Trying New Things and Learning on the Job with Jeff McConaghy

Foreign.

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

About their treasury careers.

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

In this week's show, I'm joined by Jeff McConaughey, the Vice President, corporate finance and treasury at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, who I've known for many years. So this will be quite a nice, fun conversation as we go through. But Ferring, who Jeff's with, headquartered in Switzerland, they are Ferring Pharmaceuticals. They're a research driven speciality biopharmaceutical group. That's what you need first thing in the morning. Saying all that in one sentence, yeah, great. But the company itself, the identified developer, market products in the areas of reproductive medicine. Ferring has its own operating subsidiaries in nearly 60 countries worldwide and markets its treatments in over 110 countries. So truly a global company. But as always, I'll get Jeff to explain that a little bit later in the show. Jeff, start us back in the beginning. You're originally from Canada, and then you, well, as we said earlier, you accidentally discovered treasury, but we'll come on to that. But talk us through your career. Sir, back to you.

Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. Well, I guess maybe we start in university. So I knew that I wanted to study business going into university. I was advised that getting your accounting designation would be a good solid footing in business and you can always have that to fall back on. So I was on the accounting track up until my third year university. And then I was lucky enough to have a job in an accounting firm that summer after my third year. And I realized that I didn't like working in an accounting firm.

Hang on.

Yeah, it was a good start. So my last year at university, I ended up changing all my accounting electives, international business courses, and did my last semester of university as an exchange student in France. So kind of changed plans. And I think having traveled and having been part of that group of international students while an exchange student in France kind of cemented in my mind that, you know, there were more places in the world I wanted to see. So I was what I wanted to do is try to find a company that would allow me to see different places, travel to maybe live in different places. And so I thought the best way to do that would be to get an international mba. So after the semester in France, I was backpacking around Europe and I stopped in the London Business school and stomped in and asked, wanted to talk to them about how would I get into their MBA program. And the guy was great because I probably came in and flip flops, shorts and T shirt as I was backpacking around. And he said, well, honestly, to, you know, to get into a good MBA program, they're going to want you to have two or three years work experience before they'll accept you. I thought, oh, it takes three years to get your accounting designation back home. And I had an offer from an accounting firm in my hometown. So I called them up and asked them if they would still hire me. And they would. So, because I looked at it and said, okay, well, this is a means to an end. So I decided to go back into the accounting path. So I did change firms partway through, not because I thought it would really change the dynamic of what I did, but I went to a firm that had clients that I thought would be more interesting. And as I was about to finish up my past all the courses, finishing up my time in the accounting firm, one of our clients, McCain Foods, had an opening in its corporate reporting group. There had been an internal transfer just before year end. They were not able to fill the position. And so I was assigned. I was basically hired as a consultant through the accounting firm to go work there through the year end. But anyway, so I stayed there for actually three months as the consultant and really enjoyed the work. Now maybe his background. So McCain Foods probably still is the world's largest producer of french fries. Their head office was predominantly in this village, Florenceville, on the east coast of Canada. Village of about 700 people, where the brothers founded the company over 60 years ago now, I guess. And so they were having difficulty at the time anyway recruiting in young professionals for, you know, for these sorts of jobs. So after, like I said, I was there for three months just putting in my time to finish the accounting designation and they'd offer me the position and kind of like being on the other side, like working for a corporate. I liked the people that I was with. I said, okay, well I'll try this for two years. Because I hadn't really figured out plan to go back, you know, done all the planning to go back and do that mba. So I said, okay, well, you know, I'll. I'll try this for two years. It was a big company and they knew my interest in traveling around and seemed to be willing to accommodate that. So I did that for a year. And then after a year they transferred me to Toronto because we had a. There was the corporate office in Florenceville, and then there was a corporate office in Toronto where some of the executives were. So I went as an analyst to work for the CEO and the cfo, and I did that for a year. And then the person who was managing the corporate reporting team back in Florenceville went back to his home country in Australia and they offered me the job. And so I went back to head up the corporate reporting group that required, you know, that was despite being back in, you know, in this small village, it was really kind of the job that I had been wanting because it was. I was in the head office of a very large multinational and, you know, with the opportunity to go different places. So I never ended up doing the mba. I just kind of, you know, fell into the kind of job that I wanted by going back the accounting route. Life lesson there is never, you know, never be scared to take the opportunity. It might not be where you, where you want it to be, but you never know where these, where these things can lead.

Yeah. And then, and then you, you sort of did a number of roles there, but sort of get us to the, if you would, how you discovered treasury, you know, how did you find out about treasury there? What, what happened? So I think for you to go, oh, hang on, treasury, that'll do.

So I was, I spent five years in corporate reporting. The role just kind of evolved over time. Then the treasurer for McCain left. Now the global treasury operations for McCain are based in Switzerland, in Geneva. And when the treasurer left, I was asked if I would be interested in moving to Geneva and heading up Global Treasury Group, which seems like a bit of a change. And it was because I had no treasury background, the only link. So the group in Geneva, the Treasury responsibilities were largely managing the global foreign exchange exposure, the intercompany lending and external debt that supported all that. But the group in Geneva also had the accounting team that did all of the accounting for the finance and holding and treasury companies around the McCain world. And because I was very familiar with that through my years on the reporting side, I understood the accounting and I think the CFO at the time thought I could manage that and then learn the treasury piece as time went on, as I was there.

But it's quite a senior role to be right. Learn, learn on the job. How did you do that?

I did that because I had a wonderful team in Geneva who was, you know, who were willing to teach me what I needed to know in order to do my job. Plus, you know, the CFO was very experienced in the financing side of Things as well. So I had great support above me and I had great support on the team in Geneva as well. So that kind of gave me the time I needed to learn on the job and learn what I needed to.

Do and, you know, put it in perspective, been experienced of the group. You were qualified, you knew what you were doing. It was more that they parachuted you into this role. So you had the internal knowledge of everything about McCain, so you knew the group, but it was like, that's right, is the new thing. And actually, a number of companies do that. You know, you've got people like, you know, in the uk, got Diageo, where they use that role a lot of the time, certainly did bring in people to then learn treasury for two, three years maybe, and then move on within the group sort of thing. But. So it was similar for you, but was that a little bit daunting for you at that stage? You know, you're having to learn from colleagues, if you like, that were much more junior than you, and they go, right, this is how we do this. You know, how did you approach that, as it were?

So, I mean, any move is hard. And then, you know, you add the international piece to it and you're, you know, you're. I was still in the same company, but, yeah, I was changing careers. Yeah, complete career change. So how did I handle it in terms of dealing with the team? Very humbly, because they understood what we were doing, you know, day to day. Yeah, I kind of. And I was learning from. From my boss, you know, kind of how what we're doing on the structuring of the financing, how that all fit in. So it was, you know, it was really coming in, being very clear about what my experience was and what it wasn't, how I would be leaning on them to continue to do what they do and help guide me as we were there. I think it was. It's really about asking questions and just taking the right approach, acknowledging that you're not the expert and you have things to learn, but you can help shape other things while you're there and hopefully make the office a better place at.

The same time you'd made a move location wise, what was that like for you?

So, yeah, moving from Canada to Switzerland, I mean, all moves are kind of challenging. And it was, I must admit, it was a difficult move at first because you're changing countries, you're moving to a place where, you know, I'm not proficient in the language. You're. You're trying to understand the differences in how they do things, find an apartment, while at the same time, you know, you're learning a brand new job.

Yeah.

Although, you know, in hindsight, probably one of the easier moves that I've made because, you know, kind of life goes on and things get a little more complicated when you start to move with family members and pets and that sort of thing later on. But yeah, it took a while, I'd say, you know, it took, I remember saying it took nine or 10 months to kind of get adjusted to your new existence and probably longer than that to get adjusted to the new job as well.

So you made that transition and so you're the treasurer McCain over in Switzerland. You did that treasury role there for just over four years, but then it was time to go back to Canada. What happened or how come the move?

Well, what had happened is I got a, I got a call about a treasurer position in Toronto with a company called Celestica. Now Celestica is another Canadian head office multinational, like I said, based in Toronto. And so I got the call about they were looking for a treasurer. And what appealed to me about the role was it was a broader treasurer role than what I had at McCain. Not only was it the treasury piece, the kind of the core treasury piece, but it was also insurance, it was global pensions and customer credit. So there were these other different pieces and some of that put you much closer to the business than maybe you would is just managing kind of that in house bank like I was at McCain. That's what happened. I got a phone call. It just seemed like the right time to make a change to a much broader treasury position. And I mean, it was interesting as well too because I was going from McCain private company to Celestica public company listed in both Toronto and New York. So you had that public element to it potential of public bond markets and the equity piece as well. So that again was a big change because changing countries again. This time I wasn't moving just by myself. I was moving with, with the lady who's now my wife, who's from Geneva and our dog and moving to Toronto. So it was just, you know, it was a different dynamic again. Plus the, you know, learning all those different aspects of my new job in a company that had a very different culture from the one I came from as well.

In what way? What do you mean?

Well, it was McCain family owned business in a global company. But the competitive pressures were not the same as Celestica. So Celestica is a, they're in the EMS industry, which is basically outsourced electronic manufacturing for that industry. Highly, highly competitive again. And then you have the additional pressures that come from being a publicly listed company as well. So just a completely different culture from what I had grown up in. Having spent 11 years in McCain, you.

Got into that role and you were there for a number of years.

Eight years.

Yeah, it's really good. Sometimes I talk to treasury professionals gone in, they've done a role and we say, you know, the catchphrase I've sometimes said is used to be three years and oh, okay, Covid and Pandemic have changed that a little bit. And I've seen people bouncing around a lot more because the world of business is in turmoil. But aside from that, you know, in general terms, the first year in a Treasury role, you tend to be learning a lot of it. Second year it's sort of, oh, this is the process. Okay, we know what we did last year. They improve it and everything else. But as you start to move in and through year three, you've already been through this cycle twice and it's actually a natural thing, I think three, four years. But you were there quite a period when you and I know that you really enjoyed the role, but it sort of evolved or explain, explain again for the listeners, you know, how did it then grow and change sort of thing.

Yeah, because if I, if I reflect back, my 11 years at McCain was always developing and growing. I mean the, the roles expanded, the, what I did changed over time. For the entire 11 years I was there at Celestica, it was a big change going in and I would honestly say it took almost two years before I really felt comfortable in my seat because it wasn't so much. I mean, even if you just look at the treasury side of it, at McCain we're very focused on, we're doing external financing and intercompany lending and foreign exchange. But we weren't focused on cash forecasting and Celestica, that was the most important thing that we were doing was cash forecasting because, you know, yeah, where is it? To make sure we had it, where is it? How much were we going to have? But free cash flow was a, was a publicly reported number every quarter and it mattered. So you know, just getting familiar with how best to do that was it was a change within just the treasury piece, but then the other components of the job, understanding the insurance world and understanding pensions and particularly the customer credit because element was a real learning curve. Because Celestica being a low margin business, you can't afford to have your customers not pay you Customer credit was actually finance controlled rather than business controlled. The general manager could not override finance and how much credit you would be giving to a customer. We spent a lot of time there. Well, first of all, understanding the business, spending a lot more time speaking to GMs about their business needs than you would as maybe in a more traditional treasurer role and building the relationship because you had to find a way to make it work. There was often, shall we say, opportunity for conflict. Constructive. Constructive conflict. Right. Where you know, you said we can only supply a customer with this much credit based on how we, you know, how we evaluate them. But you need this much more. So let's talk about the ways that we can, we can bridge that gap. So I guess because, you know, kind of because of some of the pieces that were external to treasury, there was a constant evolution of different situations and experiences that kind of. That made the job maybe more interesting for longer than it would if it had been more of a restricted treasury role. So I guess maybe circling back here, I think because the role was so much broader than my previous one, it took longer to get up to speed, but it also made it a little more, you know, made it interesting for a longer period of time.

Yeah. Diverse and more across the business sort of thing. And you know, again, we talked about this on the pre. Conversation we had and that's one of the reasons I sort of asked about it as well. And then that's it. You had your time again in Canada. So you've been at Celestica for this period of time and you know, but you also had a sort of a drawing to go back to Switzerland because you love the country and you know, the roles and I know that you look for a while to sort of get back there, you know, what, what was the tipping point or you know, how come and tell us about fairing and things. So fill in that for the listeners if you would.

My wife being from Geneva, you know, we had, we had family reasons to come back to Switzerland.

Yeah.

So that was, that was the big draw of coming back. And so I had, I had learned of, you know, this position becoming available at fairing. And so I got in contact with, you know, with the people who are organizing that and managed to find my way here. So after, yeah, after eight years in Toronto, moved back to Swiss Roman to this part of Switzerland to start my, start the next phase of my career.

At fairing and tell us about fairing as a group. Again, people won't know about the group and things.

Fairing, it's A mid sized pharmaceutical company. I think we're in the top 50 pharmaceutical companies around the world. It's privately held and so I know when I, when I was looking for information about the company and getting ready for the interview, it was very difficult to find information about it. No, very little. So it's a private company and operates we're just shy of 2 billion euro of revenue globally. As you mentioned, we operate in almost 60 countries around the world, very much focused on women's health and reproductive medicine. That's about half the business that is there. I can share some of this information now compared to when I was looking three and a half years ago because we've, because some of the things that we've done in the last year with the Swiss public bond that we issued. But we can talk about more of that in a minute. Yeah, so specialty pharmaceutical company. I mean what's great about this is I'm back in a private company again and I understand the differences between a private company and a public company. So I'm very comfortable in this sort of environment. You know, it's a global company, you know, we've operations around the world so we still have that very international element to it. And it's a new industry for me too. So it's another, it's another learning. I think it's nice to be a Treasury professional because your skills are transferable from one industry to another, which does allow you to kind of change things up and experience different things along the way, which is interesting. That's where we are at faring. I mean, in terms of the role here, the treasury role, it's treasury, so it's the basic treasury piece. I do have responsibility for global insurance programs as well. And here I have, part of my team is the business development, development finance group. So we do all of the financial valuations and reviews of any business development deals that come through globally. So again, it's another interesting add on to the role because it does help you see some of the things that we're working on, things that we're considering investing in, which feeds in very well of course to funding needs and cash planning needs as well.

So obviously you've been with a private group, then you went with a public group. So, you know, lots of public information is easier to, you know, publishing your figures and everything else. You went back to a private group and then as you said you wanted to raise these funds, do more development and everything else, but you're sort of trying to then convince internal stakeholders who've got used to the idea, no, we don't tell anyone else. It's our information. How did you get over that? Because there'll be other treasury professionals in a very similar situation. So how did you do that?

With a lot of help from the cfo, I think, is the right answer. Being a private company and having never published your financial statements, which was a requirement, and it's a requirement in order to issue a Swiss public bond through that. I think it was a number of conversations because at the time we were looking at different financing options and it was a conversation about. We've looked at all these other different markets and we do think this one is very appropriate for us, you know, given our situation as being, you know, it's our domestic, it's our local market as a Swiss corporate. And, you know, just having the conversation too, about what we thought we were, the implications of issuing that information and, you know, just talking about it saying, well, we don't really think we're giving up any competitive advantages by doing this and, you know, just getting more familiar with or just getting more comfortable with that was just that idea and assuring people that we weren't really disadvantaging ourselves by doing it. And it's actually the process, I think it went quite smoothly in that transition to getting people's thinking that, yeah, no.

This is okay, yeah, this is buying. Yeah, yeah.

And when we did, it was actually quite surprising because a lot of people were across the company were quite excited to. Then we were doing this. They thought it was. It was a good thing, it was more transparent, it was, you know, it was better for employees. They. We got a lot of positive feedback.

From it as we move through your role sort of thing. And again, I do this on each week, you know, talking about the future of, you know, treasury and things like that. You know, what do you see as the developments coming along that you think are relevant? I had a really great podcast recently, Phil Scott from Ferguson, and one of the key things, lots of people go off to these conference, again, I do this on each week, you know, talking about the future of, you know, treasury and things like that. You know, what do you see as the developments coming along that you think are relevant? I had a really great podcast recently, Phil Scott from Ferguson, and one of the key things, lots of people go off to these conferences and, and everything and, you know, come back, yeah, yeah, rah, rah, rah. And, you know, one says, oh, blockchain all this, Is it relevant to our business? You know, is it relevant? And relevance was, you know, you sometimes goes in the, go in the offices and they have quotes on the wall, motivational quotes. But I think, you know, we joked about the fact that they should have put up something on the relevance question mark. And actually he said there was a real shift that when people were then coming back from conferences, you know, where you want to get new ideas and you know, sometimes, you know, the, not the energy level was down, but they come back in, they go, was it relevant? No, not really. Oh, okay. And it, you know, gave people much more real world view and what's going to make a difference? I know we spoke about this before and things like that, but where did it go? You know, where does treasury go to from here for you? What are the key things you're seeing?

I think that's a very good point because also what's relevant to somebody in retail is not necessarily like same day payments or real time payments. It's not as relevant to me as it might be to somebody in another industry. For me, I think it's difficult to predict. But I see one thing impacting us in the future and I think it's here to stay is esg, you know, the, the new requirements, not new requirements, but, you know, linking your, your funding to, you know, kind of ESG related targets. I, I just think that is key one area where it's, it's just seems to have enough foundation now that it's, it's going to stay.

Yeah, it's the right ethos and it's the right thing to do in a way. Because then if it's.

Oh, absolutely.

If it's.

Yeah, yeah.

And I know that you guys are, you know, and you're very keen on that as well, don't you?

So we're kind of early stages of that. We have an ESG group. They're starting, you know, starting to work through what that framework looks like for fairing. Yeah, because we, you know, we have a revolver renewing here soon and so the questions are coming up. I actually, you know, pose the questions to our banks in terms of adding that element to the, to the revolver, what that you know, what's needed. So we're already having those conversations, but it's. Yeah, like I said, I think that is one trend that's here to stay.

So you've got an experienced treasury team there with you at Ferring. What's it like? Obviously you've got a new team, brand new, that you're coaching them, they're learning new things, but you're on the opposite end. These guys know what they're doing and things. So how do you lead them, motivate them? How do you do that?

Yes, I have a very experienced treasury team here, which is great because everybody knows what needs to be done, they understand how to do it best and we're all working towards that. I mean, what we're kind of focusing on is, what I'm trying to do is create opportunities to develop because we know it's a solid treasury team that, you know, lots of experience there, but also create opportunities so that we can demonstrate, you know, to the broader organization all the various ways that we can add value. So, you know, there's a lot of, actually there's a lot of change going on in fairing right now. You know, we're, we're in, we just finished migrating our last region to, you know, the finance and administration work has been migrated to an external provider over the last year and a half. And so, you know, my team has been involved in that. We actually lead one of the end to end processes in managing travel expenses. So I've, my team's been involved in that. We have a, an ERP project where, or moving to a single instance of SAP. So that project has just been launched. So again, having my team involved in that as well from a project standpoint and just making sure that, you know, because treasury, in those sorts of projects, sometimes you feel like you're nowhere and everywhere, you know what I mean? So just making sure that we're involved in the different end to end processes, the bank connectivity and those pieces are included. So it's really, to me, it's about that first of all, just getting out of the way so they can do their job, helping them, you know, get the resources they need to make things more efficient which, you know, makes life nicer and more efficient. You know, when it's, when you're not spending all your time doing manual stuff, it allows you more time to do more interesting things. And that's, you know, that's what we're trying to do is free up that time so we have, you know, more time for the, for the interesting things.

As we approach the end of today's show. And we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes and you know, we've had a really good conversation there and we've touched on various, you know, areas and things like that. You know, just looking back, what tips would you give someone, someone listening today and they might be early stage of their career or mid or later on, you know, as you look back over, you know, you've got international moves, you've got different, you know, companies, you've got different things. You know, just take a moment. If you were to sort of reflect on that and, you know, just, you know, what advice would you give to someone? You know, you're sitting there with a cup of coffee with them and having a chat, you know, what would you.

Say, pieces of advice? Well, I think, I think the most important thing that I accidentally learned in my career was to be open to whatever opportunities present themselves. I mean, I was willing to go work in a location that not a lot of other people wanted to at the time, and that allowed me to kind of accelerate, I think, my career faster than if I had not been willing to do that. And you just never know where a path is going to take you. So, I mean, early in your career. Yes. Seize the opportunities where they might lie because you, they may work out or, or, you know, they can work out very well or, or you might, you know, if they don't, there's, there's time to change.

Yeah.

So I'd say that is probably, you know, first and foremost the thing that I've learned.

Jeff, that's amazing. Final piece of advice, I think that just, yeah, it's just been a nice, relaxed conversation. Some of us, you know, we're sort of deep diving all over a bit. It's just a nice conversation with a experienced treasury professionals such as Self. And as we said before the show, I can't wait to see you now as we come out of lockdown for a beer one day soon. So, yeah, we'll put your detail, your LinkedIn details in the show notes. So thank you for your time today, sir.

Well, Noah, thank you, Mike. Really, it was fun. I appreciate the chance to talk.

Lovely. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen.

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