Why Curiosity Is the Most Valuable Skill in Treasury

Before we get into this week's episode, I wanted to share a few short clips from the panel. I think this shows exactly why we love doing these events so much. In front of over 1,000 people a year now, we've got one Treasurer talking about how they ended up in Treasury almost by accident. Started off doing payments, even using faxes, and then being given the chance to grow, learn, and build their Treasury career. Then you've got another example of a Treasurer in the real world where the banking stress hit the US, there was cash sitting with Silicon Valley Bank. It wasn't about sending a long email and waiting for someone else to decide what to do. It's about taking action, getting the cash out, making sure people were updated, and then explaining the options from there. That's Marco. So have a listen there. And then finally, a really important point about reputation, because when you work in Treasury, you're close to the money, trust matters, And your reputation matters alongside it. And if that's ever damaged, it's hard to get back. So listen to these 3 short clips from the panel before we dive into the full podcast.

This is my Spanish accent. And then I end up in Treasury one day in Madrid. I was studying in England and then I end up in Madrid. I told my mom I will be there 2 weeks. I spent 12 years there. After work. I was looking for jobs, but I didn't know exactly what I really wanted, what I could do. I did some accounting before, tax. I end up doing some tax in Madrid. I don't know if this is for me or not. And then someone gives me the opportunity in an interview to go to the corporate treasury department. They have this vision of creating this team. Started more in the lower level of— I find your start point in treasury more sophisticated. In my time, I started to do payments with fax. Right? I don't know if some of you know what is a fax, but I did. So I started from very low level, processing payments, etc. But thanks to the people that were building department and they believe me and someone sees something on me, gave me certain opportunities to be trained, to study through the company, challenging me a lot. And then I could start making my vision of what I wanted to do, not just doing payments.

Just give a simple example, you know, when the stress came up in the US banking market, we had Silicon Valley Bank, we had $10 billion cash sitting there. I didn't send an email to my boss. I made sure that the cash was coming out and then reported it, you know, the action that we did and kept him up to speed. On other occasions where it's not that easy to act quickly, you need to report. And you can say, you know, here are the steps that we can be taking to resolve it. Option 1, option 2, option 3, you know, whatever it is. And that's how we move forward. I would always give a recommendation in the option. I would say, you know, my preferred solution is this because, you know, these are the reasons. And that's what I would propose.

You have to think, analyze in advance the available scenarios. You have to be ready for different scenarios and either to prevent them in advance or have a clear plan what to do if something happens. This is always cheaper. And the second thing is the Warren Buffett quote: "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it." And especially in the world of money, when you sit close to money, it's very important to keep your reputation transparent and clean because that's what's built in years and is lost by one incorrect action, especially now in this digital world where anything you say, anything you do will go viral.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast. In this week's show, you're going to become a virtual participant in one of our Treasury Career Corner live events. In these sessions, I interview a panel of senior treasury professionals about their treasury careers. This is done in front of a live audience, and you'll get to hear from these amazing treasury leaders as I talk to them about their treasury career journeys, some of the lessons they've learned along the way, and they offer their advice about how you too can become a successful treasury practitioner. Please have a listen, enjoy the discussion. Hopefully you'll come join us as well, one of our Treasury Career Corner live events very soon. As I say every week, let's get on with the show. When was the last time— in fact, I've just answered it myself in my head. The last time you were able to quiz 3 Amazing Treasures was 6 months ago, and actually Lorena was here and we had an amazing evening. And you guys here in Amsterdam, just to start actually, so we were standing in a bar and I was standing there with my wife at the end of a great session. We're all— and we're going to have drinks later as well. And someone came out, when's the next one? It So good. I went, oh, it's not till November. I looked around the room of you guys all having a drink. We, we will have drinks at 7:30, so we'll finish on time. And I said, when's the next one? The second person, I went, it's in May. And wife's like, what? I said, I've just made it up, love.

Oh.

I said, because you guys showed us by being there some amazing places, listening, getting some great knowledge from these treasury professionals. So in exchange for them making the effort to come here, I want your energy, enthusiasm. We're going to do some questions and answers. With about 10 or 15 minutes to go. So switch off your phones, anyone that just needs to make sure the sound is off a little bit. But why do I do these things? Well, I'm Mike Richards. I run the Treasury Recruitment Company. I help you as practitioners find your next roles. I help you if you need to recruit. But then I started a podcast 7 and a half years ago. Now we've done 430+ of them. We've had treasurers from across the world. Global Treasurer of Amazon was on episode 400, and it keeps continuing to grow. 260,000 downloads. And each and every week I interview a treasurer just like this. And then it came along, the live event as well. So that's the team that helped me. These are our sponsors. So Baker McKenzie, you've already heard from, and they will be in the bar as well. So you've got to go and talk to Philippe about giving him all your legal business. Gonna have Chatham Financial. Can you put your hands up there? There we go. Keep it up. Crisis Greenwich. Yeah, you longer name, keep that. Big hands. Cariba, great. And State Street, great. Those are the guys buying the drinks without them, this, and also sponsoring this event. Without them, it wouldn't exist and you wouldn't get this amazing knowledge. This is how we're going to go through. I'm doing the intro. I'm going to ask my treasurers, they're going to introduce themselves, then we can talk about how they started their treasury careers, how they've developed as well, how the world has changed. We used to have on this, I noticed we're going to change one of these about working from home, everyone's used to hybrid now. Now it's the march of technology and stuff. We will talk about that a little bit in the main session, but if you've got more in-depth questions, we can do them outside as well. We'll do then some takeaways as well. But first of all, I'll hand over to my first guest, Marco. Over to you, sir.

All right. Yeah, Marco Schuchmann, born and raised in Germany. How did I come to Treasury? Well, you know, after my military career, I started in banking, a very great switch, worked for some international banks, but at some point in time I was tired of being the consultant and the salesperson. I wanted to feel the nitty-gritty details, and that's how I ended up in Treasury.

But then talk us through a little bit how you— well, you gave me a very quick run. Give us a few of your highlights and your career steps.

Ah, career step. I moved in 2003 to the Netherlands. I took on a position at a company called Amgen. Amgen didn't have a treasury operations function at all, so needed to build something from scratch. And it was as easy as that, you know, looking at JD Edwards, you know, how can we get a payment file out of JD Edwards? So then you look into, you know, at the time, EDIFACT was the best format to develop. So we looked into it, you know, what did the old JD Edwards system produce?, and there was a V3 format which was from Austria in the past, and we used that, we developed that, and within a week and a half we had a prototype of a payment file. So that was, you know, the very early stages, and then we built on this a shared service center operation, we built a back office process with netting, with FX hedges, balance sheet hedges, we were using one monthly FX rate at the company, so really fully fledged treasury operations process. After that, I went to AkzoNobel, built probably the largest and most extensive payment factory, probably with the exception of Philips, they are probably also same size and same structure. But we had closed economies like Vietnam, Brazil live on that payment factory. So really advanced. And from there, I went over to Fionn, FION was a troubled company, they needed a refinancing, and it was a very interesting process to working into the restructuring department of the banks, and then saving the company from becoming bankrupt, being part of the sacking of the CEO in the process, so it was a very intense period of time. From there, I moved on to ASICS, became the group treasurer of the sport shoes company, for a couple of years, set up SAP completely for them, set up JP Morgan as the global cash management bank for the first time that this Japanese company worked with an international bank. It was a cultural change for the company. And then from there, I moved over to L'Oréal Basel, where I worked as head of treasury operations, heading up a group of people of roughly 32 people in, over the globe. With satellites in Asia, in the US, and in Europe. And in 2021, so during COVID I moved over to my new company where I'm working still today. It's a company called Proca. We're producing basically big microscopes, you know, 2 stories high, really for big research organizations. And we're building treasury from scratch. It's greenfield, you know, governance, IT infrastructure, people, organization, and Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

So I want to explore in a moment, we'll go through the rest of the panelists, but then come back and explore how different industries has shaped your view of treasury, which we'll do with each of the members of the panel as well. Lorena, over to you.

Okay, so I'm Lorena. I was born in Argentina, I grew up in Spain. This is my Spanish accent speaking. And then I end up in treasury one day in Madrid. I was studying in England. And then I end up in Madrid. I told my mom I will be there 2 weeks. I spent 12 years there afterwards. I was looking for jobs and I didn't know, in finance, but I didn't know exactly what I really wanted, what I could do. I did some accounting before, tax. I end up doing some tax in Madrid. I'm like, I don't know if this is for me or not. And then someone give me the opportunity in an interview to to go to the corporate treasury department, they have this vision of creating this, this thing. If I hear you, I started more in the lower level. I find your start point in treasury more sophisticated. In my time, I started to do payments with fax, right? I don't know if some of you know what is a fax. So, but I did. So I started from very, very low level processing payments, etc. But thanks to the people that were building that department and they believed me and see— someone sees something on me, gave me certain opportunities to be trained, to study through the company, challenging me a lot. And then I could start making my vision of what I wanted to do, not just doing payments. And this is something that we later we talk more about leadership and encouraging people and everything, but that don't get frustrated with the start point of your career, right? Try to see ahead, right? Because I started really, really very low back in Madrid. I spent there 12 years doing that, and I started to envision how I wanted to do it, right? And I was very lucky to be selected by a very big company where I had the opportunity to see big departments of treasury, right? And with several areas. So then you can start seeing that it's more than whatever you are doing, right? And also amazing products that some companies I, I, we manage that you don't see in smaller companies and things like that. So I started to be really passionate about this because of the mix of more commercial side, communication with people, connecting with people, right? And the numbers because my background was business. So yeah, I started to be passionate about it and try to do my best to try to spread my CV and try not to know about everything because it's impossible, but have an idea about everything. So always saying yes to opportunities, but also looking for them because you cannot just be waiting for something. So whenever in a company I was there and I saw a position in some other area within treasury, because I had very in mind that I wanted to keep myself in treasury, I will ask, can I? And many times they say no, because probably my manager wanted to keep me there or whatever reason. But sometimes they say yes, and then I complete my CV in a way with finance, financial risk, more operational side, implementing systems and so on.

And you, just before we move to Felix and stuff, you're with now TMF Group. Can you just explain briefly who TMF are? Because they've got 89 countries, 125 offices, huge. So who are they?

And yeah, I'm very happy where I am right now because it's a, it's a very complex, uh, well done.

What do they do?

They offer financial services to companies, several pillars of business, capital markets, funds, management, etc. But from an internal finance point of view, Corporate Treasury, what we are managing there is 89 countries and growing because we grow by acquisition too. Since I joined, we grow the, already the countries, right? So there's always a challenge, a new country, a new entity, a new thinking, how we should optimize this when the new company gets in, right? How we are going to upstream the cash. Yeah, so it's really amazing. Also, it's spread all over the world. So very diverse team that I'm enjoying very much.

Cool. Felix, we'll pass over to you.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. So my name is Felix. I'm originally from Ukraine. And I started my career in banking. I have banking background, banking education, and I quickly from my childhood, I was attached to money and loved to take control of money and to know where, how it comes and where it goes. And so that's why I went to study banking. And then I was working from my third year of university. To Treasury, I came in 2001 when it was 9/11, and because of the time difference, it was almost the end of working day in Ukraine, and the news were spreading everywhere. And at that moment, I was working in credit risk department, but I went to the dealing room, and because I felt like that's where the people know what's going on. And so I spent a couple of days with them just forgetting about my main work, and word after word, the guys saw that, okay, this young guy has some potential. So, they took me to the dealing room and so I started being a trader, money market, a fix, then I slowly grew, was promoted. In a couple of years I moved as a treasury director to a mid-sized Ukrainian bank, then I was the treasury director of UniCredit subsidiaries in Ukraine. And then I decided that Ukraine is too small, and so I moved to Europe. I did my MBA, I moved to Saxo Bank where I was working with high net worth individuals as a sales trader and relationship manager and with institutional clients. And that really helped me expanding my knowledge about financial markets, so it was very complementary and a good addition to to my previous background, but with all the growth of banking restrictions, banking regulations, AML, and all that paperwork, I really felt that there is less and less creativity and joy in day-to-day work in banking because it came to like 80% of paperwork and only 20% of really doing something nice. And that was the nice moment when I moved to corporate treasury. And it was really great because I found my current company, almost 8 years with JetBrains, and I started building there. And what Marco said about greenfield, that's a great benefit when you can start building on a greenfield because you can build it the way you see it, the way you want it, and then everything works like you imagine. It's important that you imagine it in a good way so it works. But that's what I'm still enjoying because the team was growing, the company was growing, we were implementing new instruments, new— we implemented cash pooling, we started investing through platforms, we implemented a fixed hedging. It all started with simple things like cleaning the mess, cleaning the forecasting, getting the visibility on bank accounts. That's a basis, that's a foundation. And then you can start adding some big project like we do a big project every year which adds something nice to our treasury. And also I really liked, Lorena, you mentioned that knowing more and more and expanding the CV. During my MBA, we had a great career consultant who was a lecturer, and he was saying that the career path is that first you have to become expert, learning more and more about less and less precise topic until you know everything about nothing. But then you start getting seen, you start getting promoted, so you have to expand your knowledge and know to more and more areas until you know nothing about everything.

In that moment of my life.

Is that now what I have to call all these guys? They know everything about nothing. Okay, well then you're going to get lots of education from this session. So we'll start with the early part of your careers, but really rather than digging into your earlier careers, we've got a variety of different levels of experience here. If you were to give advice to new fresh Treasury professionals, maybe they've got a few years or something like that, 2 to 5 years maybe, or. So the profession, we'll start with yourself, Margot. What should they focus on first? Looking back at your experience, you obviously had banking, Felix, you had the same, but what did you, what do you think they need to do now? Because the world has changed a lot. We'll come on to technology, AI later on in the session. What do you think they should be thinking about now?

You need to understand the risks of your organization. You need to understand the ins and outs, what is going on in the company. What are the key impacts? You know, where can you make a difference to the organization? It can be a sales incentive. You know, it can be that you're putting something in place where you allow customers to create higher credit limits. And that can be as easy that you build a cash application tool, which gives you visibility right away and you don't need to reconcile for the next 2 weeks when the payment has come in. That could be one thing. Another thing could be if you have high FX risks on your balance sheet and you have P&L volatility, that might be the focus. If you're short on cash, then you need to see, you know, how can I fund the organization? So you really need to understand the pain points of the organization. You need to do a deep dive on what difference can you make in the organization and then come up with ideas. Come up with—

How can you do that if you're an analyst? You're right, you're starting out, you're an analyst, maybe senior treasury analyst, you know, go to your treasurer and say, I want to find out the problems of this company. And they were— Sure, I'm finding these out. Or how do you put it?

But to be honest with you, you know what I did in my early years? I just went into SAP and looked it up. I just found my way in the organization. And, you know, I was working it sometimes at night when you don't have to do your day-to-day activities. But, you know, just because I was curious. Curiosity, interest in what is changing. Then you also spend a little bit of time extra. You go the extra mile. And then you come up with ideas. And 9 out of the 10 times you get a no. But you need to get beyond that. And that one time, that is where you have fun.

Cool.

Lorena.

It's all about purpose in life, right? So once you have a purpose and if you really, really start trying this as a career for a junior treasury. I'm totally aligned with you. Curiosity, of course, will bring you everything because no one is gonna stop you when you want to learn something, right? You can learn by yourself, of course. You can get into certificates, etc., but really, really knowing the business and keep connecting. And nowadays, I wish I would start my career in treasury in this moment, a lot of time because not with my experience, it's with the community that is around treasury. All the people like yourselves, you know, promoting the profession, etc. When I started, that was not a thing. So most of the people I knew, they didn't know what I was doing, right? Still happening that sometimes. Not in Amsterdam, I think more people know, but in Spain back in the time, no. Keep the curiosity totally alive and keep learning by yourself. And don't get frustrated because of the no, because sometimes we stop our careers because of someone not giving you the opportunity, opening a door. The doors are open, okay? You just need to move. And if the opportunity is not there, just change it, right? Change and try it again. And make mistakes and ask questions. I mean, be active, connected, and know your business.

Cool. Felix?

I will add that you have to focus on hard skills and soft skills. So if you're a young, like 1-3 years experience, keep learning and improving your hard skills, understanding what's going on in treasury to dig to the deepest details. Because those details matter and those details make the difference. And in soft skills, it's about being proactive, it's about being willing to deliver, willing to do something more. And like I always like saying, that there is no traffic on the extra mile. It's always, especially now with the next generations who are more focused on work-life balance, and somebody still has to do the work, and that's how you can be seen.

And let me probably just add something there, because based on the skills, based on the insights that you have, you know, at the time you need to present something, you need to present it with ease. You need to convince somebody. That's, you know, don't get into the details, try to see the bigger picture, try to explain, bring people back. Sometimes it's speaking children language. But that's what it is, you know. And treasury is complicated, but you need to translate that message and bring it over that somebody else understands it and is with you.

And now we have AI for that. You don't need to get lost in huge Excel copy-pasting data, and then you don't— when you finalize that, you don't remember the, the first analysis you thought about it, right? But now you can get these tools, helps that will provide a, a higher level of your work.

Well, we'll stay with you for that. So how are you using technology? We had this conversation last week in Dublin as well, and the— and also did it the ACT conference, Liverpool. One of the things that we were talking to the panel there, they're using very much on a personal level. Their companies are starting to use some of it, but they're, they're still trying to use it. It's helping them develop their emails, it's helping them be faster at that, the volume of activity. And you guys in Treasury, you tend to be a very small Treasury team, so you're using any tool you can. But also they were talking about in business terms, Treasury being late adopters, they're waiting until everyone else makes the mistakes or, you know, we can take their experiences. Is that what you're seeing? And then we'll go across to Felix and then back.

In our case, and today we were talking about about that internally too. We are trying to get ready to understand how we can use it, right, in every department within internal finance. So we had a colleague explaining us about AI also, very knowledgeable, and he was advising us to really set up the basis of what we would like to do and then analyze if it's going to be AI or we have other kind of technology, robotic, that can simplify certain processes and then invest in AI, right? Or things like that. And internally, I'm encouraging everyone I know on my team to use it, right? When they have questions, when we have to read a document or whatever, but always validating the data, of course, because nowadays we don't have like a dedicated agent for us. But we are thinking in all these terms.

I would agree that we are late adopters. That's true because it's all about the confidence in the results and confidence in data. And if you cannot rely 100%, then you cannot do a lottery and then see if one of your subsidiaries gets the payroll on time or not. It's not a lottery. Therefore, and also the progress of AI and of technologies and of available tools is so quick that trying to catch up with something today while you master that it already becomes something simple or outdated, and there's a better solution, a quicker solution. So it's more about following the progress, understanding what's going on, implementing the solutions which are not risky for the company and for the decisions that you are making based on that. But at the same time, I believe that at some point of time, the AI will become so easy to use that trying to master it today, unless you want to develop something yourself, it does not make the effort to the outcome, does not make big sense because there will come easier solutions which would be more user-friendly, user-efficient. Even if we speak about TMS, there are many AI solutions inside of TMS like predictive forecasts, suggestions on a fixed hedging, for example, on the positions management. That's where it's already built in. You don't have to invent the wheel yourself, but you have to understand how these numbers are created and what decisions you should take based on that.

I'm the old-fashioned guy. I think we in treasury, we need to understand the basics. We need to understand the details, and we always will need to understand, because if technology fails, we still need to be in charge of the business. Having said that, I think our profile has changed over time, and we need to embrace the technology that's there, because it's making our life much easier. It's giving us insights, insights which allow us to much quicker react to what's going on in the market and how can we operate in a much quicker way than before. A couple of years ago, I was looking at CDS of banks to see, you know, is there a potential default risk, logging in on a daily basis to Bloomberg, downloading the curves, you know, where are we at. Today, I'm getting a report and that report shows me the trends and shows me, you know, what's going on in the market. And, you know, that is just a time saver and an efficiency changer because then I can react and I can spend more time on the things— on what are we going to do actually with the data. If we have identified there is a risk, how do we prevent the risk actually to hit us? And that's where the power of technology comes in. And that's why I would say, you know, we in Treasury, we need to embrace the technology. And get wherever we can, but don't trust everything.

And that came out in our session actually in Liverpool, that Victoria Underwood from Imperial, she was actually saying she used Copilot. She was looking at it for her FX risks. She put in this, she put in some information, gave her this perfect answer. She looked at it, she went, this is completely wrong. This could put the company bust. And she went in and said, you've got the answer wrong. Said, oh yeah, I have actually. Sorry. She was, oh, okay, I'm just meant to trust you. She would back to base and then ask another question. Oh, and I've got that wrong as well. And she was just like, hang on. And, and she was then working with her team saying, guys, you can't just trust it. You've gotta have your underlying knowledge. But that being said, I mean, there was, and there, there was a talk between, I was saying to the room about artificial intelligence and what is real intelligence. And that's the thing. But obviously it's making you guys more efficient and things like that.

Yes, but adding to what you were saying, because that's when it comes— what I was trying to say before is that you need to define and put the limits or not to— for the business to use the AI, right? So you cannot just get in the trend that because you personally are using ChatGPT, then you go with the Copilot and try to resolve your day there. No. You need to prepare the tool with the data, feed the data, how you want the machine to understand the data too, and everything. So then you will have an outcome with quality to do your job better, right? And time efficient, of course. But, but not just asking. And yeah, if we—

if you ask 100 questions, probably 5, I don't know, So let's talk about some of the keys to your success because you guys are great networkers. That's how I've met you through various sessions and met you at different conferences. I know, exactly. And then we've got this networking that's going to go on here. Now, again, I was talking to one of my clients. He was talking to— it was over one— he had a junior guy that had gone into him as the treasurer. And this junior guy, look, I'm a junior guy. And it comes back to your example earlier about how do you find out about the company and things. And he said, go and have coffee with all the business leaders. And then he came back after about 5, 6 weeks. He said, how's it going? Well, it's going all right. He went, how many coffees? 3. He went, have 6. He said, have one a week, get to know the different people in the business. But how important do you think in this evolving, changing world, networking, communicating internally, and taking it from maybe also you as treasurers as well in the outside world and having your external networks as well? We start with yourself and then move across the panel. But Marco, what about you?

Yeah, I think it's very important because next to the technological side, we in treasury have become the business partners of the organization. In my organization, I can say that people are coming to me and they're asking me proactive questions. So how do you get there? You need to ask the questions: What is it that actually keeps you awake at night? What is it that would help you to increase sales? You know, these are the kind of questions that you need to ask a business guy. And then they come up with some things which you can't understand, which you probably think, okay, it's not totally not related to what I'm doing. But then you need to take it back and you need to come up with ideas, you need to brainstorm, and you know, you need to feed it back and start the dialogue. And that's how you get the foot in the door. You know, it's, it's the normal life lessons. Get the foot in the door, speak to the people, and make them aware that you are there. All of a sudden they come to you.

Great.

Felix, and then we'll come back to you.

Um, yesterday I was listening to an interesting lecture from, uh, the IE Business School professor, and he was actually talking about the human qualities, human skills in the AI world, where you cannot compete with the efficiency of AI as a human because most of the existing now systems already show IQ, knowledge, and speed of processing much higher than the best of us can perform. So where people can focus on, humans, are the human qualities, the integrity, the reliability, the empathy, and other skills that the machine cannot reproduce. And that's why it is really important on building connections, on speaking to people, on trying to learn from people, because it's also The way how the knowledge is transmitted is from generation to generation, from people to people. That's where you get also the institutional knowledge, because there are some things which are specific to your company and you can learn and understand that only internally, because all treasuries are the same, but every company is different and you meet different shareholders, different boards, different stakeholders, different needs. Needs, different tasks, and even the same task is approached differently in a different environment. And that's the institutional knowledge that you as a young growing treasurer can— should absorb from the people in the company.

For me, connecting and networking is the game changer internally, of course, because of what you are saying, because you get to know the company, you to know colleagues, but of course you need to be reliable. And so if people come, just not to be just busy, right? Just to try to help, because you are in the end incorporated, you are providing a service also for the company. So that has to be very clear. But also externally, the networking here in Amsterdam is amazing with the DICT and everything, and I managed even to have consider some of the networking friends, and for me that is very important because we can share our profession in a way that no one else understands. We, we sometimes suffer the same things. We get to, to talk about it, and that's amazing too, right? So again, to the human touch, always, right? So it's more— and makes your profession fun.

So last week I interviewed Manoj Pandey, the global treasurer for Valshanam Healthcare Group and things, and great interview. We'll come out in a few weeks. But one of the key things he and I talked about was how his role had evolved to go from operational but then strategic and how he was managing, managing his teams. I was going to ask that, but I think actually I'd rather make the most of the time with you guys. How do you then manage upwards? Because he was then talking about A couple of things, tips from him was never give your boss bad news, or if you do, have, you know, the reasons for it. And this is the bad news. This is what we're going to do about it. This is the action plan. Yeah. Or this is the good news. And here's my pay review request. He didn't say exactly those words, but that's what we talked about. But the back was, this is the value we were adding. We've done that with a few other treasurers like Emma Haywood and stuff like that, where she's talked about demonstrated to your boss the value. So the both bits, which I think the nicest way— 5, 10 years ago, you guys, you weren't the best at. Now you're really owning the function a lot more. We'll go across on the panel. How do you manage upwards and not give the bad news, or how do you deliver it? Go through it.

You first.

Okay.

Oh, sorry. You know, bad news. You know, first you need to make the assessment. Is it something that you can manage yourself? If I can manage it myself, then I do it, you know, resolve it. Just give a simple example, you know, when the stress came up in the US banking market, we had Silicon Valley Bank, we had $10 billion cash sitting there. I didn't send an email to my boss. I made sure that the cash was coming out and then reported it, you know, the action that we did and kept him up to speed. On other occasions where it's not that easy to act quickly, you need to report, and you can say, you know, here are the steps that we can be taking to resolve it. Option 1, Option 2, Option 3, you know, whatever it is. And that's, uh, that's how we move forward. I would always give a recommendation in the option. I would say, you know, my preferred solution is this because, you know, these are the reasons. And That's what I would propose.

I would say that the approach is different depending on the stage of your career that you are, right? First, if you are a junior, don't panic, okay? But no one is dying, right? But I used to say to some of my teams, we don't work in a hospital here, right? But don't panic, but communicate as soon as possible. So first, do the assessment, of course, but when you are junior, sometimes you don't have that You are panicking, you are moving millions from one account to another, it's your first job, and I can understand that you get panicked. But talk to your manager in a way to, to understand what to do, to learn for the next time, not to come back all the time, right? But when you are more in a senior position, of course you need to assess and try to really get to the solution 100%. If not, it's because it's very critical, and then, uh, yeah, you it with Khaled.

You said everything right, so I would like to look at this question from a different point because we have here not only young treasurers but also experienced managers, and I would like to speak up from the manager point of view, how your team and your subordinates will deliver the bad message to you. And it is extremely important to create the environment where the mistake, even if it is a mistake, not just the bad news which is driven by external factors, but even when a mistake of an employee is not a reason for, like, for a strict criticism, for negative atmosphere. So you have to create the environment where people can come to you as a manager and say, okay, this is the problem, or this is what I did wrong. Then do the feedback, the review, and make sure they can avoid these mistakes in the future. The other story is if they continue repeating the same mistakes, that's a different story. But still, they need to understand that even making mistakes is a part of growth. Making mistakes is a part of work, and only the person who doesn't do anything doesn't make mistakes. Mistakes. And this is one of the manager functions, that's to create such environment.

And we've had it as well with a couple of my clients that said they're allowed to make the first mistake and we help them correct it. If they make a second mistake, they're calling me. So I'm fine with that. And I can help them find the new role and everything else. But aside from that, you guys in treasury, we'll stay with yourself, Felix. Keep strategic? You know, you've talked about this, that, you know, there is a lot of pressure on you. Technology is helping, AI and things like that, but there's still a lot of work to get through. How do you keep your view on helping the company move forward? You know, over the past few years, we've had all different things like blockchain and a lot of CFOs have said, can you go and explore it for me? I said, what, on top of my day job? Yes, please. Like, oh, great. And then it goes away. Now you've got technology and all those different things. How do you handle it? And then we'll come back this way as well. How do you keep your eye on the prize, if you like?

There is the main course, main track, the things that need to be done and that are timeless. So first you need to make sure that all the processes and everything is being performed correctly inside the company. And then you start thinking and checking what else, how you can improve, what else you can add to this. And of course, having these kind of events where you can network or you can have presentations from different people, from other companies, from other vendors, especially the big conference like Eurofinance, that's where you really see the fair of the latest achievements and latest things to see, then you can say, okay, can I do something with this? Does it ring the bell for me? Can I try this in my work? How can I attach this? And that goes back to the curiosity that we discussed in the beginning. So you have to maintain your curiosity even when you're junior or when you're senior. That's what drives the company, the treasury, forward. But you may— you need to make sure that basic functions are covered.

I would say creating room for, for the others in the team, right? Because then when you create room to the others in the team, you have the room to keep yourself a strategic, right? And, and that comes with trust that you were talking about that in the end before, right? To giving them the trust and encourage them to really lead things, right? Because there's a moment in time when you are growing, managing teams that you think you need to know about everything and do everything and control everything, but then you need to let space there so you can perform more strategic. Otherwise it's impossible for you to grow, and then you will become a frustrated group treasurer.

On the, the basics that we were discussing, I always call it the treasury house. There's a foundation, policies, procedure, governance, infrastructure people, organization, IT systems, and then the core processes that you have. That house, you need to assess where you are in your process and where you want to go to this year. That is what are the must things to do for this year. In addition to this, then you have the special requirements that are coming where somebody wants to know something about AI. I always try to volunteer for it. Because of my personal curiosity. I'm sticking my head out, but I'm not doing it on my own. I'm working with a team. I'm helping people to understand. Throughout my career, I've worked with people, and 3 of the people that I've worked with and that were direct reports of me are in the meantime Group Treasurers and are much further in the organization than I am. I'm very happy for them, and, you know, it's— that is a nice development to see. But yeah, you know, helping people, empowering people, letting them make mistakes is indeed something that is very powerful. And it also helps me because I don't need to do everything.

Cool. So I'm gonna pitch a couple of other questions that I've been actually asked in a moment, but I'll just give you guys some time warning. So at 7:20, we'll go to questions. You've got 5 minutes. Think of the questions. We'll probably get through 1 or 2. You will then get to to mingle with the guests, with my panelists rather, downstairs in the bar. And we're going to do that from 7:30 till 8:45. Now because of the staffing here, we have to be out of the building by 9, otherwise Philippe, yeah, he gets angry. Watch out, you don't want to mess with him, he's a lawyer. Yeah, and we will be going to the bar at the end of the road. And again, that's about the networking challenge, which I'll come up to in a minute. But before we do that, again, I was in Liverpool, was asked by this lovely lady, she said long question to basically ask me 5 years from now, where's Treasury going to be and everything else. I went, I don't know. 3 years ago it was blockchain, if that, you know, was dying. And they said, and did you use ChatGPT 3 years ago? She went, well, no. I was exactly, how can you predict 5 years? I said, if you can, I want my lotto numbers now, please. Because I said, we don't know it. I know it's so, it's an evolving world. However, what do you think the greatest change or differences that will— the Treasury will be encountering coming up over the next 2 to 3 years. Where do you see— what's the direction of travel? So, you know, you can answer it any way you want because I think it's a tough way to, you know, you— we're still dealing with the day-to-day. But what are the things that you think coming down the road? First to you.

I mean, we experiencing it right— well, we experience it right now. Volatility.

Yeah.

The unpredictable. Something can change from today to tomorrow.

So How do you cope with it?

Well, you need to be ready for it. And for us in Treasury, cash is king. Financial risk is something that we need to manage. So these are the kind of things we need to be able to manage and be on top of them. And if it means that we need to do the nitty-gritty details and if we need to call people and if we need to do something, then we're just going to do it. It's— it is— it is part of the business. You know, what you see is in a stress situation, all of a sudden you get even higher attention from your senior management. I've experienced that a couple of times. All of a sudden, you know, they might, or, you know, they might not talk to treasury at all, you know, and they see it as a strategic function. And it's nice to see that we are doing a good financing at cheap rates and body, body, body, but when it really gets tough, then all of a sudden Your CEO is calling you on a daily basis. What is my cash? Where is it sitting? When, when does that customer pay? And these are the kind of things where you need to step up and need to be able to do that.

It's a profession that is always evolving. Since I'm 23 years doing this, since I was a treasury analyst, right? Baby steps for me, but, but it's always evolving. So you need to like this, you need to like change, curious, be curious, keep learning. And be ready for changes. Otherwise, this is not the place. You have to find your place in other side of finance.

Well, uncertainty is actually the basis why the Treasury exists. That's the reason why the— how do you say— raison d'être. Yeah, the reason of existence for Treasury is to manage the uncertainty for the company. And therefore, uncertainty will and I think that we are ahead of some higher volatility and much higher inflation periods. And, but speaking about technology or changing, changes in the how Treasury works and operates, it will be slower than we expect because Treasury is not an IT function. It's reliable. Therefore, what is reliable is changing slowly. And that's why I do not expect drastic changes. There will be new things, there will be maybe the cryptos will or stablecoins will get more and more. But we are— and we cannot ignore them, that will come at some stage. But 10 years ago, 2017, 2018, probably it was already discussed like, oh, Bitcoin tomorrow will replace all the fiat money. But we're 10 years after that, we're still here. So all these changes, they will go slow and we still manage to embrace them and to take the best out of it.

So you guys should all be connected to me on LinkedIn anyway, but if you are, you'll notice that I do a LinkedIn newsletter every single week, which I've done now for crumbs about 2 years. And then we do a weekly video. Now, the reason I say this isn't self-promotion, it's more that you've got some great pieces of advice. And each week I'll take a piece of advice that I've heard. We did Dublin last week as well. There were little nuggets from you treasury professionals where you're sharing your knowledge and stuff, and that's what we highlight each week. We shine a light on it. One of the ones is actually next week's newsletter, I think it is, about building a network. Because there's a guy I know in the US and he's always got his job through just through some of the people he's— he hasn't had to network in a while, and he said, when's the bet, you know, when's the best time to look for a job? Yesterday. Always be looking. You know, I'm not saying this is— we're not doing this as a career recruitment thing. I'm just saying to you guys, this network can also help you if you need to go somewhere and get some advice. You're going to get to meet some people later on, and we'll do our networking challenge in a moment. But now I'm going to ask you to throw some questions this way as well. I want your outdoor voice, not your indoor voice, because we don't have microphones, so I can't come around the room. So put your hands up with some questions to get to ask these great, great treasurers, please. Come on, from you, you guys. Take one over here from Kirill. Nice and loud. So in, I think, in two situations, so in a greenfield situation and maybe coming into an existing treasury, if you think about How many people you need in a team and how do you convince that upwards in order to get there? Great. So how many people in a team and if you need more or how do you deal with it? So we'll go across the panel.

You need to measure that. So when you join in a company and sometimes they tell you, you will have 5 people and it's all covered and TMS and everything, right? And sometimes that is not the reality itself or the people that are there are not dedicated to the task that they should be, according to the goals that you are going to have, etc. So you need to properly assess and measure that. When you have a good business case, it's very difficult that you won't have some, some kind of support at some time. Sometimes you won't be able to hire 10 people at the same time, right? But maybe one by one, and then be realistic in prioritizing the what you want to achieve. I have set up from scratch teams a few times, and it's not easy, but it's very doable. So we can talk about this offline.

That's great.

Yeah, it's— should I also answer?

Yeah, no, please.

It's about, uh, you need to think about functionality and you need to think about backups so that the person, even if you hire somebody for a new function, you need to always think ahead. If the person gets sick, if the person goes for a vacation, maternity, paternity leave, whatever, this function cannot just get stopped. So, and because treasury is a valuable function, so you need to first create the value of treasury inside the company and then get the right people. And also think ahead, not when your people are already working on 120% of work of their capacity, but when they're at 80%.

So that's probably coming back to what I said, the house. It is, you need to understand what is it that I'm currently doing and where do I want to go to. What you need as a manager to translate to your bosses is what is that incremental change and what is the added value that we are delivering as an organization. And sometimes the, the pure answer is it is because of statutory reasons, or because, you know, there are some changing laws that you need to adhere to it. So when, uh, when, when the, uh, the FX reporting was coming up, you just had to provide that infrastructure. You had to do it. There was no way around. And, and there are other things, uh, where you just need to outline that need. But if you have an added value and then you can substantiate it, then you have your business case.

I would like to add one thing, if I may, because also apart from the business case to hire the people, you also need to have a very good plan to onboard these people and have the time to dedicate to them. So you can get the approval for the budget for 3 people, but if you're not going to dedicate time, then the mess is going to keep a mess, right? So it's very important that you really have all that very clear And to add on to both of these, we'll come to that question in a sec.

The, but the, the podcast we do, Treasure Career Corner, this was actually asked a couple of years ago at one of our live sessions. I'm trying to remember who it was. And one of the guests, and actually I've heard it a number of times, he went in with a new boss and said, we want this. And they said no. Boss is like, what? He said, I can deliver this much with this team. Because he did a big measurement exercise. He come with a new starter, said, this is what I can give you. I can't give you this and this until you give me— and this is how we've done it. He basically broke it down into— he said, and this is the amount of time, this amount of cost. If you give me this budget, I can give you this. If you give me this many people, I can deliver that. And that's one of the key things. And then I see someone the other day said, oh, listen to your podcast. How do I listen to your podcast? It's on a little-known thing called Apple and Spotify. And, oh, okay. And I said, that's a good thing. So do sign up. And this is the kind of knowledge you get from it as well. Now, and a question there. Also, there was a question over here, but we've got one question. I'll come back to you in a moment. Sorry. Nice and loud.

Sorry.

I assume you're all active globally.

Do you discuss Ukraine? Yes. Venezuela?

Yes. You need to be proactive there, right? So when something is going on, When something is going on in the world, I want to see where is my cash, what is there, what I have there, what I'm going to do next week there. So you need to be proactive.

You don't react, but you monitor. Yes. So there are a couple of things. We do WACC calculations per country. So also when we go into financing decisions, we always use a country WACC. And in the country WACC, you already have a risk assessment to a related country. And when it comes to the operational risk, then yeah, we have a risk heat map within our organization where we focus on things. I mean, in restricted countries or in countries where the heat map is building up, we're getting all of the cash out as quickly as possible.

Yes, but normally it's very important to, to start setting up decentralization as much as possible, right? So the more centralized you The less risk you have locally, right? Let's say.

So one of the things that we are doing, for example, is we are setting up, or we've set up a cross-currency notional pool in the Netherlands. And then when we see a particular country is facing some risks, we just open a bank account for them, a non-resident account, and then let the major flows go to this non-resident account.

Yeah, great.

You can have a meet.

We've got time for one more and then you will be able to ask the questions out and out in the drinks because we don't want to— yeah, because we're limited. But one here and then this side.

Prashantis, have you ever been in a situation that you are out of the projects that you are doing apart from the business as usual activities? Like the projects are done and dusted and now you're not able to start a new project, you're not able to see that what new I can do.

I don't know if I'm gonna answer this question properly, but you are saying if we are out because We don't have time.

All the projects are finished and you are not able to find a new project to start.

Ah, no, no, no, never. With 89 countries.

I've seen a to-do list. It doesn't stop. Yeah.

No, because it's the business as usual, it's your team dedication time that you spend there. It's also the projects that you want to get involved with your CFO for your learning, your own learning. So yeah, if you get bored, it's because you want.

It's not a computer game where you can reach the last level, kill the—

there's no game over restart.

In fact, I have to say, talking about the career itself, some of the changes I've done in my career was because I started to foresee that maybe it was not active enough. And I could— so then I changed.

That's the answer to that. So one final question.

What part has education and qualifications played in your career?

Yeah, we didn't— again, I'd love to know, but I didn't want to, you know, we want to keep them fresh as well. But education and things, what do you think other people should do?

I think that's important because especially now when your CVs are filtered and screened by AI, it's extremely important to have to have the right letters and the right words in your CV, just not to be filtered out on the first stage. For me personally, being from the third world country, not everyone of you knows this difference, but yeah, if you come from Ukraine or similar third world country in Europe, it is considered that these people do not know anything, do not learn anything, and whenever, even when they come to they kind of need to start from scratch because that doesn't count. I had my university degree, my PhD degree in Ukraine, and my quite nice career in Ukraine, but only when I did MBA in Austria, in Vienna, that kind of gave, made my previous achievements legit. Legitimate.

Yeah.

And that kind of opened the door for people. Like when I was looking for a job in Europe, okay, people started speaking to me because I had European education. So it kind of gives you an opportunity to sell yourself. It does not guarantee you anything, but you get the opportunity.

In my opinion, I think that you need to keep learning. We were talking about this extensive. It doesn't matter if it's a certificate or things that you go because you don't have the— you need to be willing to do the job at high quality and keep learning inside the company, right? Because otherwise, if you have a certificate but then you don't put yourself into it, yeah, you might be a very good student but not high performance.

And just to add on what the previous people said, is there are two things. You need to get the foot in the door. Uh, that's where you need the certificates for. If a hiring process, they will always ask you for certificates. And I mean, I've, I've seen in, in the, in the meantime how these AI recruitments are working and how people are rejected without the degrees. You know, you don't have a chance to go through that HR process. But then it comes what, what Mike Richards was saying, you need to build up your networking relationship. If you know people and they know who you are, then you might get the foot in the door. Me personally, I think I don't need necessarily a decree, but I need a person who is willing to dive in, into the deep details and really do the work until the finishing line, really bring it over the line. So instead of having these high potentials which identify all of the areas and they find everything nice, but then when it gets into the realization, they drop it. And you know, it takes them 5 years to implement something. Then I'd rather have somebody who is down to earth and doing the things, implement it, get it done, and then we move on to the next.

We're going to go to wrap up now. So takeaways, because again, I want to keep to time because we are— we will be thrown out. Philippe, watch out for him.

Go.

So Marco Festival.

All right, all right, what did I say? Um, you know, for me, I mean, I made the move from banking to Treasury. It's— I love that function, but I've seen people, um, they were working then for me, they were not interested in that long-term career in Treasury. So, you know, that's something that you need to assess for yourself. Do you want to really stay long-term in Treasury? Then stay and make the best out of it. It might mean that you run into a ceiling where you cannot go forward, where you've seen it, where you get bored or whatever, then just move on to the next company. This is the world that we're living in. This is just normal practice. You don't have to work for 35 years for the same company anymore. And on the other side, if you are that young person which has lots of ambitions in the world, Don't stay too long in the treasury function because, you know, that's what I've seen a couple of times, that people were working for me for 3, 3 and a half years and all of a sudden they wanted to take on an FPA, FP&A controlling, or an accounting function. And then the manager said, yeah, but you know, you're that treasury specialist, so you get that brand mark. So, so that, that's something that, that you need to be aware of. Treasury is not for No, it is not for everyone. But I mean, my key advice is if you learn something about corporate finance, that's going to help you quite a lot in all of the financing functions. So make sure you pick on that. And then, you know what I was talking on before, understand the heat map and yeah, try to be proactive. It can come down to you at some point in time that you actually need to save the company. And then you need to be ready for it. Be ready.

Yeah, I think I remember what I said. It's what we have been discussing, right? Like, uh, try to think ahead and keep growing if you really, really like this profession. And otherwise, skip it. But like any other profession, it is. Yeah.

So prevention is cheaper than the cure, that you have to think, analyze in advance the available scenarios. You have to be ready for different scenarios and either to prevent them in advance or have a clear plan what to do if something happens. This is always cheaper. And the second thing is the Warren Buffett quote: it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. And especially in, in the world of Money, when you sit close to money, it's very important to keep your reputation transparent and clean because that's what's built in years and is lost by one incorrect action, especially now in this digital world where anything you say, anything you do will go viral during the concert, for example.

So when you go downstairs, talk to people and everything else, you're going to have the networking challenge coming up in a moment. But don't just go, oh, let's connect on LinkedIn. Well, you can connect on LinkedIn, but I met you that evening, I'd love to talk to you about your FX hedging strategy, we're doing a similar thing. Or actually deepen your relationships because that's going to help you. You can see this from this panel. Then follow up, because if you don't follow up, it will— your network will just wither and fade and things like that. So the networking challenge, career corner. When you go downstairs— did this very successfully in Texas— and chap who was actually quite introverted, he found it quite difficult. He said, Mike, I've got out of my comfort zone, I've come here this evening. It was a brilliant first step. The second step was, I went, you need to meet 5 new people. And I said, minimum 3, but try and aim for 5. 5 people you've not met before. You're going to go downstairs, you've got people's name badges. Hi, I'm Mike Richards, I do this, da da da. Go and do that because you've invested the time to come here. Yes, you can go soon, but the fact is there are free drinks being paid for by our lovely sponsors. Thank you, sponsors. But we do this to help you with your treasury careers. If you don't invest in yourselves, who is? It's your own fault. So you've got this opportunity to go and meet these other people. And it's not just about jobs, it's about you and your profession. You've heard from these amazing panelists, so I want you to put your hands together for them. Yeah, and let's go to the bar.

It's just one down.

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