Why Every Aspiring Treasurer Should Take the ACT Exams with George Sawtell

I suspect like a lot of treasury people, those famous words fell into treasury is exactly what happened to me. So I started a company called Delta PLC in a small head office in London. It was an international engineering company that didn't have a Treasury Department. And whilst I started as a Treasury traditional head office accountant, quickly after I arrived was a treasurer whose job was to establish a Treasury Department. And to begin with he needed to head of treasury and Tax. He needed to spend his initial months looking at how that department may be set up. And after six months he started to lay the planks it were for a Treasury Department. And that's where I realized that this could be interesting and was starting to grab me as somewhere where I might like to work. In fact that was the treasurer was Martin Smith who Tom turn to work for Dyson for many years and in James Dyson's family office. And you know, he gave me that opportunity and you know, was a great teacher and mentor in my treasury career. So one of the things I did at Delta was I did the first FX deals, the first deposits I put in the treasury management system. And I did realise at that point that treasury really was for me. And then I looked at the association of Corporate treasury and I like doing exams at that period in my life and I started the treasury exams and I can honestly say they were the most relevant exams I've ever done. It was because what I was doing during the day helped me with my exams and the studying also helped me going forward what I needed to do for my work. So they really were very practical, helpful exams. So I did all of them. When I say that I did all of them, I was exempt some modules because of my Chartered Accountancy qualification, but I then went on to the next level. So they did them all in one go. By the time I finished that and spent a couple of years at treasury and Delta, I realized that it was a small company, a small department. But to expand my treasury career, which I then set on, I needed to move to a bigger company with a bigger Treasury Department. It was a real challenge to work with colleagues in those areas to explain that it wasn't really their cash and we really needed that cash to come back to the center to shore up the balance sheet. That was challenging for a number of reasons. There were cultural differences, there was the long term view that that cash was theirs. The cash was quite often tied up with the government bank who was also the biggest employer, who was also typically a shareholder of cable and wireless. So very unique nuances. But that was created challenges in problem solving. And that's one of the reasons why I like treasury. Because there's many areas where there's conundrums that need solutions, and seeking your way around that and negotiating and presenting why that is the way to go is a skill that needs to be developed. But once you've got it, it's incredibly helpful to have SA.