Video 4 How is your treasury team structured and how do you manage them

Talking about how the size of your teams and everything else. One thing I get a lot of feedback on is balancing the day to day pressure that is on you guys as treasurers and the demands that your CFO is sometimes making or knocking at your door and saying that we want this one, this plus also you know, your treasury analyst is knocking your door and people management and things like that. Perhaps the size of your teams and what's your attitude to sort of the advice perhaps people looking here and say well I'm actually a new manager or I'm managing a team coming up and things. What sort of are your go to ideas, you know, do you have goal setting or what are the things that you guys are think thinking about.

What'S.

The size of your team?

We're probably a specific animal in Luxembourg in the sense that we are really the corporate treasury department of the group based in Luxembourg where we manage more or less everything except for South America and specifically Brazil where we have a team because of exchange controls we cannot manage offshore. But for the rest we managed pretty much the rest of the group from Luxembourg. So we are seven at the moment. We used to be more. I do not desperate to come back to the initial number but at the moment this is a sign of the team. And while we are a very operational team, we have a small trading room and people are really interacting with commercial people with a group on a permanent basis. And this is a team of three. And then we have a team of three which focus on what we call treasury operations which is everything but trading let's say and myself focus more on the financing side of the group. Yeah, so that's the way we're structured.

For the moment and managing those team or coaching those team members. How do you fit it in? What's your attitude towards people management as it were?

You should ask the audience. No, I mean I trust people I work with. I have two senior persons in the team. Very good people with a good experience, part of the team for a long time which is somewhere also a good feeling of their trust towards me. So they are very independent. We, we catch up obviously on every key points we need to decide together. But they are very independent in their work.

Kind of the opposite. We are not the corporate. Right. So we are the think of it as a regional treasury center. The team has five, probably will continue to expand but as a Treasury we have global cash management. We have about 4, 40 some odd people. Then we got the risk team and we got the capital market team. So it's quite large Organization obviously because of the size of a company, how we manage data. I same as I trust my people and I think that's very important. And you do let them fail. You try to guide them as much as possible, but you let them fail knowing that they have done their best and you will back them up. I think that's important. We can't do everything perfectly. A lot of times we make decisions based on what we know at a time and obviously things could change, but we learn as we go. I think that's the attitude we need to take and making sure that don't make the same mistake twice.

Yeah, don't do it again.

So basically it's a pretty new team for me but we are 1212 people and basically it's focused into. It's split it into two teams, one more focused on projects and basically the reorganization of the department. We are three there and then let's say nine other people more focused on treasury administration. There is really a lot of focus on cash management and making things work. More than 40 banks, 80,000 bank accounts spread everywhere. So quite heavy workload there. A lot of manual process so far. But basically the idea is to really kind of revamp the organization and the structure to make it more strategic, more with let's say not from a pure admin and let's say resultants from the business but really taking a more proactive view in terms of bank relationship, bank management, really the management of the treasury supervising let's say in terms of risk management also. And let's say there are a lot of intercompany loans and transactions which are going back and forth and treasury was to some extent not that much involved so far. So basically I'm really challenging the structure right now if I can say from my previous job because that's what is the fresher. Basically I worked in a smaller team of five where I was heading basically treasury operations. For me that was really key to kind of at some point if I was working on projects which I had already done to kind of more coach my colleagues so that they get the chance to learn as well. I think this is really important not to be everywhere and to use. You are present but you try to coach so you try to let them do so that basically they learn also on the spot and you are very frequently more than happily surprised. But you let them fail as well. I agree. But let's say it went quite well and I don't think that treasury should have, let's say always lots of people in the department. I really see that more as a supervision role and guidance and that's for my new role and we'll see if there will be more people. But it's not the main objective, I think, but the supervision and the guidance providing, let's say, treasury knowledge in an organization sometimes that has not had a treasurer on board before, basically challenging the way they do things, can, can be good and that's what I, I'm trying to do.