Weathering Challenges in your Treasury Career with Christopher Corner

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've built their careers, where they are now and where they see themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show I'm joined by Chris Corner, the former deputy group treasurer at Thomas Cook. Thomas Cook Group has been a British global travel group for many, many years. Originally founded way back in 1841, then more recently in June 2007, there was a merger of Thomas Cook between Thomas Cook and then my Travel. The group operated in separate segments, so tour operated an airline and then operated travel agencies. All came together so listed on both the London Stock Exchange, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, but more recently been through some times, Thomas Cook and all UK entities went into liquidation earlier this in 2019, leaving 21,000 employees out there, you know, looking for a new role and everything else. And, you know, we'll talk about some of that stuff. We don't want to dwell on it too much in the show, but enough about that, you can talk about that later. Chris, Chris, tell us about your career today and maybe how you first got started finance treasury, as it were.

Yeah, thanks, Mike. Hi, everyone. I guess you say Lloyd's my first introduction to treasury, but also to the working world. So I joined their graduate training program trade out of University Lawyers of London is an insurance market some 300 and something years old now. And the Corporation of Lawyers, which is the part that I worked for, was essentially an umbrella organization that was providing services to the insurance market which, which was made up of a number of insurance practitioners. So. So I wasn't involved in the actual technical insurance activities. The team I was part of was providing treasury services to the market as a whole. I guess when I felt I had an interest in a financial career, I hadn't had any particular experience in that. I hadn't done any internships or supplements or anything of that sort. But going through all of the graduate recruitment literature that was available at the time, I was very interested in getting into financial organisation in London. Seemed to be where all the roles were. And also when I was reading through this literature, treasury sounded like a really interesting part of banks and financial institutions that I was looking at. So during my first year on the graduate scheme at Lloyds, I arranged for one of my placements to be in the treasury team there. And it just felt like it was very, very natural fit for me. When I went in there, I had real interest in what they were doing and so Immediately started on the treasury exams at that time and really it's just on from there. I felt it was the right thing for me. I guess at that time I didn't know that 20 plus years on we'd still be here and spent all of that time in treasury, but it felt right for me at the time. And as you say, a number of roles have come and gone since, but it's always been where I want to be.

So you have that role within sort of it's an overall company, as you say, sort of overseeing assurance and financial services and things. But then you made a very move to a real solid company, as it were and dealing with solid stuff because you joined Johnson Matthew, the FTSE 100, so top company but chemicals, precious metals, massive group but you know, real commodities and products. So quite a shift. How was that? How has that sort of change, as it were?

Yeah, I mean that was a very intentional move and again, I mean looking back, I was still very, very new, very naive professionally at that time. But I did recognize that for all of the good things about Lloyds of London, it was a very unique organization and I was very attracted to Treasury. Alice I've been attending a number of the qualifications classes and seminars and so talking to others, I thought I actually want to get into a true corporate treasury function. And that's where the opportunity came up with Johnson Mattie. And they were really looking for someone there at that time who could come and be a bit of a jack of all trades because they had very good people in lots of positions, but not necessarily cover across the whole team. And so it gave me that opportunity to go in and really learn every aspect of a corporate treasury function. And again, I had a great time. It was a really good business, really enjoyed my time there was. And yeah, in the same time I got to see and learn about the FX ceiling, I got to learn about bonds and guarantees, precious metals management, as you say, for the chemicals side of the business as well. So that was a really good move for me and one that I think really set me up very well for the ongoing career.

And what was, you know, and Johnson Matthew itself, you know, what, what's treasury like in a chemicals precious metals company? Is it very commodities focused or what was the sort of the working, you know, the treasury workings of it as it were?

Well, I guess at the time my role was very operational and again I look back on my time there and it felt that it was very much focused on commodities. Again, there's a lot of work going on with precious metals refining at the time. So there were vast quantities of incredibly valuable materials flowing through the business. And so we had a couple of people dedicated to managing the precious metals position on a day to day basis, but also some quite considerable funding amounts and FX exposures. So from the bonds and guarantees point of view, where you have a customer's materials that effectively you're holding on to while you're refining those before sending those back to the customer, so there's a huge amount of operational work to do there. At that stage of my career, I wasn't very involved in more of the senior activity and working with the board. So I can't really talk to where there might be differences from Johnson Mattie to other businesses I've worked in today. But again, operationally there was a huge amount to do and a real good place of treasury experience I gained there. Absolutely, yes.

Yeah. And that was a sort of Stan you sort of contributor role, as it were. You then joined GE Insurance to actually lead a team. How was that sort of that transition? You know, had you led people at JM or, you know, was it, you know, G was your first leadership role? Because that's a key theme about your roles ever since. And that was back in 2002.

Yes. GE was not my first management experience. And again, the move from JM really came. It just felt to me like a natural time to move on. I've been there about four years. I'd had a couple of promotions during my time there. But it did feel like if I wanted to make that next step and to get the managerial experience and perhaps see another, another part of the business, quite early in my career I decided I didn't really want to become specialized in one particular sector and so I wanted to get out to see another part of the world. So GE gave me that opportunity. A very different organization, a very different culture from when I was at Johnson Massey again, Johnson Massey being a very long standing, very British feel to it. And I think GE was a much more results focused organization, a much more demanding environment to be in. And so from a finance professional point of view, I think I really developed in terms of learning actually it's not just about putting in every ounce of effort that you have, but it's about delivering results. And if you deliver those results in ge. Yes, doors open and you move on. If you're not delivering results, then you absolutely get told about that really quickly.

Yeah, straight away. And then as we're going into the leadership aspect, because we've got some people listening today, that will be like, oh yeah, I'm just about to move into my first boss job and I've got to lead and manage a team. What sort of pieces of advice for maybe that role in particular, you were leading a team of four. All treasury activity outside of the us but sort of what were you, what were you like as a boss? How did you do it? What were your keys to success?

I think, frankly I think the biggest key to success there was that the team that had been put together and it was actually a startup treasury function that we had there for that part of the business which was ahead of a potential sale or flotation. And the overall timber treasurer there was an internal hire, he'd come from GE Capital in Paris and he has put together a really good team of people and he had me reporting into him but then managing the day to day team. But again I've got some really good people around me and I think also actually having everybody starting at about the same sort of time, you've got everybody coming in with the same mindset, no one's bringing any baggage, everyone's trying to deliver the same objectives. We've all bought into the same thing. And so that made my job quite a bit easier because you weren't dealing with lots of conflicting interests and priorities and old knowledge of their career. That's right, that's right. So that was really important. I guess my management style particularly then was really about just leading by example. Again I'd had the really good experience from Johnson Matthew, so I felt I was able to do all the day to day nuts and bolts of the treasury operations and to be recognizing from others in the where people needed bit of hand holding to get them up to speed and what they needed to do or actually where people were very good at what they did already and you could just leave them to get on and do that. So I think from that point of view it was a relatively straightforward exercise. But also I was very conscious at that time. Again, in my first leadership role you need to be looking around and learning from others. So again, picking colleagues, okay, who's doing things well. And again I had a big boss who was a very active communicator and really taught me the value of frequent communication with the team, being visible over communicating if anything. But again, much better that way than not at all standing back and people feeling like you're disinterested. Absolutely.

I know that GE are a big proponent and always have been of technology and automation and things like that. What was the sort of technology journey for you again, people listening will be like, oh, GE automate everything. Or was it good? Or was it, you know, was it a new kind of thing? Because this is back in 2002 now we're in. So, you know, we're talking 17 years ago, but you know, we've both seen it change a lot over the time. You know, I've just been to a couple of back to back conferences in Nordics and everyone in the room, you know, was a technology provider. It just seemed, and it just seems that, you know, that's the constant march of things. I mean, we'll get back on, you know, what was it like there?

Well, in fact, I mean that, you know, dredged up from my memory project pass, which shows how important it was to me at the time. Productivity, accuracy, simplicity and speed. So this was what was an overarching technology transformation work stream that we had and it was really high level sponsorship. There was no question we were going to deliver this, but it was such a big project and it became almost overwhelming because we were trying to deliver so much. And I think this was a good lesson for me to learn in this business that actually taking on much more manageable, bite sized chunks is often a better way to deliver progress, particularly around technology because this was across the whole of the finance function being led out of the us. Again, it was very much a global business and trying to deliver a finance transformation globally with almost a big bang implementation. I guess as with most finance projects, you'd end up with some delays to implementation deadlines and so on. And in fact what ultimately happened was that the GE insurance business got bought out by Swiss Re in the summer of 2006, just at the point as we were about to find and implement all this work, a good couple of years of work which was all doing the right stuff, all for good reasons. But ultimately we never got it up and running to the extent that it was designed to be live. Something else came up in the meantime. That's right. And so again, I think key takeaway is just be a little bit more realistic. You need to be ambitious still, but realistic in terms of what you want to deliver rather than trying to come up with something that is absolutely best practice but perhaps takes far longer to put in place as well.

And then you did insurance, then precious metals insurance, you know, different kind of insurance would stay. I think it's quite a different.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. And in fact just on that with ge. So from a career point of view, the role of insurance solutions was interesting because it was a Startup treasury team it was going to be my first opportunity to have managerial experience. But I also wanted to then think, well, when that role comes to its natural end, you're in ge, you can work in pretty much any business in pretty much any sector, pretty much any country that you want in the world. And so that was really a big part of my decision to move to ge. Of course, what ultimately happened with the acquisition by Swiss Re. The moment that acquisition is announced, employees are prevented from talking to GE about any other roles because they want to retain the talent. So again, I've been there four years. I was beginning to get a little bit restless and think about the next role and all of a sudden that avenue was closed off to me, which was a little bit unfortunate. But again, as you say, coming on to my subsequent move at that point it was a question of well, I need to change company because I didn't want to be, as I said, I'm an insurance treasury specialist. I wanted to get out to another sector.

So with yourself, you. Well, I placed you as the group treasurer at Capita Group. And again, some people might know Capita, some people who maybe you could explain, you know, because interesting business and lots of different businesses in there, maybe you could explain that.

Yes, it's a capital support services business. I guess when I was there, which is around about 10 years ago now, a bit over 10 years ago, it had a pretty much 50, 50 split between public service contracts, so essentially doing work for government departments and then 50% in commercial contracts. Quite a big chunk of that was within the financial services industry. So supporting insurance businesses with the claims management, for example, supporting the registrars business with all the process outsourcing that goes on there. And it was a really interesting time to be part of that business. If you go back and look, I mean just a fantastic growth story, short term capital. And then you had the guys who set up the business back in the late 80s were still running the business and three or four man business then still running the business when it's a 1400 business with 30,000 employees 25 years later. So it was a really interesting place to be. It had that base benefit of acting as though it was a small business, very entrepreneurial, but you still had that scale which from a Treasury point of view made a really interesting place to be.

Talk us through again the sort of setup for UN Treasury. How did you created this from scratch really? There were some treasury guys, but it was a sort of refreshing. The first focused group treasury, if that's the right way to put it. But maybe explain that for people if you were.

Yeah, so again, a business of that size clearly had to have treasury activity. But as you say, Mike, it was sort of done in different parts of the business. There'd be some people in accounts doing some of the business and people in the cashiers function doing some other treasury activity. There was a financial advisory business within Capita and the head of that would take on all of the funding activities. So it was very much a. Wasn't really even decentralized, it was just a, you know, not integrated function at that time they wanted me to come in and try to pull everything together. So again, that was really interesting because, you know, I didn't need to worry about it being a question of me having to set up all the processes from scratch. There were good people doing the right things, but being able to then just pull all that together into a centralized function was a really good opportunity. And of course building on what I've done at ge, where I've been the number two in helping set up this new team, actually at Capita now I had the opportunity to be the one reading on this. So again, that was a really positive career progression for me as well.

And how was the sort of shift you'd been looking at the shape of some of these businesses? Johnson Matthew? Okay, UK based company, but very international, lots of overseas and everything else. GE doing all the treasury activities outside of the US, then Capita Business Process Outsourcing, FTSE 50, all the funds come in UK virtually with a few. I know there were some overseas but, but very limited, you know, what was that like for you? So putting your FX stuff on hold.

Something, it didn't really play a part. There was so much to do and so much of interest that the fact that the FX piece, as you say, sort of went on hold and there was some very interesting Indian rupee hedging that we were doing at the time. We had a massive offshore office out in India and of course if we're doing contracts for 10, 12, 15 years and they're effectively being service, I mean, you need to know what your cost base is. So very difficult even today to be hedging Indian rupees out that far. So imagine that sort of 10 or 12 years ago. So there was some interesting effects work there, but as you say, that wasn't really the core of what I was doing. But there was so much other interesting stuff going on, whether operationally, but also on the funding side, we did a number of private placements when I was there in the US market. We were Pulling together the bilateral bank facilities that we had, we pull that together into a single club facility. So there was a lot to do. And yeah, the absence of the FX work, which, again, that's always been something I've enjoyed, the international nature of the various roles that I've had. Yeah, it wasn't really there at Capita, but that certainly wasn't important for me.

No, you grew it and things. And again, with that, you were there for a number of years, but time for a change and you joined BBC Worldwide. So again, for the people listening today, they're going, oh, this is a great checklist of some of the really good, great, solid treasury role. So then you became the treasurer of BBC Worldwide. Again, people know BBC, but I know that it's different and perhaps you could explain, again, you know, it's a global name, everyone knows the B. What did you do?

So BBC Worldwide was the commercial arm of the BBC, so it would take BBC content and sell that abroad. So within the UK and with the BBC's licensee arrangements, you essentially couldn't be selling that to UK consumers. But of course, you've got all this fantastic content that's loved around the world, whether by expats who want to get hold of that content, or indeed just others around the world who come to know and love some of the programming. So that's what that business was doing and we had the commercial freedom to go and do that in a way that didn't apply to the public service broadcasting elements of the BBC in the uk. Again, this was a startup treasury function. Effectively, at the time, there was a contemplation of BBC Worldwide being floated off or sold, so they needed a standalone treasury function to be able to manage that. So, again, it was about going in and just taking existing processes, but making sure that they were really embedded within the Worldwide business. And there were the right discussions going on with the various clients, directors around the rest of the business to ensure that treasury was really supporting Worldwide in a way that was going to support any subsequent separation of that business.

And, you know, again, BBC, you know, team wise and things like that. Again, do you run a team there or, you know, how was it sort of set up?

Yeah, yeah, it was a small team. There were four of us at the points when we got the team fully established. But again, I think what I really benefited from Worldwide was the experiences that I'd had both at Capita and at ge, where again, I'd been helping to set up teams initially and then, and then had my first go at leading that and of course, there are things that you would always do differently in these situations. And so having a. Another opportunity to do that was good, but it was also very attractive because I was really enjoying that aspect of what I was doing. Again, having pretty much a blank sheet of paper to create a new team I found really interesting. I think it's a fascinating part of what we do. Sometimes you go into a business and everything's running very smoothly and that can be great because it allows you to focus on some more of the technical challenges that have been faced by the business or to engage more widely in the organization. But actually, at that point in my career, I found it really interesting to be really thinking about the detailed structure of the team and how best you set that up to deliver a really strong treasury function that the business needs.

Then BBC Worldwide and then BBC itself, or how do the two sort of mingle, as it were.

Yeah, so, I mean, we work very closely with the BBC treasury team. Ultimately, they were the ones who owned the bank relationships. All of the funding for the BBC came into the BBC Group treasury team. So ultimately, anything that we were doing Worldwide had to be within the structure that was set by the BBC Group Traders team. So we worked very closely with those guys. I would sit down at least weekly, not more often than that, with the group treasurer there to make sure that we were aligned in the work that we were doing. And in fact, over time, it became apparent that there was a little bit of an inefficiency that was built into the BBC's treasury operations by virtue of having these two separate teams and a bit of confusion, I think, externally from the banks, when they're not quite sure at times, should they be talking to the Group team, should they be talking to the Worldwide team? And as long as there is the potential for this separation of Worldwide, that was something you just had to deal with. But actually that was taken off the table by the arrival of a new chair of the BBC Trust, probably about 18 months or two years after I joined. And at that point it was really a relatively simple conversation to say, you know what? I think we actually need to put this team back together. Given that the external landscape has now changed, this needs to be a consolidated function. And actually that was a dynamic that was going on elsewhere across the BBC at the time. The other functions where Worldwide had set up standalone teams, but treasury was really one of the first teams that, at that time, we took the opportunity to put everything back together. So again, it wasn't what I'd gone into the BBC to do. But from a personal career point of view, I'd had a couple of years separating and setting up this standalone team and just as that particular part of the role was coming to an end, we then turned around and put it all back together. So you then get another couple of years of that restructuring experience as well. I guess from that point of view we took the opportunity then to be looking at all the use of technology at the time, making sure that we're developing use cms, for example, bringing on some of the other technology partners. So again, another really interesting piece of work. So very much two phases to my pilots at the BBC with, you know.

With the cash flows, you know, everyone's buying the media, you know, it's, it's obviously a big thing and things like that. The cash just came in all the time. It was very solid, healthy business. Or was it challenging in that aspect or not? Not so much.

Well, I guess again, big difference between BBC Public Service Broadcasting, you got the license fee. I might be a bit out of date now, but 3.7, 3.8 billion pounds a year and effectively it just came in, as you say. So from that point of view, the funding was never a particular challenge for the BBC, but within worldwide it was a commercial business that was subject to fluctuations in consumer demand and general economic sentiment in the various markets that we worked in. So there was certainly some exposure to those matters there I think as well. When you come to thinking about some of the other risks though, again huge FX exposures for that part of the business. So whilst the funding was relatively comfortable, certainly on the public service side, there were some very meaningful other treasury activities.

You moved from that to the. Well, the move to Thomas Cook. We'll bring it up today in a minute because been through some challenging times of late, but a move to a travel business, you're ticking a lot of boxes. Done insurance, you've done precious metals, you've done BBC. Oh, I know, let's move to a travel group, you know. How did that come about? Or was it just the, the attraction of another great treasury role?

Well, I think, to be honest, you know, when I was looking to move on from the BBC and again I was in a good role, good people around me, you know, from a day to day point of view, no reason to leave, but I did feel I wanted to move on to get back into that corner corporate treasury environment again, a bit like when I was@lloyds. BBC is a great business, but it's not a big organization. But it's not a true corporate treasury function. And so I was able to have a good look around and buy my time waiting for the right roles to come up. And when I first heard about the Sonos Fit role, it sounded quite interesting, but I wasn't convinced about it. I went and had the interview and meeting the team, hearing about what needed to be done there, hearing about the profile of treasury within the organization, I was absolutely hooked. And in fact, I remember that week I had three interviews for different organizations and at the start of the week, Thomas Cook was very much third on my list. Yeah. And by the end of the week, it was, I've got to work, I won this.

And you say it was, you know, sort of all over the place or, you know, sort of needed. What did it need or explain that?

Well, I think I wouldn't necessarily characterize it or all over the place, but it was going through a really interesting time. So, again, going back a little bit, history, 2011, 2012, that the company was virtually out of business for weeks on end, could almost fall over at any point. And there had been this big recapitalization back in 2013 that really gave the business an opportunity to rebuild. But again, even before I joined the 2013-2015, massive cost cutting, really trying to reposition the business as much more of a digital player. Starting to close down all these shops. We had about 1200 stores around the UK, a lot of overlap. There'd been an acquisition with the co op travel business, so they were often a co op and a Thomas Cook store, sometimes side by side on the high street. So this huge transformation effort had already happened. And I think if you'd asked me to join that business back in 2012, 2013, I would have probably thought it was too high risk for 2015. Yeah, they got a couple of runs up the ladder towards getting where they needed to get to, but it was still a very long ladder and there's still a number of steps still to go. And I thought that was where there was so much interest in work. Again, having been in all these companies that were great businesses, but frankly, they were the more comfortable end of the credit spectrum. You had banks saying, would you like to borrow some money? How much would you like to borrow? It was relatively straightforward from a credit perspective. So then go in somewhere like Thomas Cook, where you really had to fight every last pound that you were getting from the banks. Really tough negotiations around terms on those deals that you were doing. That was going to be a complete shift for me and one that I thought would really fill out my cv because you're going from, as I say, sort of very comfortable end of the credit spectrum to something that is right on the other. Right on the other end. And for the first few years, and I was there, it was just short of five years before the business went under. But we were making progress. It was slower than we wanted, but it was going the right way. And it was only then, summer last year, summer 2018, that things started to unravel. But we had a number of years of making some good progress in that business.

And with that, again, not to deep dive into it too much, but was it just the markets or you know, it hit hard or, you know, what was the sort of what was happening there?

Yeah, I mean it's a combination of so many things. I mean there's obviously been huge amounts of press commentary on this in the aftermath of the business going into insolvency. You know, it's not something that you can give a quick answer on. But I guess the two key factors for me are the amount of debt that the business had taken on essentially caused the recapitalization I referred to earlier on back in 2013. But at that stage we were still really highly levered and I guess the expectation at that time was this was a sustainable business. But we need to make sure that we are delivering the transformation really quickly. And in the meantime we are paying very high rates of interest on some very long term bonds. So you end up paying a huge amount of the cash that you're generating as a business each year. It's a really competitive market, it's low margin. So you're generating this cash. The huge amount of the cash you're generating is just going and servicing your debt. And what you need in that environment is a few years, a bit of a clear run of being able to get back on your feet and then start to pay down that debt. And then the money that you're bringing in actually you can start to reinvest in the business and really we never got that clear run. And you think from my time in the business, 2015, the awful hidden tax in Tunisia, which closed down the Tunisian market. Customers weren't there to travel to Tunisia, so obviously we can't sell holidays there. That was a big year round market for a big year round destination. Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, again, very popular UK customers in 2016, all the, again the awful Turkish terror attacks and disruption. Almost every week there'd be something else. Turkey was about 33%, 35% of our business in 2016, 2017 there was massive airline disruption, air traffic control strikes, it's a feature of air travel. But 2017 was particularly high. It was something like an extra 50 million quid that was spent on compensating passengers for delayed travel in 2017. Again, 50 million quid that you would otherwise be putting back into the business. And then 2018, summer heat wave. I mean, all of these things listeners could well think, well that's just part of being in the travel business. But they were all things that we'd not seen to that extent before. And I think that the heat wave is a great example of that, where, yes, you have heat waves from time to time, but it was the first time we had such good weather across all of our source markets. So we are UK business, Scandinavian business, Continental European business. The weather conditions across the whole of the northern half of Europe in 2018 were stronger than had been seen for something like 150, 200 years. And of course in that environment, people quite rightly think, well, I'll just stay.

Home, don't need holiday, all of that.

Yeah, that's it, all of that late booking market disappears. And then what we subsequently found is actually that fed over into 2019 because people had realized, well, you know, last year we could have got that holiday that, you know, would have been costing a thousand pounds ahead. Actually, we could have got it last minute for 500 ahead this year. Why don't we wait until the last minute? Again, I haven't touched on Brexit yet again, it's just, yeah, every year there was something that, that didn't give us that clear run. Yeah, yeah, I know. And ultimately because of the long term history, we never actually had enough, we never had enough money in our back pocket to be able to ride out the cumulative effects of all of these different storms that hit us. And ultimately that's it. Once it did start to unravel, liquidity gets taken away. You, the providers, credit across the business that start getting nervous just at the point is that you need people to be standing still and retaining their support for the business. You can understand each individual person being nervous collectively. If everyone could stand together, it might have been a different situation. But again, you can't be blaming people for taking the decisions that they need to take their particular organization.

The effect on treasury or treasury coping during that time, how did you guys get through it?

Well, with great difficulties, I think we had a great team there and actually again, whilst it didn't end well, we've done some really positive work in the few years that I was there particularly around, around financing. So actually back in 2017 we did a new bank deal and we increased the amount of funding that the group was able to get on a committed basis. At that time. We refinanced one of our bonds to significant impact, two of the bonds, but one of them made a significant reduction in the amount of interest that we were paying. We timed that very well in terms of going to market. In fact, it was the first European high yield bonds we launched after Donald Trump had just been elected in the us So a time of market uncertainty, but actually we benefited. But no one else was going to market at the time and so there were all these investors looking to do something with their money. We went to market at that time and it turned out to be, to be a really good deal. So yeah, there were some good opportunities from a Treasury point of view during the last few years, but also very difficult in the last 12 months to imagine a situation where this is every stakeholder, every investor is getting more nervous. We had the banks committed liquidity there, but there was a huge amount of uncommitted funding that we had within the business. Whether that was around our FX and fuel hedging program, if it's around the bonds and guarantees that we issued to some of the local travel regulators. We had a huge fuel procurement program and fuel supplies. We started, started to get nervous and perhaps looking to reduce some of the payment days that they made available to us. Regulators were wanting us to perhaps put up some additional funds to protect the local consumers there. So again, you've got all of these different stakeholders just sort of beginning to pull up that liquidity lever and trying to manage liquidity in what is already a difficult trading environment became even more difficult.

And so, you know, as we look to the future for you, obviously you're out there and everything else. But you know, when we started, you know, talking about you and you know, big theme is you're a great team builder, leader if you like and that's a key part of you, if you like. And if people are looking at your LinkedIn profile as we approach the end of today's show, you know, they'll look back and they'll say, wow, that's, you know, you've got this great profile, you've got mct, so the top level of, of treasury qualification in the uk, you've got solid career paths and things like that. So there'll be people reading through that and going, do you know what? I'd like to emulate that treasury analyst managers, they Want to follow in your footsteps and some of the treasurers out there, maybe some of the more internationals, are going on some great war stories there. But what sort of advice would you give those guys? Say, analyst, managers first? What nuggets would you give them? Two or three, maybe that, as we close off today's show, that you can sort of share with them. And, you know, the guys that should have a similar approach to you about treasury, if that's the right way.

Yeah, yeah, I guess. I mean, certainly for those more the analyst and maybe manager level study is really, really important. I think it's a very competitive marketplace when it comes to moving between treasury roles and to have qualifications behind you that can distinguish you from others applying for the same roles is very important. It also acts, I think, is a really useful benchmark when potential employers are considering your application. Again, it sort of cuts out quite a lot of that interview where you're going through, testing someone's technical skills. If you know they've got different levels of treasury qualifications, then that really helps. Again, in my own experience, again, I had the benefit of getting to Choshi very early. As I talked about earlier on, I got all my. In those days, it was the MCT exams completed when I was 27. And that really, I think, set me up very well that when I was then looking to apply for other roles again, employers just know what your level is and they almost take some of those technical skills for granted in that application. So I'd really encourage people to work out what's the right qualification for them very much. For me, it was mct. I didn't go down the accounting routes intentionally, but again, for different people, it might be different subjects that work out what's going to help you get to where you want to get to and then absolutely commit to completing that as quickly as possible. I think the other thing I'd say is around making the best of whatever role that you're in, whatever situation that you're in. Again, we've touched on some of the issues I've had to face during my career, where my company's been acquired, we've had a restructuring, I've gone insolvent. None of these things I obviously choose to happen, but actually the fact that they did all happen has made me a better treasury professional. And so when there's a situation that's perhaps going a different way to what you wanted, embrace it, see the opportunities in that, it might not be ideal. It might mean that you need to change your approach and move on quickly, more quickly. Than you'd otherwise have expected to, but you can find the positive in anything. And I think again, treasury is an area you're not going to have the benefit of just going in and rolling along very comfortably day after day after day. You need to be embracing whatever change is going on around you.

So, Chris, thanks for just talking through there. A lot of your experience and you've had lots of different things. Before we move to the close of the show, I just wanted to explore with you just, just your general. You're seeing the world of treasury, seen it from a number of different aspects. Everything else. What do you think are the biggest challenges maybe for treasurers and, you know, treasury professionals and how, you know, how are you approaching them? How should you think other people, you've been to all these conferences and everything else, what do you think? Is it a rise of technology or is it the people aspects or what's the key thing for you in your head as well?

I think you need to draw the distinction between the day to day core activities of treasury, if I can put it that way, and some of the other challenges that can arise. So again, a lot of my role today is no different from 20 odd years ago when I started in terms of things that we discussed around the funding, fx, bonding, cash management, counterparty risk, that's the core of Treasury. But of course you can't take your eye off making sure that that continues to operate very well. At no point can you think, well, we've got that bit done, I can now go away and do this Brexit project or whatever it might be. So I think from that point of view, treasurers have to constantly be aware of the day to day and I guess the technology feeds into that. There's always ways. Whilst the risks are no different from 20 years ago, the way you might manage those risks, risks very much what will change and develop over time. So I think, you know, that important not to lose sight of the House very much what will change and develop over time. So I think, you know, that important not to lose sight of the housekeeping, if you like. But then on the other hand, that there are these continuous, continuous new challenges that are arising and we touched on some of those that have affected Thomas Cook. But I guess these challenges, and I'm going back here, if we go back 10 years, to the global financial crisis and everything that followed from that, with recession, credit crunch, Eurozone crisis, Brexit, Brexit subsequently, all of these things at the start of my career were almost unimaginable and yet Nowadays, we don't necessarily know what's going to be the next one next year, but there is always something new going on. And I think it is about making sure that as a business, treasurers, as the risk managers of a business, are thinking that far ahead, thinking about what could be happening further down the line, and perhaps not trying to pretend they've got a crystal ball, but making sure that whatever happens further down the line, because something will, because it has been every year for the last 10, 12 years, we are in a position to be able to deal with that. And again, from a Thomas Cook perspective, we are always aware that we didn't have the level of committed funding that we want. It wasn't that we got caught out when things started to unravel, but we just hadn't been able to get to the point where we got all that funding committee. We hadn't got a sufficiently strong credit rating to attract sufficient investment in the business on a committed basis. But we were constantly trying to get there and then we weren't able to get there quickly enough. But it was something that, again, in a business, treasurers as risk managers need to be the voice in the business saying, hold on a minute. You'll have other parts of the business that are wanting to go into the new market to launch the new product, to make that really exciting acquisition, and they may all be great things to do and they may be the right things to do, but you do need the treasurer just to be saying, what if? What if there's a danger that we become known as doomongers? And that guy over there, he's such a pessimist. So you need to temper your language. But again, the experience of Thomas Cook in particular is one that you really mustn't take your eye off these new challenges, these new risks that just keep emerging.

Yeah, I think the great point you made there is that the new norm is that everything's uncertain and prepared for that all the time. Always be prepared in that way.

Absolutely.

Awesome advice there. So beat your competition by getting your qualifications because they're going to make you stand out, give you that rubber stamp of expertise. That's the right way to put it. And, you know, grab the uncertain, you know, because, you know, it is an uncertain world and you can see, you know, anyone will be able to see through your LinkedIn profile that you've been through some solid companies and challenging times, but you've written it out. So, yeah, well done. Keep. Let's keep going. Let's try and find you. Well, we'll be talking to Chris in throughout 2020 and you know, wherever he lands next and, you know, really good. And all remains for me, sir, say you thank. Thank you very much for your time today. It was a, you know, great to chat through and look forward to further discussions.

That's a pleasure, Mike. Thanks very much.