What Makes a Great Treasurer? Stories from Smurfit Westrock, QatarEnergy & Tate & Lyle

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. Let's get on with the show. Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner live in Dublin. This is the 8th out of 10 I've done this year everywhere from Vegas to New York, one of the best turnouts I've got to say here. So thank you very much for all showing up. Now I need you all to be here in both mind and body. So anyone got their phones on them? Fantastic. Put them away. How often do you get to see three amazing treasures? Sorry, Two amazing treasures and Paul, it's all right. Here's our warm up hack. Don't worry. Three amazing treasurers and get some career advice from these guys. You don't. What you're going to get to see tonight are three amazing treasurers who are going to talk about their treasury careers, talk about how they've made their progression, how they've grown their treasury careers and where they see the future of Treasury. And as Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues. So listen in, ask some questions and actually take advantage of of talking to these treasurers. You are going to get to see them in the bar afterwards but share some of the knowledge. A couple of people have asked me, who am I? Why am I here? I'm Mike Richards, as it says here, exceptionally large head on this. Oh no, sorry, before I do that, I'm going to thank our sponsors. There you go. Keep an order. It's a State Street. Can you give your hands up please? There's a lovely Jackie, she's going to assault you with a notebook unless you take one. But then David will give you some lovely chocolate to take away the bruising. Chatham Financial. Where are these? That's lovely. There's Sarah. These guys are buying the drinks later as well. Be nice to them, otherwise they won't buy you a drink. Salmon Software. There you go, Tom at the back, be nice to him. You won't understand him, he's very posh English. And tis we got you guys. Lovely. And Gert as well over there. Thank you very much to our sponsors. There you go. Who am I? My race has run the treasury recruitment company. I recruit you guys moving from one seat to another seat and then send out a bill. Been doing it for 25 years. I then thought, I love talking to treasurers, even Paul. Oh, there's the rest of the team as well. So you've got Katie Hardy. Where are you? There you go. There's Katie. When you need a job, Move. Later on, after a couple more drinks. And what have you said to your boss or colleague? Call Katie. I started talking to treasurers 20 years ago and then I thought, I'm enjoying it so much, I'm going to record it, with their permission, of course. And it became a podcast. I thought maybe we'll do 10 episodes. We're now 330 later. I've spoken to treasurers across the world about exactly that, their treasury careers. And it's rather popular. 160,000 downloads, which is just incredible. 2 to 300 a week. And again, each and every week, I talk about how you treasurers have developed your careers. That then led to this live event where these lovely people share the stage with me and I ask them about their careers. We go through it and these are some of the questions we're going to talk about. They get then to introduce themselves, talk about education, how qualifications. Some of you want to know about that, but you also want to know about some keys to their success. What have they done? How have they made it, some of the decisions they made and everything else from that as well. We'll then go to Q and A. We are then afterwards, we got some great key takeaways and I know that there are really good takeaways, so we could probably get to takeaways a bit earlier this evening. So I think there's some really good advice for all of you here. So, first of all, I'm going to let everyone introduce themselves and talk about their careers. Got lovely. Erin Cole. Now, you have to be nice to Erin because she is slightly nervous, one of her first sessions. But we are going to start with your story about starting in laundrettes. Over to you.

Karen's lighting me here. Pleasure to be here. My name is Erin Coe. I'm group treasurer at Taint Lyle. It's a food and beverage ingredients company headquartered in the UK. I'm 37 and I've worked in for good treasury for 13 years. So not quite as tenured as some of the choir guests on this podcast. The first time I've told my story in public, so goodies, Nandi. I was going to take a different approach and not start with my degree and what happened when I left university. So I was 11 and I had my first experience to mentorship and principal at the school. Mary Mitchell o' Connor, who many people in this room will remember as a former Irish Government minister. She coached me to go on and win two scholarships to two very prestigious schools in Dublin. And I was 11 and I had big decision to choose green to get and what school was never really on the cards for me but my parents supported me all the way. That I think was really where the seed of ambition was planted in me. And I just knew that I wanted future success and I also felt like I had to prove myself. When I go back to my early days, I actually had exposure to treasury so cash management and fx. My parents always instilled a strong work ethic in me. So I worked since I was 14 and my first job was in the dry cleaners and I managed the the dual transition from Irish punks to Euros out of my little catcher blister. So I had the two sets of nymphs and coins and my little calculator on the side. And that really was where my first entrance to treasury started. And I had loads of jobs after that. I worked making breakfast rolls in the local deli, the DIY store where I learned cluster service, how to mix paint. I had to do a stop take which I think everyone should learn to do. Everyone should working with puppeteer when they're.

Younger and then how did you discover treasury or where did it come from?

So I went to Trinity College. I studied business and economics, graduated in 2009. When everything thinks back, Ireland was not a very nice place to be looking for a job and the global financial crisis had really taken hold here. And for business grads really the only options out there were. I never wanted to be in Cat. This is a long story. I'll try and keep it snappy. I was really looking to secure a place on the advisory team at PwC. They offered me the role and as quick as they offered it to me they took back and paused it for a year. They gave me cash compensation so I took that and I booked myself a one way flight to Bangkok and I had a great time in Southeast Asia. Traveling around the world was my oyster. Just finished college, didn't really know what I wanted to do but I think that PWC robot pulled back ON Fast forward 18 months and in bathroom. I'd had my daughter at 23, my little girl Ezra and I was solo parenting a little bit lost. I'm trying to figure out the name Stone. I knew it wasn't going to be the intense grad scene in PwC with a couple of ACA study at the weekends and the evenings with the baby. It just wasn't going to be craftable especially on 24k a year. I struggled for a few months inping what I wanted to do when I came across corporate treasury postgrad in D.C. and that really appealed to me. It just seemed like a really practical way to learn about funding in the debt, capital markets, fx, risk management. So I signed up for that and then by a stroke of luck, almost simultaneously I was offered an internship at Getty Images by Kara Killian, mentor and lifelong friends who Mike knows well. Yeah, we're hired made Getty and I was so lucky to have CAR had the gold standard intro to Treasury. Getty was privately held at the time so working under private equity it was super fast paced. We went through two leveraged buyouts which meant billion dollar multibillion dollar debt raises. Cara gave me the keys on the Bloomberg and I was trading half the billion dollars of interest rate swaps and building models. She brought me to the Elf Pole tour. I was sat in Jonathan Klein's office, the founder and see when he was doing the earnings calls. Yeah, it's an amazing experience. Just couldn't have asked for more. The time came where we'd set up the EMEA treasury in Dublin. Cara was then moved to New York to head up investor relations and I became the only finance person in the office. And Cara gave me really good advice that the one thing she was missing on her CV was looking back at that. I'm going to regret taking PwC because I've immediately doubled my salary by not taking us but actually that's a big gap for me not having no accounting qualification. So we knew then that the next step was going to be for me to leave Getty eventually and I figured out that I was going to go and do the ACA through industry on what they call the flexible route. I just needed a firm to take me in and do that and a few months later he contacted me. He was a role at James Hardy Building Products, seasoned finance professional, loads of chartered accountants in the office and it was the right environment for me to go in and get that experience and then as well as that experience with high yield bonds and interest rate swaps and working with rating agencies. So that's what I wanted to take for them and they were doing lots of really exciting things. So go to the high yield market for the first time the syndicated Aussie bilateral debt into the US Star Revolver, lots of interesting things like that. And then once all of that was locked down there was it's time for me to start moving a bit laterally and I ended up working on more broad finance projects as well as keeping the tray job going. So I went to California, worked on a HFM and consolidation tool implementation. Went to Australia and New Zealand for a manufacturing project. And one of my last projects there was spending a good bit of time on the finance inspiration for a big acquisition that they did in Germany leading the finance integration work stream. And that was an amazing experience. But it was spending on at work.

Yeah. And I know that you got through that and you thought time for some time out. She did. Yeah. Talk about that. And then bring us up today with Taya Marner. Thanks.

Yeah. My time at Jane Clarity came to a natural conclusion. I left. It was a bit of a risk because I left with no job to go to and I took time out backpacking around Latin America with my daughter. She was eight at the time and was at the best venture within 2019. We went from May until she had to go back to school in September. Such a good time. And I wouldn't have come home from left from Costa Rica. I wouldn't have come home when we first she had to go to school. Then we got to like November and I was still not back to work and there weren't many interesting opportunities coming up in Dublin. I got a call from London recruiter and my brother had a spare room in London like this and I'd be thinking to try and were asking what's your day rate?

It's a day.

Right? Yeah.

The most of that question in my life. But that's how I started at Taint as a day rate contractor working with Ollie Wadette. It was like to a director role initially and within a couple of weeks I think they were being managed role there which I took essentially and then was promoted pretty quickly from coming from a senior manager to director of treasury and Corp. Fine. I'm now great treasurer since the start of last year.

Tate, can you just for the audience. Again people might know of or have an impression of that trading sugar and everything else. But they really changed as a company. Haven't you? Yeah.

Your transformation journey. And I was actually quite lucky that I came in at the very start of the recent big transformation piece when I signed the contract. So work there permanently. I had an NDA come in front of me because they were on the journey to look at diagnostic primary products business.

Yeah.

And that's the like more commodities business. Sells ingredients like high fructose corn syrup in the US so we saw that all closed down 1st of April 2022 and we've now just announced an acquisition. We Will hopefully be closing that in the next few months. We're going to buy CP Calcium from JM Gouber. Really exciting stuff going on. Just indicated about $900 million of new debt when we'll be going into the USPP market.

So we're going to move on to Paul now. Paul I know has got a bit of a cough which he. Would you prefer to have the microphone or are you okay with that? Okay, cool. Paul, over to you. Paul Hussey.

Thank you. Can I fall asleep? Apologies.

Yes.

Two flights from DoH to and from Doha in the last couple of days to come here today I just got to talk for a few about a career. How am I going to afford it? This that outside of but my background is central bank buying. I was a fund manager under Fracture as I worked at this Then I went back into banking went into treasury with Falkenstein and Falcons treasury. The journey effectively is all encompassing to understand I think if I hire people they have to have a banking bag and it's also about the people that work that I'm not particularly clever, I'm not particularly good. We'll have to do is about spins and that's the most important thing. It's working with partnership. Treasury is simple. It's really simple. It's about cash. We can make it as sexy and super detailed as we want, but it's all about cash. The last few years I've been working in this MIC company in Sabika Aramco at the time the largest company in the world. Now I'm the largest LNG producing company in the world. But it's all about cash. It's actually understanding where a cash is, the utilization of our cash. If we do a bond issuance or do anything difficult, it's not difficult. It's actually working as a team to understand and actually get the thing going. In short, for me working in Dova, it's working with the people. The only reason I've got to this level is because as a team we succeed and as a team we fail. Have a very fun One of the guys who works in the development time in the forehand I've got Treasury plot is treasury could endlessly innovate this massive boundary. I think that's something I found. It's just actually understanding the risk, the cash and the people that's behind it. So for me that's Treasury.

We will also dive into these guys and their education as well. Now some other things elements of how they develop their careers. We'll come back to some of Those Eva I'll pass across to you sure.

Hi, I'm Ingo Renang and I'm SDB.

Treasury Smurf at Westrock previously green treasurers were for Catholic Room we very recently did large merger with one of our competitors to make us the biggest listed paper packaging company in the world we're now listed on the New York Stock Exchange their primary listing SOP 500 eligible and also their standard listing in London I think one thing that I've in common with I think the guys up in this stage and so he feel that we were chatting to earlier is I've yet to meet a treasurer that it'll fall into treasury and I was one of those people and again came from a banking background and I left university a little bit before you Erin so I'm not going to say when but jobs were not easy to come by in Ireland either and I remember saying to my mom the one thing I do not want to do is go into banking. That's the one thing I do not want to do and then I spent probably the next 10 years in banking and I worked initially and this will age me with Bankers Trust Collins our back office over to the ifschool Then I worked in bank of Ireland for a while I moved to London and worked at Montague Private Equity they were HSBC Private Equity when I joined them and during that time I was doing my accounting exams My qualification from university was European Studies from UL and then I did a grad dip in Applied Economics I have to say probably the most useful qualification for me and the one that got me into treasury was accounting because I decided to move back from London and I met and especially if you were with Dansby you probably knew though Paul Reagan and Brendan Glynn in Smurfoot Kappa were the two people who interviewed me and I'd come over and I'd done a couple of banking interviews and then I was meeting these guys in Smurfoot and I really, I was sitting there thinking what the hell am I doing here? I've never worked in a corporate should I just leave? Was this going to be really embarrassing? But we got on really well and I think even Aaron talking about mentorship and everyone talking about teams you learn so much when you work with people like that. Paul and Brendan were legends I think in corporate treasury in Dublin Paul was 30 years group treasurer Brendan similarly is the assistant treasurer they were such a great duo and indeed when I took over what made my life very easy is I inherited a fantastic balance sheet from them Balance sheet I'm inheriting now is a little bit more challenging, but at least I learned from the best in terms of how to work a balance sheet and how to create a good balance sheet. I think that's really how I got into it from going to. I'm never working in banking. I think it must be terribly boring to doing a roundabout into Treasury. And I started off as a Treasury accountant with them and I did that for about seven years and then became the head treasury accounting before then when Brenton retired, over as the system treasurer and then Paul retired, took over as groom treasurer and then luckily they decided on me for SVP Treasury. When we came together with Westrock, all.

Three of you, as we've got on here, had exposure. You've got accounting there and you've done the same as well. And Paul, you've got. You then have teams as well. What advice? Because we've got a full mixed audience here, so we've got some who are thinking about studying or partway through you saying everyone needs to be an accountant. Does everyone need to go and do treasury exams? Or what are your thoughts on. And it's changed and it's evolved since. You guys will start with Erin and move across and then I'll actually pass the baton when we go. Some other questions, but when. What are your thoughts? You've got a team. You've got teams. We were actually talking about this last week, Poland and where can they get education? How do you coach them?

Education trumps experience, but it helps in K's perspective indoors, I think convert under your cv, it shows that you've got commitment, dedication, you're serious about the career. And I saw a thing on Instagram there yesterday you didn't show on my phone. I felt active writing. But he said, if you're lost, the answer is education. If you're educating, the answer's execution and if you're extricating, the answer is consistently. I thought that was very good because everyone's on a different path, right. I went back into the accounting and so, like, I didn't want any forwarding that. Why didn't I just take the PwC job one in this country and get it out of the way?

But that doesn't have to be for.

Yeah, because no one could. But also no one could take it away. And that's one of the things when I've talked to employers as well and they're saying, although they sometimes do get a bit stuck because they're saying we're encouraging this, but I really like this person but they don't have the qualifications. What do I do? And I know that, Paul, you and I have talked about things like that in the past.

I agree with Aaron Racing, but it gets all the experience.

I agree to a certain extent and I disagree to a certain extent. I think, would I be where I am today without having an accountancy qualification? I probably wouldn't have really got in the door if I hadn't had it. Then you have to use it though. It's performance. It's not enough to have the education, you actually have to apply the education again. Would I be have become a group treasurer without having done ACT exams? I think they gave me a technical knowledge on different instruments. That definitely gave me a bit of an edge compared to perhaps people who haven't had the interest. And some of it may have been that I was just really interested in this, very passionate about it. I actually. My husband thinks I'm the biggest nerd in the world. It's. I actually really love Kaity and he also works with treasury and he is what wrong with speaker, but he enjoys it. But I actually really love it, which is why I've done that. So I think it definitely gives people the edge. But I don't think education has to be formal. I think there's a whole host of information out there, podcasts you can just put on your radio, listen to a podcast, 10 minutes. The FT news briefing gives you pretty much in a nutshell what's happening today. There are all these political podcasts, different business podcasts. All of that is the same type of education. So you've actually, I think, more access to knowledge, the type of things that you maybe had to go to a university to do before. There's a lot more at our fingertips now. But I do think. I agree it's the application of it is what comes down. Because people mightn't. Your guy with geography is his primary degree. He probably is educating himself though, all the time on treasury because he's interested in treasury and it doesn't have to be a formal thing. I think it definitely gives you the edge. It definitely probably gives you that foot in the door. And I think that is still the case. I don't know if it will always be the case because you say it's rapidly changing, but it probably, I would feel, would I be where I am now if I hadn't done continuous education? Probably not. So I do think it certainly helped me.

Oh, God, what are you going to hire for in five years? What's the person you're going to hire.

I think it's going to be either of two things, really. It's either someone who's a Treasury expert, but then again, we were having the conversation before because we're going to get onto it, AI and everything else, and the rise of that Treasury. But everyone's saying, oh, our treasurers like yourselves all going to be replaced by robots. I certainly hope not, because otherwise I'm out of a job. You can just go and create a robot and that's it, you're done. It's not that treasurers have always embraced technology, always used it to your advantage and everything else. And I think it's actually helping you get more done with less as AI is brought in and you're. It's not just AI. When Aaron and I were talking about this, it's about the use of data. You guys are great translators. You are talking to. You've got big sets of data. I was, I did one of my sessions earlier this year in New York with Dana Laidhold, the global treasurer of nasdaq. And they now use machine learning to scrape their daily exposures for Nasdaq and they keep it controlled and everything else. But what was taking one team member and a couple of team members probably a week to to do now they do in seconds, nanoseconds. And it actually makes their jobs more interesting. That's one of the key things, I think that's being lost in a lot of the stuff that you see in the press and everything else. AI is making your jobs as treasurers easier. It's elevating as well. I think there is going to be an issue that more junior staff, you are going to maybe look for people from a data science background or something like that. I've talked to a couple of US clients in particular. One guy, he had a couple of his son's friends and they were saying, oh, I'm going to go and study economics. He went, don't do economics as a major. Do a split major with that computer science. And the guy's, oh, really? I'm not really. I said just use it for yourself sort of thing. And I think in that sense, one of the questions we'll come back to the AI bit, what I wanted to get from you yourselves. Looking back over your careers now, Paul, you've moved internationally. You, Erin, you've done different moves with different companies. I just want to reflect on maybe some of the choices you've made. As you say, what's been key to your success for you, Paul, you've made moves across the world and just got up and got on the plane sort of thing. As you said, you've done three back to back flights to be here. That's why I'm having to buy him drinks later. But that aside, you've been there and you've made different choices between you. Paul will start with yourself and then come across then come back to Erin. What would you say Paul, with yourself?

It's very simple to say what does he want? What does he want on Trevor? I think it's effectively used to wear it on the guys do says treasury is enough traffic in a big share. I hope I mean that again if you look at the crisis we've gone through, it's only when the CFO wakes up and goes is my cash funder.

Going to do he?

And I think we need to get better at actually selling the story as regards what a treasurer actually does. What is the main price is to protect the underlying asset. And I'm not talking about oil wells are not talking about Helen trash that I work. I'm talking about where the cash is, what we do with the cash, how we use loads of cash. Again, it goes back to it's very simple. Treachery is very simple. We can make it as complex as we want. But the cfo. I've worked in a lot of companies or some very good CFOs and it comes down to the town because that treasurer is only as good as his boss or her boss.

And that's actually come out a little bit on the podcast as well. Some people have asked me what have I observed from some of the more successful treasurers and I've said it's not just about management downwards, it's also about management upwards, going to making your boss look good sort of thing. Now you've been very successful. Is that one of the keys to your success? Managing upward as well?

I'm not sure. I've always been great at managing upwards and indeed I've made as many mistakes as I've and look lately luck plays a little role in everybody's career success. Luck can be shining on you at certain times and at the right times. One thing I would say is probably if I look back at the turning point in my career because I had always and I think it's a little trap that a lot of us fall into. If I work really hard and I'm diligent, people are going to notice, they're going to tap me on the shoulder and they're going to go, you're great. Here you go I'm going to offer you everything. And it doesn't quite happen like that. I think you have to be a good performer. That's a given. But someone said to me one time, and I thought it was very true, she said, performance plus perception equals promotion. Because you don't have to just be good, you have to have. People need to realize you're good. And a turning point for me was it was a good few years ago now and our technical accounting manager, who was a fantastic mentor to me, Paul McFeely, who actually wasn't. Yes. Who wasn't a qualified accountant, was probably the best accountant I ever knew. His doctors and Terfus as well. He was, yeah. And his daughter still is. So it's. He was a fantastic mentor for me. And we got chatting about derivatives and as I said, I am a complete nerd when it comes to this stuff and I love all things chatting about all of these things. And Paul said to me, I think you should do a presentation on Seymour, because it seems to be quite complex. You're making it really simple. And as you say, it is actually really simple. People get a bit frightened. So anyway, I said I would do it. And I was in the canteen one day and our Stephanie Furley at the time came up behind me and he said, emer, I hear you're doing a presentation on derivatives. It's one thing I always think I'd like to know more about. So I'm going to be there and I will never forget, my stomach hit my ears. I never felt more nervous. But he was there. And when the head of Treasury Accounting Rule came up, I was given that tap on the shoulder to go for it. But it probably wouldn't have happened had people not seen me at the derivatives presentations. There's luck, there's taking a bit of opportunity and there's also having great people. And our CFO again, Ken Moles, again, a fantastic mentor, has come through the organization, worked in many different roles and he trusts his people, he trusts that his people are good and do their job well. And I think with every company having gone through so many different crises, the world is almost crisis after crisis. I do think treasury has raised, I think, itself in terms of profile with the C Suite, with the board of directors for exactly what you're saying, where is our cash? Do we have enough cash? Can we get cash? All of these things? And when they can trust that you have the expertise in this and that they know that's all safeguarded and future liquidity is safeguarded, it goes a very Long way to building trust. But as you say, I think it's a combination of things. But if I look overall it all stems back to that one conversation that I had in Paul McFeely that I think really did just really make a big difference to my career.

Thanks so much there. You have really hard work and putting your hammers up for doing the friend. Taking on projects that move beyond to do is it just adds strings to your bow. But also being a little bit entrepreneurial about your for your treasurers where risk managers were risk averse and a lot of us are quite conservative. Knowing when to take calculated risks with your own career can be very uncomfortable. But I think that's really important to do as well.

So we've got some great takeaways and actually a bit more career advice actually from the PALOP shawlies. I'm going to do that because I mean I want to finish on time. So I'll go into some of the Q and A. Yeah, we'll do about hybrid working then we'll come back to Aaron and then pause.

We have a hybrid system inside. We it's the core day is probably three days a week. Not specific days. It's only three days within some specific exceptions. We do value the fact that people are in there. I think we might be unusual though as well because we're the global head office. So the CFO is in the building. The CEO is often in the building if he's not traveling. So you've all the senior management really in that building. And that's where you do get facetime with a canteen where everyone sits down together, has lunch together. No one. It's not like a group sculpture their own tables so you could be sitting with the cfo. I don't think you lose that if you're always working from home. But I think we were bringing in flexibility before COVID happened and then an accelerated I think with COVID So what we find works very well is that because those quick conversations that you can have something where you know it's a two minute conversation, pop your head into someone's office but you have to go out of your way to make a team's call to bring people into it. Sometimes you lose that with complete remote working. It's trying to find that balance though of making sure that it is flexible enough for people that it is flexible. Because I think the days of people being just tied to the desk 9 to 5 and I think that you want to even away from that. But what you want is that when people are in the office, they are getting the benefit, especially people who are younger, who are training, who just. Especially in an open plan treasury operations where people just absorb things just by virtue of being there. I think you can use that at home, but it's trying to make sure that we don't go back to the sort of people have to be present just for the sake of being present, but rather that you try to get the best of both worlds. And I think it's still evolving. I think it's still evolving as a work in progress for people, but it's something we value. Now we have bigger challenges because we now have. I have an Atlanta treasury team, a Geneva treasury team. So they're not all going to be in the building. And it is making sure that they get enough face time and even face to face time with me. So it's more travel involved for me. But I think it's important that people do get the feeling that they're not. If I'm working from home, am I just being forgotten about it? I think it's trying to make sure, but it does take a lot more effort.

I did a session last year actually, the New York Cash Exchange, and there was exactly that point with one of the treasurers, Steve Rosenthal, Broadway. And he, as they all came back into the office, he loved being back in the office. He said it's great. I get more, I've got less distractions. Yeah, the really nice home office, he said, it's just great. Let him pop up, make me lunch as he go into work was great. But he actually then discovered himself that he was going all the way, training, trading under two hours. And then a couple of times he'd come out to lunch, see the same thing, hi guys. And then be straight back in his office. And actually he realized and they start to do this sort of 360 feedback with a team. And they said it's great you're here, but we never see you and you're actually in your office. And they're like, what they did is that. I can't remember the exact title, but it's actually planned in team or something like that. And basically what he was talking about is getting the team to come in those two or three days, actually planning activities together and having water cooler moments, having time together, not just coming in and closing the door. Otherwise he said, might as well just stay at home.

I agree, I'm not a fan of closed doors. Sometimes you need to close the door if you're working on something particular. You're making a call And I see.

Andrea there in the audience is far away teeing.

But we very much have an open door policy and that's. And that is the CFO's door is always open. It's not just, oh, I have my door open, but other people don't. It is very much because as you say, if I'm sitting there with the door closed, no one gets a chance. So they feel they can't come and chat about something or talk to you about something. It's a bit, it's a bit pointless. There is a proper teamwork there and.

He wasn't doing it in a deliberate way to close the door things. He was actually. He just discovered himself doing this. It was great when his other senior colleagues were. And the couple of guys that work for him say, actually we want to talk to you more. Really? Yeah. But we don't feel we can because you're knee deep in this. And whoa. When he came back from that and actually now when they do this, they said we need to see you with a diary. And it was not like we need to see you in the diaries. Hang on. Work together. On Wednesdays they get together and they have some activities they plan if they're doing a big project. Yeah. Some weeks, if they got a big project, something happening, they might be in five days that week, the following week. So, guys, I'll see you in a week. They don't have to do it, they're not rigid with it, but that's one of the things they've planned. Aaron, what about yourself? Because you've got an interesting one because you have a mixed team, as it were, location wise, I'm pretty much the.

Remote treasurer because I live and work remotely in Ireland and our head office is in London. Two people in London, one in China, three in Brazil and then a 10 person back office, including some trainees in Poland. So a couple of devolve teams there. And we do have to be very mindful about those anchor days and it does mean a bit more travel for me. But I also get the most out of those days when I am in the office. My banks are also in London as well, so it can be quite pressured to fit everyone in, but it works. And our office is open plan. So cfo, CEO, they're all walking around sitting in the open, which is great. Complete exposure to everybody. The board of director can be there, but if you didn't distracting at a time.

I'd like to give a special thanks to flywire, our fantastic sponsors. If ever you've wondered whether There's 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 Greg to explain who Flywire are, how they can help you and your treasury team with your cross border payment headaches. Follow the link in today's show notes. Let's get back on with the show now. We I spoke to the panelists before and I won't do it as a question to the audience. AI data and we touched on that a little bit and talked about how that's going to be a rising thing. But we were also Aaron and I were talking about it before and then Paul, you've done SAP, you've done all that and they'll come to you. But I'll go with my panelists now just to put it to you. The future of treasury and it doesn't have to be data, it doesn't have to be AI Euro Finance every other session is that really. But what are your experiences? Because you were just talking about that. It's quite different for you guys as well.

I think we're probably going to be a slower adopter as a business and things like AI we are doing experiments here and there but from the finance perspective all it takes is a great big acquisition like we're about to close in a couple of months to completely shake everything up. So you've got completely different data structures to integrate. But I think it just boils down to simplicity, understanding your processes, standardizing them and then using things like data lakes to try to do what you can to put those extractive of data in. That's really it. It's just getting back to the basics. It's like a web because got your ERP which is like the center of the organization but then you've got suppliers and customers and there's all sorts of information coming in and out of your network all the time. So it's not just what's going on in your organization that determines how you analyze your data. There's just then one.

Yeah we will have room for a couple more questions if we do need themselves. What are you for seeing?

Yeah, we're very integrated in terms of our systems. In terms of AI we look I think it's there in the background sometimes my experience of it. Sometimes I get an email and for some reason there's a line that goes in. It's never the line I would have written but there's obviously some Algorithm there in the background that's trying to decide what I'm actually it says something like thanks very much for that. I'm like that's not what I was going to actually. But look, I think it is. There's no doubt, look, it moves very quickly. Computerization in itself has moved very quickly. When I was growing up, I was in college before I ever really on a computer. My, my 15 year old now, he built his first computer at 12 and when I asked him about it he just said oh, it's all in YouTube more so it's like his knowledge with computers in that generation is so far ahead of mine. So if AI is coming for me, I think I'll probably end up rolling over because I'm not. I would not see myself as techie. I think when it comes to strategy, when I think it comes to explaining strategy to people, I think you still need the human being. I think you still need the person who knows is this a case of rubbish in and rubbish out. So I do think that's still needed. I think the opportunity I think is for people who are like treasury analysts. I think they'll still be there. That role will probably be different. A lot of their processes will be automated. Just so much more is automated now than when I started working. It's a completely different world where they make things more efficient and make work more interesting for people I think overall. But it's hard to tell right now just because it is changing so quickly. If you see me in a few years time you can point and go, I told you the end of a job. But look, I think people will always want people with people skills. I think people will always want to deal with people. I do think that if someone's very happy with very process driven role and not wanting to change if you like and go into more value add, I think that is going to get tougher definitely without a shadow of a doubt. But I think things will be just different. I think where it'll take certain roles, it'll probably open up other opportunities and some of that will be in beautiful south and some of it will be where people no longer have to spend time manually analyzing some data without the machine. But actually it'll be done and it'll give them proper information. But I think from my point of view I always want the person there that I feel has the skill set to tell me it does this actually make sense is this.

And it's an interesting one as well. Six years ago when I started the podcast I thought was a Pretty good recruiter. I was all right. But the thing was what I discovered from Talking to over 300 treasurers is actually I got to know really what you guys do and actually then was talking to some very successful treasurers and some treasurers that were okay. And actually what I was discovering with the most successful treasurers that 20 years ago when I first started in treasury had let itself be pushed into a corner. Bit ivory towered. You got a bit of a pay rise. You're well pay for being a treasurer. But actually treasury has spent the past 20 years trying to battle its way back out and now be part of the business. And the treasurers that I've been seeing that have been more successful that I've talked to really go out to the business. They're getting their treasury analyst and saying treasury analyst. Now you talk about it not having one. We'll say your treasury analyst isn't just sitting there crunching the numbers. Your actual analyst can go out and become FPA and help those guys and get to know them, have a coffee with different parts of and actually integrate with the teams because their next move might not be within Treasury. Treasury has been a very specialist silo and actually the least silos. And that's the other thing I think with treasurers that those that are able to translate this manage upwards, talk to their cfo. The better you can talk to your CFO and present that picture. As you said earlier, the more successful you'll be, which actually isn't sometimes a natural skill set for some treasurers and I think they've really struggled. But there, it's still a great place to be within Treasury. Now we've got time for one question potentially, or we'll go to takeaways. Any of the. Oh, we will let David have one question. So it was a good question, David. Otherwise you get the ferryman does close at 12. What terms of ferryman close actually. But just regarding ambition. Just interested in how much of a stretch will it be for group treasurer to see about who's going to take that one first?

I think it's less of a stretch now than it used to be in the past. I think it's definitely there. I report directly into our cfo, but I talk to our CEO and I present to our board. There was a time, I think, where, as you say, treasury was very silent people really. You were away there managing the cash somewhere, but no one really knew maybe who you were or what you were doing. I think we're an unusual company because our CEO and CFO are so interested in Treasury. Are you interested in the risk management? And our board is as well. I've never been one to have a big plan. The CFO that we have, I think he's just absolutely incredible. I think he's really a phenomenal CFO and it's always daunting to fill big boots if you were to go down that route. He's not going anywhere anytime soon and.

Who knows in the future.

Erin, any thoughts?

The gap is narrowing and there's so many really strong treasures out there. Like you look at Andy Henley's journey at Tesco. He went into the treasury role without a real treasury background and is very much, I think on a path to cfo.

And I've seen, and I've seen it myself that it never used to be a thing that happened. And in the six years again and over the 25 plus years I've seen and I've re interviewed now some of the treasurers I had on the podcast. There was a great guy, Sam, who he was the treasurer for Rockefeller Group. He's now the treasurer, now the cfo Property Management, a property company in New York. And he and I caught up about what was the difference and he said I knew all this stuff but I didn't know some of this stuff. And he did it very effectively but it was a really interesting catch up call. I've done it with a couple of others. When I first started the podcast six years ago, there weren't any treasurers moving to cfo. Now it's becoming more rather than the unusual, wow, how do they do it? So we try and keep to time because there are free drinks, thank you very much sponsors. But we've got some great takeaways from the panelists here. Erin, maybe pick out just a couple of yours if you want. I love the power of tiny gains, but do you want to explain that to the audience a little bit as well?

Sure. So for anyone listening to the podcast and not watching the video, I've got two cringy little images on my slide here. So the first one is the power of marginal gains or time gains as James Kere says. So a former CEO at James Hardy Building Products where I worked introduced me to this concept that if we can improve 1% every day, by the end of the year it'll be 37 times better. And I thought that was great. But then I realized he probably playing Jerome slept from somehow. I guess my message is have a vision. The other image that I've got on the screen is my 30th birthday cake that my accounting mentor James Hardy organized.

For me and the cake is the.

Front cover of the treasurer magazine Mike.

Head eventually just like DLT at the.

Body and I think that was it. Even though I'd always worked in corporate treasury, it was only then that was courtesy that yeah, I can do this job. And in the faction that is the thing I want to go for. The five years later I managed to get myself there but that was really the moment where the penny dropped. Thanks Carol. If you're a stink then that's my message here is that I think have a vision and then use that continuous improvement to make sure that you get yourself there. Set small actionable goals, make it happen.

And just on that I sometimes finish some of my sessions and I when Aaron and I talked about the other day about this, we talk about. I've done this with US audiences as well and just saying with your treasurers, you're going oh yeah, how do I do something 1% better? Our balance sheet or whatever this is about you as people. So what I did a couple of times I gave them these coffee vouchers and I said go and do this once on a Friday. Just take 10, 15 minutes for yourself and just think about what I could do for me or my team every week. And actually the feedback I was getting from people is incredible because okay, they weren't getting 37 times the thing but they. Because they were doing it once a week but actually they were saying 52 times iterations was amazing and actually making a difference. Some of them were doing a health thing, some that they were getting off the bus a bit earlier. So all different things and the variety of it. So maybe just have a think about that, we'll talk about it and more of a drink. So I have one less drink tonight. One more. I know but we're going to come back to Paul Paul maybe pick up a couple of yours. Maybe you can see them at the back. That's it. Communication downwards upwards. Understand your business. Embrace change engagement mental.

If you get an opportunity, work abroast. If I look at the Irish treasury market certainly compared to what I've seen I've worked in the States and everything in the trade but probably a little bit behind for other countries there. I think seeing new initiatives, new ways of working, new mechanisms of working and working the fines Katrina is the most important and also it doesn't mean that's the key climate either. You have to have the RT change pursued again. Don't be afraid very standards and we in trophy have to be the best. We have to bring the best out of the team. We have to have that goal, we have to have that boring desire. It's not for everybody. And if it doesn't work for some of your team, the right trophy is gone. And as I said, my thing I said previously, proficiency process technology, full KC EMA for you.

For me, I suppose the one it sounds a little bit twee, but be trustworthy, honest to the team there. And it's more than just your moral fiber or whatever. It's really be the person people can depend on that they can depend on you. To be honest. I think being a team player, if you're not easy to work with, you can be all these other things and do all of these other things. But if people don't want to work with you, it's going to be very difficult to actually really make a successful career. So I think that's one and I think knowing the value of your internal network, because we talk a lot about external networks and external networks are great, but I think you always have to remember that you and your colleagues know more about your company, its risks, its opportunities, and that's talking to your people in your operations, getting all of that knowledge, having that communication. Because sometimes I think we maybe don't value our internal network as much and it's an extremely powerful and important network to have because I come to things with a treasury hat, but I'm not seeing on the ground what's happening in the operations. So we need and they will be by nature much more risk taking and that may not always be appropriate either. So I think it's making sure that internal network is really leveraged as well as your external networks.

Would have been easier for you guys not to come in today. It would have been easier for you straight after work to head home and everything else. But you have made the effort to do this. So actually maybe should take some number one reflect on it. It will be on the podcast later. So do take some action from it as well. Working remotely connections. This is actually this is one of the reasons we joke about heading off to the pub afterwards and everything else. But there's a serious part of that is actually you as treasurers are sociable people. You will gain some more from your network. That's why we're doing it as well. Maybe if you are meeting someone this evening, Chris Fulton, who is one of the treasurers now, a CFO next week one one of the days he told me about his networking tips and I wish I could take it, but I have to give him credit for it and what it was. Now, okay, a lot of you know each other, but sometimes you meet someone this evening you don't know. And what he said was that he would meet someone and this could be this event, it could be a Euro finance can be at some of the other events and he would meet someone and he began a conversation and then someone else would come along and they said, I said, sorry, can you give me a second? He would just take a note about that person, just take her, they're going, daughter's going off to university, she's going to this. And he would then make a personal connection afterwards. And he's made three moves now. I think it is in his career, not through me, I've had words with him, but actually he's got these through his network because people have come to him, said, oh, we'd like you to come and be now. He's a CFO of now is actually coo. I think it is because they said, I'm not looking for another job. He said, no, we don't. But we know that you are the right person because your network has told us this. It does the work for you. And then again, follow up with everyone. Guys, amazing, thank you very much for making the effort, getting out of your remote offices. We have got the sponsorship which does pay for the free bar. So do make the most of it. But before that, give these wonderful people abandoned. Boss, thanks for tuning into another great episode. You really enjoy it. Thank you very much. You make it worthwhile us recording them with these amazing treasury professionals right the way across the world, from the us, across the uk, across Europe, and there's lots more exciting guests to come and lots more live events. We love delivering this content. We get asked now, is this what you do? Do you just do content? You just do? No, the reason we do the content is to get to know you guys, to give you back the tips for success, if you like. But we're here to help you hire someone. If you need to recruit, call us. Because at our heart, we are a Treasury recruitment company. That's how we pay the bills, that's how we pay for the podcast and that's what we're passionate about. We hear from you at events and things. Can we also help you find your next great role? Can we help you hire? The answer is yes, that's exactly what we do. Yes, we do our treasury salary survey@treasurysalary.com that helps us know exactly how to benchmark not only your salary but also when you're looking to hire, we know exactly what the market is paying. Wherever you might be, whether it's the us, UK or Europe, we want to make sure that we are the best informed, that we're not just finger in the air. We always know. If you want to hire the best in treasury, don't hesitate to contact us. Go onto the website treasuryrecruitment.com or in the US you can contact Joe Grabowski. Europe, contact the lovely Katie for more senior roles and roles across the uk, reach out and contact me or drop any of us an email Joe at treasuryrecruitment.com Katie treasuryrecruitment.com or Mike@treasuryrecruitment.com Let us help you make the hiring process as amazingly seamless and easy as our podcasts are to listen to. Thanks for your amazing support and looking forward to seeing you at either an event or a conference very soon. Or just give me a call. Let's help you find the next role or recruit the next treasury professional. All right, until next week, Movie. Thanks.

Sam.