This is a YouTube video titled "Video 1 How did you get started in your treasury career?" containing a multi-speaker English conversation recorded in November 2020. Mike Richards hosts a discussion with several professionals including Benoit, Winky, and Johan, who share their career paths and experiences in treasury roles, describing how they entered and developed in the treasury field.
So what we're now going to do is just go through some of the early careers and how these guys got into treasury and how they've grown and developed and things like that. So Benoit, you originally started with Umicore, is that right? And how did you get into finance, graduated Umicore and then discovered Treasury. How did it work?
Yeah, well graduated and started actually a few months as a professor assistant at university and then went to Umicore where actually I did my thesis and I was happy to join them because it was part of what they call a management training program which was a series of short term assignments. And I was more focused on community trading at the time. And I did one of these short term assignments in treasury which I found very interesting. So combination of treasury and community trading was excellent. And then this is well the first step let's say in treasury at that time.
And it was an accidental step or you planned it or you just.
No, no, no. I was part of the finance department of the group and it was a natural move to go in treasury focusing more on foreign exchange risk management specifically.
Do you get your first start? Winky, you had a very planned start into treasury said before it was the thing you said right from the day go or how did it happen?
Totally accidental. So I was actually starting with a systems group supporting our treasury and accounting finance basically that was never thought of much of treasury other than the fact that I because I was able to talk in a language of both business and systems. So I helped them to rebuild. At a time back in the US I was working for PayPal. No, actually even before that I was working for back then called Federated Department store which is now called Macy's. It's kind of pretty large department stores in the US So working for the financial services I had run the system script and the databases development, run the actual imaging systems for the benefits group at the time and set up a new call center of 200 people in Bangalore, India remotely from Ohio. So that was where I started and then when I moved over to PayPal the I was put into to support because of my. Also I have a dual degree in finance and systems. So I was able to kind of help to support the treasury as well as finance happened to they run into an issue with the money market fund systems and I kind of. That's where I kind of joined in and helped them to build it out. But as we learned that they don't quite understand how to talk to the engineers and I was able to translate two things and kind of able to bridge the gap. And at the time the treasurer basically said that we probably want to pull her in because she understands the background as well as the front end and able to kind of articulate back to the business folks. So that's how I started back in.
The US Johan So basically I come from a financial background, but I fell into Treasury a bit by accident also basically I wanted to, you know, when you exit university, you don't know really what is the business world. And I wanted to work for corporates. I am from the region, but I didn't want to work for banks. I wanted to work for corporates and to be faced against really real life or real activity where I thought banks will not bring me that. So I started my career in consulting business for ENY and basically I stayed there one year. After one year I quickly discovered it wasn't for me. Basically I was not steering my career the way I wanted and basically I left and I had the chance to work for RTL with Francois where basically I was very curious about treasury, but I didn't know anything about treasury, about what was the content. And basically I started really as a junior and then grew in the department by doing projects and learning what is a Treasury Department. And frankly I've been doing so for almost 15 years now and really I love it. So it's really there is a combination in this role that is very, very interesting and that's why I'm still in in that field.
And why was it so interesting? Why was it treasury that got you?
Basically there is this. You can be considered as an internal banker, but it's more than just banking. You need to make the bridge between the internal needs and your internal partners, but also with the external partners. And you need to kind of balance this to provide the service towards basically your company and your internal partner first. And basically there is this mix of business understanding it, let's say negotiation because you have also a lot of negotiation with the banks and it's quite mixed. So it's what I enjoy basically.
