let's stay away from those companies. So I view technology, it is a recruitment tool because it shows that you're a, you know, you're a savvy tech embracing company that, that'll help you get, get the good talent and, and I think bracket the nail on the head. All of us want to use more technology. So we're doing stuff, we're doing less and less manual stuff ourselves and, and try to automate everything to, to get all of the treasury teams doing the harder stuff, the, the more complicated stuff and, and the, the more interesting stuff. So put all the boring, you know, spread automated all and get off your desk and yeah, and it's it's, it's.

Good for everyone, especially this day and age. I think you need to embrace technology. There's different flavors of it. It doesn't always have to be the big shiny third party software system. There's a lot of technologies that you can use internally and be creative. I think that embracing again that culture where the team and challenge them to think outside the box and feel like they have the opportunity to bring new opportunities, right. New systemic processes kind of that always improving mentality and I don't think you want to force systems just to get a system in place, but the right mix of technology to better serve the group. I think I'm, you know, I'm a big supporter of that but it always doesn't have to be that, that, that big expensive system depending on where your company is. I've worked for companies that, you know, support the full TMS suite and we want to be in house bank and get everything automated and. But then I've also been at companies that may not have that opportunity or budget where you have to be nimble and creative and get to some, get to maybe 70% of that, you know, that full suite of products. So I think you have to be open minded to that. But I think that's definitely the, where the industry and you know, treasure world's going is let's, let's take advantage of technology to automate the, you know, the manual efforts. That way you can actually do much more value added tasks.

I'm gonna answer a bit as well if I grab the mic. We have got time for one more question because these guys have got some great tips for you guys as well. One of my previous podcast guests and actually who's going to be treasurer Career Corner Live in London is a guy called Dan Ferguson, treasurer of Resolution Life. They use and this was. We were asked this back in November on our previous live event about the use of AI. You know, how do you use it? Are you bringing it to bear? What are they doing? They use it, which is fantastic. And everyone's oh my God. But you know, it's confidential information. Yeah. But they have their own internal AI bot and what they do is he is a treasurer. For instance, there were some things, you know, he's in the insurance industry. It's mind boggling. As he and I talked about there are so many different things and tweaks and you know, as if treasury wasn't different difficult enough then he's in insurance, he's like, wow, now he's done it because he was Raw Sun Alliance. He was there many years but even he knows there are bits that stump him. But what they did do, they were asked a question, he didn't particularly know the answer. He was thinking crumbs, how am I going to do typed into the bot. Oh, go and speak to this guy. And by the way, these are the other sources of information. It was all internal, all ring circled so on, you know, ring fence rather so actually, you know, it was safe and actually made his job and exactly as it saved him days and hours and you know, just so much hassle. So question at the back there.

Yeah.

Thank you all for your time and sharing your background. I know you're all getting your seats for fairly short time, but where do you see your career going next? What do you see as your next step?

Good question. Yeah, I've had the experiences in a variety of different industries and I think that was kind of the first tick box that I wanted to build in my career. The next step for me would be, I mean International New York I think is the best place to be, but I think to be able to expand the scope of the role with a headquartered organization. So right now it's a regional role per se, North America. Moving to a headquarter role would probably be the next step for me to be able to have that vantage point and that perspective also.

Yeah. So I think, I hope the next job for me is a treasurer role. And I think what I've tried to focus on is I want to be in a role where I think we probably all think like this. I want to be stretched, but I don't want to be stretched so far. I'm nearly incompetent. So I want to be in a treasure role where it's an organization that I can add value. I can really manage the treasury organization appropriately. And it has to be the right thing, the right time, the right culture. It has to be the right everything. And I think we all probably think about where we want to go next and bracket's a good point. It's, you know, think about it's not just where I want to go professionally because that's certainly part of it. But you know, where do I want to be geographically, where do I want to be from a work life balance, you know, it has to be thinking through all of those factors. I wish I had a crystal ball.

I think it's similar, similar type answer. I think the ultimate goal or the next step is a treasurer role of some sort. Right now I join nbcu. Obviously it's a Subsidiary of Comcast. It's a different vantage point knowing that going in, I've sat in the HQ seat from the top down. It's kind of again, that other approach now kind of being at the subsidiary level gives you a different kind of perspective a little bit. And I think I just always adding value, being challenged and you know, being in situation where your voice being heard, continue to add value, build a good team, build a good culture and you know, you kind of let those next opportunities come. You can't really, you know, you have to be flexible but put yourself in the best situation I guess for that next opportunity. And a lot of factors come into it.

Amazing, right? We're going to give the top tips from these guys. So we've done the questions. Luke, it starts with you. So you can cover all of them, one of them, however you want.

So I'll cover the first and the last. And, and they're probably, geez, they're all super straightforward. I think they probably don't need much, much explanation. But I, I mean, yeah, I, I find on, on the first one, I find myself, you know, kind of when I'm working on a transaction or a project, I really get fixated on, okay, boom, boom, gotta, gotta, I gotta get sort of a goal line before quarter end, what have you. And instead of thinking, okay, how does this fit into? How should I prioritize the different pros and cons, the different levers for this project to, you know, in the same mindset that the CFO would. So it's, it's something that I ask my team to keep doing. I have to keep reminding myself, okay, get out of the weeds. Think big picture. What does this really mean? What are the risks to what I'm doing? All that stuff. And the last one Mike started, just put your phones away and focus. And felt my phone vibrate at one point. I didn't turn off my control.

It's all right, you're barred. You're not having any drinks now just take your stuff and go.

Talking about the hybrid versus in person, it kills me when I'm on zoom and you see somebody and it's clear they're, they're somewhere else. And you know, you're, you're looking at them on the screen and either they're, I can't put my head down because you'll see how cold I am. You know, like you're, they're heads down looking at their phone. You know, that person's looking at their phone, they're not paying attention. It's Obvious when people aren't paying attention. We all do it because we're all multitasking. But try, try to focus. That's how you get the most out of meeting. That's how you add the most to a meeting, is when you're really present.

When you're focused, be present. Brilliant. So now, all right, over to you. Which one?

I guess I'll focus on two also. So for me the key takeaway is always to have a plan. That's kind of worked for me. And when I got out of mba, I was like, I want to work for an international organization, joined Turkish Airlines and then eventually I want to take more responsibility. I joined Henkel as the, as the Treasury Manager and then eventually a regional role and then a larger regional role, etc. So having a plan worked for me. And there's always a point in your career where you feel like that you have given enough to the organization and the organization has given back enough to you both in that specific role. So either it's time to move or it's time to actually look for the next role within the organization too. So that's your vantage point, that's your kind of subjective view. That's one part and then two for me was to not be afraid to take risks. Obviously calculated risk. Right. When I took on the IMEA treasurer role, they were onboarding me. There was a hard currency crisis in Egypt and there was the Lebanese pound devaluation. I didn't know what any of those meant and, or how we would manage them. But you're always working with the right stakeholders, you're always working with the right banking partners and there's always a way to be able to find that middle ground and learn from those. And now if there's a devaluation somewhere, I know what to do. So those were the kind of my key takeaways.

Ron P. I'll take two of them as well actually. All three I can take. I think it's a lot of what we said is always try to take an opportunity to learn. I think you're in a room with some brilliant people, whether it be bankers or you know, your own team. Take that opportunity to always, to be, to learn because that way it provides you awareness how to, how to deal with situation in the future. I think then the second one's really, really quick. I think we all get in our comfort zone and we're really good at one thing and that's kind of what we lean on and that's kind of what, you know, gets us to a certain Point. But I think you also need to challenge yourself to be uncomfortable, get in situations like Barack just said and, and take that other turn to insert yourself into something that may force. Challenge you a bit. And I think that's how you stand out. If you take that. If there's a project that's offered on the group and you really have no idea how to even solve that or. But it's offered up, take that challenge and look at and flip it into an opportunity. And that's another way for you to be noticed that maybe it's an opportunity to give you exposure and, you know, plug a mic, understand your network. I think we have, you know, in this room alone, I don't know how many people are here, but we're all kind of connected now in one way or another. And it is just understand the power of your network and how to make sure you're positioning yourself appropriately within that network.

Cool. This is the real world. You guys have actually got out of your home offices, your work offices, maybe wherever it might be. And as it says here, you've done the work. You've turned up here. Give yourself a congratulations. Yes, I know you've only done it for the free booze. Well, thank you to Kyriba for that and State Street. Thank you very much, guys. But joking aside, then you can make a connection and that is working remotely. Initially, yeah, it's great. I can do this and get my other stuff done. But actually what you're doing this evening is connecting with other treasury folk. And part of that, take notes, maybe write your notes on a business card. Now, the story I'll give you is actually Chris Fulton, COO here at Prior Cashman, and a big thanks to those guys as sponsors and providing this incredible offices and conference room. But I met Chris a number of years ago. He was speaking, we were doing an AFP session and he'd already, we'd already done this on the podcast and he has a really great tip. So as you maybe have a business card or you connect with someone on LinkedIn this evening, you meet them over a beer or a glass of wine. Mine, he actually said, and you wouldn't think this, he's, you know, he's a treasurer. He doesn't need to network. He's like that. He, he, each of the roles he's got, unfortunately hasn't got through a recruiter. I know, I've had a word with him. But aside from that, what he does, he has an incredible network because he actually gives us stuff. He actually cares because. And he Told me this story on the podcast that he would go to a networking thing like this and he'll be out there having a drink and he will meet someone and they say, oh, my daughter's off to Purdue or maybe going like this. They go, oh, yeah, I know someone there. Oh, actually. And then someone else goes to Gram and said, sorry, can you give me a second? All right. And he will make a note on a business card, right, Brian's daughter going to Purdue. This is happening. And then the next day, he follows up, follow up with everyone you meet. That's the final bit. You've made this effort to come here, so make the connections, because that's what he did. And each of the jobs then came and found him. Because when he was approached for his. What he made was at Scadden Arps at the time that he got that role through his network. Someone said, oh, we'd like you to come and work for the next role he got. And then when he got the role here, they approached and said, oh, would you come here? He's now coo. The jobs have come to him, not the other way around. And he's been like, well, I'm not looking for a role. Yeah, no, that's great. We know. We want you to come and work for us, so it works. Now, final bits here. Want to chat further. You meet us in the bar. So we're going to give a round of applause for this amazing panel in a moment, but also, is that part of applause for Kyriba, State Street, Prior, Cashman. Amazing. Great offices. And now the weather has cleared up. No, it's not. It's still brutal out there. But the good thing is, have a nice couple of drinks and give these amazing panelists a round of applause, please.

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

What could be better?

So if you keep an eye on the website, we'd love to see you there. Keep an eye out for dates and venues. We're coming to a city near you. If you want to connect with us, just reach out to me. Can't wait to see you in 2024. Treasury Career Corner Live the World Tour. See you soon.