From Banking to Treasury: The Career Move That Seemed Like a Step Back But It Wasn’t

Keith Gaub, Vice President and Assistant Treasurer at Bristol-Myers Squibb: The willingness to do that, the sacrifice that I’d have to make at that point in time in my career was gonna be on the compensation front and the title front, and I was okay with that because I am a true believer in playing the long game. If you have to step sideways or potentially even step backwards in order to position yourself for longer term success.

Keith Gaub: In an area that you really wanna work in, your passion is in. So when I thought about that move, because I don’t think it’s easy for everyone to take a pay cut or take a title cut, they feel like I’ve worked this hard, why would I step backwards? Again, careers are long and if you’re thinking about kind of the end goal as to where you want to get to, to make a transition like that, I would do it a hundred outta a hundred times over again.

Keith Gaub: I had this friend of mine. When we were younger, who had this theory that every game of solitaire could be won. But the reason I say that is because I think a corporate career can be on that parallel. If you play your hand correctly, if you realize the opportunity in the moment and you handle it correctly, you’re gonna have a very successful career.

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast, where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I’ll 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.

Mike Richards: In this week’s show, I’m delighted by, joined by Keith Gaub, the Vice President and Assistant Treasurer at Bristol-Myers Squibb, a lovely colleague of Sandra Ramos Alvez, who’s been here before. She’s been on the podcast a couple of times. Lovely lady. Keith works alongside Sandra, and she said to me. Keith’s great.

Mike Richards: You’ve gotta get him on your show. I was like, right. But we’ll put a link to those shows in the show notes. But to let you guys know, Bristol Myers Squibb are a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop, and deliver. I. Innovative medicines that help patients around the world get over and prevail over serious diseases.

Mike Richards: Built a sustainable pipeline of potential therapies. You’ll hear this if you go back to listen to some of the other ones as well, but Bristol MAs group, global Pharmaceutical with Keith is gonna explain a bit more about bit later on in the show. But Keith, over to you sir. How did your career get started and how you got started in finance and then treasury over to you?

Keith Gaub: Sure. First, thanks for having me on. Mike, love the show. Think it’s a great platform for treasury folks to talk about. What’s our passion? It’s interesting because my early career path, I started it at Lehman Brothers. I was in banking and I had an internship and an accounting group, and then they offered me a full-time job and then the middle, maybe a year into that full-time job, the SVP of that area called me in and just said, look, I get the sense that maybe you’d like to do some things outside of accounting.

Keith Gaub: Are you interested in other areas of the firm? And I said, absolutely, certainly young enough. Let’s, let’s see what else is out there. And he said, I know the treasurer pretty well. I know the head of the controller. I’ll send you a resume over there and let’s see what comes back. Treasurer called immediately and said, we had three open roles.

Keith Gaub: I had him come over, we can interview and we can see if he’s a fit for one. So I went over there, uh, I interviewed for all three. I ended up. Finding the asset and liability management role, the most engaging, and they agreed and they offered me the position. Which I accepted. Now what’s interesting is that the controller then circled back and said, wait a second.

Keith Gaub: I was traveling to Japan. I, I didn’t see this email. We have open roles, certainly always looking for young talent, and by that time, I’d already accepted and I didn’t wanna go back on that. So I often sometimes look back and think how different a career I might have had, had I got that controller and spoke to ’em about their open roles.

Keith Gaub: But I have absolutely zero regrets. I worked in treasury at Lehman in a variety of different roles, asset and liability management. Interest risk rate management and liquidity management as well. And then from there I moved actually into the front office sales and trading. And then the financial crisis hit and the career kind of took a path, a different

Mike Richards: path from there.

Mike Richards: Well, just from there. What’s actually the nice linkage, actually, so when I first started in treasury recruitment, they were like, I said, what’s treasury? And they said, we don’t know. Here’s all these treasury guys. And I was like, okay. So I started getting no treasury similar way. And the first two roles I’ve recruited were two heads of a LM and back in the time when you could barely find out the books about it.

Mike Richards: So head of a LM for Barclays, head of a LM for NatWest, I sure learned very quickly, but can you explain for the listeners. Asset liability management is the group risk and the bank’s balance sheet, not the external balance sheet. Can you just give them a quick potted history or explanation? If someone’s listening today and they’re a treasury, corporate treasury person, they’ll go, hang on.

Mike Richards: How does that relate to corporate treasury? It does. But it’s the corporate treasury within the bank. So how would you explain it?

Keith Gaub: Yeah, that’s right. So this is going back into the early two thousands. Certainly things may have evolved within the banking infrastructure since then, but asset and liability management back when I was doing the role was exactly right.

Keith Gaub: We were primarily looking after the company’s liabilities from the long-term debt, short-term borrowing side, as well as the cash investing side. We monitor the maturities. We looked at the debt maturity profile. We identified any risk within it. We looked at the cash, we did all the reporting on the investments, ensuring that we are liquidity, properly funded.

Keith Gaub: Anything related to that nature. Anytime there was an external borrowing, we made sure that the infrastructure was set up. We ensured that all the securities were properly booked within the TMS and that they flowed through to the company’s ERP system. It was a really great early hands-on look, and what was really beneficial for that, which kind of set the tone for my entire career is I got to focus very singular and we talk a lot about.

Keith Gaub: Inch wide mile deep. It was really that kind of expertise. Being singular focused, proved really beneficial because after I rotated out of a LM and into interest rate risk management, and then liquidity management, I just got to spend a year plus in these singular focused disciplines that when I moved into more of a broader treasury function on the corporate side, I felt I was really well prepared.

Keith Gaub: From the time that I spent in banking on that, and it’s still, even though it was very early on in my career, was absolutely invaluable experience. And can

Mike Richards: you then, you and I know it, 2008 Lehman’s Crisis for New Start Crumbs. Yeah. That’s crazy. 17 years ago, I. I was there. Yeah, we were six years into the business treasury recruitment company and luckily for us, the one lucky thing, we didn’t do very much banking recruitment.

Mike Richards: We still do, we do more corporate treasury recruitment with the corporates, but it affected everyone. You were there though, at the coalface. What was that like? Or can you explain what it was in a nutshell? In those simplest terms?

Keith Gaub: Yeah. At the highest level, I look back sometimes and still wonder if it was a.

Keith Gaub: Mismanagement of risk or misunderstanding of risk. It goes back to the very basic, when you think about mortgages playing its part, it was a really interesting idea of mortgage securitization, bundling up mortgages, and then selling them as securities. And the securities were usually backed by the US government.

Keith Gaub: And then we moved into this model where we became private label and the quality of the loans themselves got called into question and eventually. It, it was a type of situation that really infected, really impacted the entire chain because if you think about it. The homeowners themselves were probably getting put into mortgages that maybe they couldn’t afford.

Keith Gaub: They had teaser rates and things like that. And then you look at the mortgage underwriters that were assuming a lot of risk lending out these risky loans. They were involved in the chain. The banks were then buying up these loans, looking to securitize them and then ultimately sell them to bond investors.

Keith Gaub: So when the financial crisis hit, not only did it impact. That chain, it really started to dive into all areas of the US economy, freezing, liquidity, unemployment, skyrocketing. It was a really concerning time, and ultimately it was a true testament that the economy was able to recover and move on. But it certainly was a very scary period in time and for someone that had been in banking, had only knew banking and jobs similar to the ones that I had, were getting eliminated left and right.

Keith Gaub: It was absolutely a concerning time. So what then happened? ’cause you made a couple of moves, you just me, but then straight back into Bark Barkley’s capital. Just talk us through. Yeah, so at that time it was interesting. I applied for a treasury job at cheering Plow. Unfortunately, that role had already been offered to someone by the time I got into the pool.

Keith Gaub: But my resume got flagged by someone. My resume got flagged by someone in that recruiting process that was looking for a dedicated finance person to, to work in their marketing department. So I accepted that job just saying, look, I, I just need to work at this time period. And what was interesting is my first day at Shear Plow was the day that Merck bought them.

Keith Gaub: So it, I didn’t even, I was getting dressed in the morning. I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to go in, but I was there for a year. They were going through the acquisition and at that point in time, someone that I had worked very closely with at Lehman Brothers had gone over to Barclays and was building out his team, and he asked me if I wanted to come over.

Keith Gaub: So I returned to Barclays. There. And at that point in time you saw it. It was a really interesting look into company culture, and I’m sure it’s all been sorted out now, but you had two institutions in Barclays and Lehman that probably had very different styles and viewed the world in a very different way.

Keith Gaub: So I. Cultural wise and stylistic wise, it was just maybe not quite the perfect fit for me. And that was really the point in time where I started thinking about what else do I want to do in my career and do I wanna remain in banking or do I wanna do something else? And right around that time period, I started realizing how much I actually missed some of the treasury work I was doing.

Keith Gaub: ’cause I was in a little bit of a different capacity at Barclays and I started thinking about what my path back to treasury might look like and how we can facilitate that.

Mike Richards: And so you made that move or you and I had a, we had our pre-show chat. You then, you’ve been there three years and you thought, and again we talked about the fact that I get approached lots of the time by lots of banking individuals say, Hey, I can do treasury.

Mike Richards: I. I couldn’t go into corporate treasure. I’m like, yeah, you can, but you’d have to come back down and then across and they’re like, and in fact this week’s newsletter was about exactly that or focused in a little bit on that. Can you talk us through that decision making process? ’cause it was a great conversation you and I had.

Mike Richards: Yeah,

Keith Gaub: it is definitely not easy. And that’s not even just from banking to corporate, that could really be any industry switch. It comes with a little bit of a transition period and may even come with some sacrifices. And when, in my instance, I had worked in banking at that point in time for around 12 years.

Keith Gaub: I had established myself in more of a leadership position, but I realized that I was gonna be crossing over an entirely different sector, certainly different business treasury set up differently, and the willingness to do that, the sacrifice that I’d have to make at that point in time in my career. Was gonna be on the compensation front and the title front, and I was okay with that because we could certainly expand on this.

Keith Gaub: I am a true believer in playing the long game. At that point in time, I had worked 12 years, I had figured I’m gonna work another 30. And if you have to step sideways or potentially even step backwards in order to position yourself for longer term success in an area that you really wanna work in, your passion is in.

Keith Gaub: And for me, I. A chance, the company that I was going to work for was a spin out. It was an animal health company called Zoetis. They were spinning out of Pfizer and their treasury department was in the infancy stages. And I’m one that type of person that likes to con continuously challenge yourself. And I looked and said, I.

Keith Gaub: This thing needs to be built. Like how cool of an opportunity is this? Most of the times you step into a role and someone’s done it for some period of time, and you make it your own. You put the changes, but rarely do you walk into a role where your CFO on the first day is saying, what should our credit rating be?

Keith Gaub: It was really grassroots and just an awesome experience. So when I. Thought about that move because I don’t think it’s easy for everyone to take a pay cut or take a title cut. They feel like I’ve worked this hard, why would I step backwards? Again, careers are long and if you’re thinking about kind of the end goal as to where you want to get to, to make a transition like that, I would do it a hundred outta a hundred times over again.

Keith Gaub: And so

Mike Richards: is. You Animal healthcare is, or just talk through if you would the business. ’cause then also I wanted to go through the, as you say, the playbook is, if someone’s in a similar situation, they’re joining a company like that and it’s a blank. You open the book and hang on the page is a blank. How did you do it?

Mike Richards: How did you go about it?

Keith Gaub: Yeah. So the business of Zoetis Animal Health, there is, are some similarities to human health. But the big difference obviously is the medications are for companion animals and livestock, and the difference there is. There’s really not the insurance company dynamic. It’s really direct to consumer model.

Keith Gaub: They sell directly into the veterinarians and the livestock producers, and very similar to way a consumer stable product would price. If the market deems its value and can pay for it, then that’s where the price is. If not, you have to make kind of price adjustments and they also don’t have. Quite the same challenges that the human health have with LOE, which stands for loss of Exclusivity.

Keith Gaub: You take a company like Bristol Myers, the other large pharmaceutical companies that have significant revenue generating products, the moment they’re the, they lose the exclusivity on that brand. There’s gonna be generic companies that come in and flood the market and. Instantly causing price reductions for the current manufacturer.

Keith Gaub: Animal health’s a little bit different. You have the generic dynamic, but since the products themselves don’t usually gross the amount that some of the larger human health products, the generic companies will typically spend their resources trying to replicate more of the human health side. So the LOE is not as.

Keith Gaub: Was not as prominent a dynamic in that space. And then in terms of how I went in there, it was really just with some humility. Go in there, understanding that you don’t know everything. Like I was a banking guy. I felt really confident in my technical skillset when it came to capital structure and derivatives and liquidity management strategies.

Keith Gaub: But it’s a whole new business. It’s a whole new industry. It’s a, a company that manufac and sells tangible products versus very different from the banking model. And then going in and thinking about how to establish things. Had a lot of conversations. What should the company look like? A lot of peer benchmarking.

Keith Gaub: How do we wanna set this up? Conversations with banks, research on companies that had been spun out before. And then ultimately, it is some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done in my entire life because those opportunities are few and far between. And even though it was a public company, you’ll feel that kind of private sense of ownerships.

Keith Gaub: Look what we built. All of this wasn’t here when we started, and that was my responsibility was in treasury. But same thing could be said for fp and a and commercial finance and manufacturing finance. It was a group of people that kind of collectively came together to build something. And even though I’m no longer with the company, I still actively follow them.

Keith Gaub: A lot of good friends at former colleagues there, they’re doing fantastic. And it was just, it really built my skillset for the role that I’m in now.

Mike Richards: And

Keith Gaub: you were there

Mike Richards: for nearly a decade, so what were the, some of the. Most complex transactions you did, or was it all easy? You just surely just go to the market.

Mike Richards: Hey, we’re healthcare great. Thanks very much. Easy, easy street.

Keith Gaub: Yeah, I would probably never use the word easy in any role I’ve had. I don’t necessarily think any professional should seek out easy. I think. Part of the excitement around the line of work that we’re in is that you wanna challenge yourself.

Keith Gaub: And I would say the overarching hardest part is there were no other standalone animal health companies at the time. So let’s just say it’s, you’re spinning out, you know, a company in the human health space, there’s maybe a non-core asset and a large pharma is spinning them out. There might be some standalone companies that you can compare yourself to.

Keith Gaub: Zoetis didn’t have that. We were really unique in that phase. So getting into kind of, okay, how predictable are our cash flows? How much debt can actually is needed to support the business. And then when you’re a, when you’re a newly spun company, you’re usually left relatively highly levered and very little liquidity that kind of usually dividend up to the parents.

Keith Gaub: So you looked at it in phases. Okay. What are. Very compartmentalized, like Gantt chart almost. What does the first one to two years look like? What does the first two to four year look like? And then you start thinking about, okay, now that you start getting more of evolve, like what should our financial policy be?

Keith Gaub: Do we want to be a dividend paying company? Do we wanna be a company that’s heavily focused on m and a? Do we wanna. Move up the credit spectrum and be an A-rated company and try to reduce interest expense. So it was really more just about trying to align what we were doing in treasury with the overall operations of the company and the strategic direction that management really saw us moving in.

Keith Gaub: So we tried to make sure that we positioned ourselves to be very agile and that we can move with the business. We could support business growth, but we also were certainly very good risk management and core disciplines on the treasury front.

Mike Richards: Then you evolved that role and went into the investor relations, and I know you said you had a blast there ’cause you enjoyed that outward and you do anyway that you’re very affable.

Mike Richards: And when we met and everything else, you’re outgoing, you talk to people. What was that like for you, going out with that messaging around strategy? And you’ve talked about that and getting it right, as you say, over planning, but now you’ve gotta, how did that change for you being in investor relations?

Keith Gaub: Yeah, so it’s interesting, but you could certainly have a discussion. How long is appropriate to stay in enroll? I think I tend to stay on the longer side, and I’ll certainly debate people that think you should rotate quite frequently. I do think there’s advantages and disadvantages of both, but the reason I stayed in the treasury role for so long is I just felt like the work wasn’t done it, it wasn’t to the place that I wanted to hand it off to someone else.

Keith Gaub: Our CFO, who was a great mentor of mine, he had offered me a few different roles during that core period. One was in commercial finance, one was in fp and a. I just kept telling him, I just feel like the job is not done. Hold today. Yeah. And he said, okay, when the job is done, you let me know and we’ll get you something to do.

Keith Gaub: And then when there was movement going on and a position in IR opened up, he called me and he said, look, I don’t know if the job is done or not, but I’ve got a role that I think you can really excel in. And I really think you give a hard look at it. And that was an IR. I met with the head of ir, who’s still there today.

Keith Gaub: Fantastic professional, great mentor for me in that space. Learned a lot from him, and I just found it very engaging. You’re a spokesman for the company. You get to look into all of the business areas, really get on firm footing and understand the strategic direction of the company. You’re framing the message, you’re helping, you’re managing up to your CFO and your CEO on how the external world is perceiving your company and what the messaging might be.

Keith Gaub: And it was, it was one of those roles, I’ll never forget it because my first month there, the head of IR said, look, I’m gonna take calls with investors. You just listen in. And I listened in and I remember thinking there is absolutely no way that I am going to ever get to the level that he’s on. And it was overwhelming.

Keith Gaub: And there was obviously some fear that kind of sets in, but it’s a really great lesson to anyone that tries to do something different. Don’t worry about the vertical client. Everyone’s gonna have to make it. There’s gonna be some growing pains, there’s gonna be some mistakes, but can you learn from them?

Keith Gaub: Can you try to perfect your craft even though maybe nothing can be perfected? And then fast forward, six months, eight months in the comfort level became overwhelming. He started turning me loose to meet with more of our larger institutional investors on their own. And I really just enjoyed it. I, it was experience that I think I still to this day tell every young person I come across, try to rotate through a few different groups when the time is right.

Keith Gaub: Ir is one of them because the old expression, be comfortable. Being uncomfortable may not be more fitting than when you’re in that role. If I go into a meeting with upper management now. I have a pretty good idea of the questions that they’re gonna ask. There’s always a few curve balls and you can try to prepare for the ones they’re gonna ask and adapt on the fly to the curve balls with ir, and you’re meeting external institutional investors, prospective investors, you have no idea what they’re gonna ask.

Keith Gaub: So you’re going in, you’re prepared, you have a high level understanding, but when they start coming at you, you’ve gotta be on your feet thinking fast and make sure that you deliver the message that’s consistent with the company’s message. And you move on through there, but great experience. And so what happened next?

Keith Gaub: What, how did you come and join Bristol Myers Squid? Yeah, so my two channels after that were treasury and ir, and I had a really great relationship with the treasurer and a really great relationship with the head of ir. And my understanding from conversations with them was just. We’re probably gonna be in these roles for a considerable period of time, and while I was still extremely happy doing what I was doing in ir, I said, I’ll be on the lookout for the home run job.

Keith Gaub: The absolute no brainer. And that’s really a well said way of, I look at all career opportunities. Like I look for, I like to stay at companies for a while, grow within the organization, love the relationship you can build and getting into the work. But every now and again, there’s just gonna be that opportunity that is just gonna be impossible to turn down.

Keith Gaub: And when the Bristol Assistant Treasurer role opened up, and Sandra, obviously you’ve had on the show, some of my banking partners had nothing but the best things to say about her. I thought it was cer certainly something I should consider. And then as we got more into the interviewing process, understood the scope of the role, saw where Bristol was in the journey, and again, just a new challenge.

Keith Gaub: It was one of those just absolutely cannot turn it down roles. It was really hard to leave a place like Zoetis. It’s a great company, really well run, great colleagues, but I just felt for my personal development and the skillset that I wanted to build and the longer term career trajectory that moved.

Keith Gaub: Was just the right one.

Mike Richards: And how does it contrast, you’ve done obviously probably similar drivers sometimes as you say, it’s brand new markets and things like that. What are the similarities and the contrast, if you like, between the, not the roles, but actually the industries maybe, and how that then affects treasury

Keith Gaub: and things?

Keith Gaub: Probably the only similarities that I can think of is the technicals, right? Bond issuances or bond issuances. Yeah. FX derivatives, interest rate, derivatives, cash strategies and liquidity management, and things like that. All of those same principles apply. Once I got into the human health side, the scale of things was much different.

Keith Gaub: Zoetis, we probably had about $5 billion, $6 billion of debt. Bristol Myers right now has probably somewhere in the upper forties. Zoetis didn’t have a very large FX program. We’re about 9 billion at Bristol. The cash that we keep on the balance sheet is probably five times greater. Even the cross currency strategies for net investment hedging are larger, so everything is just more scale wise, is larger.

Keith Gaub: And then the other huge difference is the MA. We talked a little bit earlier on, we talked about the loss of exclusivity, right? So you take a company like Bristol Myers, some of our key products are facing loss of exclusivity. I’ve heard our CFO say very well said a few times. Pharmaceutical companies reinvent themselves once every seven years or so as a new product start facing LOE, and you have the new product ramping up.

Keith Gaub: And those new products come from your investments in internal innovation as well as sourcing external innovation. We remain relatively active on the m and a front, and treasury obviously plays a very significant role in that. So it the ability to come in and have a very significant grasp of the balance sheet, what our firepower could be, how we could deploy capital for growth, balancing it with shareholder distributions on the scale.

Keith Gaub: The company like BMS was certainly a very large change for me, and again, I do not think you should take a role. If you do not feel like it’s going to challenge you, everyone’s got their different, everyone’s got their different priorities in line. Some people will certainly look for compensation and title and quality of life and all these things, and that’s all important.

Keith Gaub: But for someone like myself, like I want to be challenged, I don’t think I’d want to take a role that I felt I didn’t need to develop while I was in to do it efficiently.

Mike Richards: And

Keith Gaub: just

Mike Richards: going back to your role actually. How do you split other responsibility areas? ’cause someone, so you are the VP and assistant treasurer.

Mike Richards: How’s it split up? Obviously when we talk to Sandra, she’s the treasurer overseas, how do you guys split up and how’s that

Keith Gaub: developed? Yeah, so I, I would say the basic way to describe that is Sandra has a. Several direct reports. So obviously within treasury, our corporate insurance team is there, Sandra, that’s into Sandra directly.

Keith Gaub: And then there’s our cash management team that’s into Sandra directly as well. And then I have the remaining items in treasury, so that includes our Capital Markets group, which is Capital Structure Initiatives. We do all of our cash flow forecasting and modeling. I oversee our financial risk management group, which does our FX and interest rate hedging, as well as our net investment hedging and liquidity management that we oversee the company’s cash.

Keith Gaub: I oversee our international treasury team, which is obviously responsible for capitalizations and loans around the world and repatriation back to the US as a a large. US domicile multinational company. We operate in several markets around the world, but we look to bring the cash back to the US as efficiently as possible, and then our pensions and benefits team.

Keith Gaub: So we look after the company’s 401k plans and some of the legacy pension plans around the world as their opportunity to de-risk them and things of that nature. So that’s my core responsibility. And when I talked to

Mike Richards: Sandra, I joked with her about winning awards. ’cause that’s all she’s about. That’s all she wants.

Mike Richards: She wants the glory. But we were joking. It’s about she and I talked about you guys winning awards for innovation and for changing things. Why is that important? Or from your, your seat, if you like, what is, what have you overseen, if you like, for that side of things? Yeah, I,

Keith Gaub: I don’t think the rewards are necessarily something that we just seek out.

Keith Gaub: I think the rewards are a byproduct of the way that we manage our treasury team and what’s core to us. And what I mean by that is there are certain areas within Treasury that could be very easy to implement and then just say, okay, that’s done. Let’s move on to something else. Yeah. And sure, we obviously are in the moving on to something else mole, but we never forget about the things that we’ve done.

Keith Gaub: We constantly reassess what we’ve done in the past and is there opportunities to effectively manage that Now, I think a, a great example of that is some of the things that we do on our Cashflow Hedging program. So we have a large cashflow hedging program, obviously as we sell in several different currencies outside the US and we use a combination of options and forwards to hedge those risks.

Keith Gaub: But we also do a lot of restructuring around them. So these are transactions that we’ve put on in the past. We look at the current market value of them. Now we look at whether or not there’s opportunities to, to ryke options into forwards at more favorable levels without compromising any risk for the companies.

Keith Gaub: We just don’t forget about. Things that we’ve done. We’re always constantly challenging ourselves and reassessing. And one of the things I always say is just because something may not have been appropriate for us a year or two ago doesn’t mean it’s not appropriate for us now. And I think our interest rate hedging program is a great example of that.

Keith Gaub: We started looking at interest rate hedging probably right around the time I joined, maybe even slightly before. I think a risk management. Interest rate principles are obviously important, but at the time it was a really tricky yield curve. You had an inverted yield curve, so swaps were really expensive, but then you fast forward that was 2022 when you had the significant inflation, you had the Russia and Ukraine war starting.

Keith Gaub: But then you look at in 2023 when you had started the disruption in the regional banks and you were going through the challenges Withe. Our interest income forecast was being shifted by millions of dollars a day because we model it off the forward curve and as the, the risk in the banking sector started to get priced in the market, put more rate cuts in there, and then if things looked like they were stabilizing, the rate cuts came out and it was just throwing our forecast all over the place.

Keith Gaub: And we said, look, we don’t necessarily know. If we’re positioned properly from an interest rate standpoint, if interest rates go to zero, our interest income is gonna follow, and that’s gonna be a significant EPS hit to the company. We certainly rolled out this plan. We worked with our CFO, we talked about the value of interest rate hedging.

Keith Gaub: He was fully on board with the strategy and we implemented the program. So this was something that we had looked at several years in the past, couldn’t get the timing right, but we kept up the consistent. The kind of consistent assessment of that, and I think that’s just a microcosm for the way that we look at things in treasury, consistently reevaluating and reassessing.

Mike Richards: And what difference do you feel that’s made? Is it just that you’ve de-risked it and when the CFO comes to your desk and go, yeah, we’ve got that under control, or why is that making such a difference?

Keith Gaub: Yeah, I think the reason it makes a difference is because I think most CFOs, ours certainly wouldn’t be different is when they report corporate earnings.

Keith Gaub: I think they want those earnings to be about the operations of the company, and there are always things that could introduce some noise into the earnings picture. You could have FX risk, you could have interest rate risk. You could have other different dynamics. And in treasury we have tools at our disposal to, to try to mitigate or offset some of that risk to really get more of a balanced profile and allow the earnings to be a representative of the business strength versus having it a muddied up picture in there.

Keith Gaub: So I think what it’s done is it’s given us greater forecasting transparency with having some of that balance on there so that when we’re. Going through and we’re bridging interest, income and interest expense, and we’re providing these forecasts, it’s a much easier story to follow and gives us a much more consistent picture.

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Mike Richards: If you are looking for a smarter, simpler way to manage your liquidity, then head to find out more at our partners page, treasury recruitment.com/partners, and find out much more. Let’s get back to the episode. And when you’ve touched on it there, the technical aspects of Treasury, very much on the interest.

Mike Richards: I know you are much more about people as well. Yeah. I just want to stay with that. Has that been the biggest recent challenge or I know we, people tell Rise of Technology or what are you seeing as the biggest challenges coming along at the moment? Is it or managing all of those things at once or what are you thinking?

Keith Gaub: Yeah, from a technical standpoint, the current market environment is certainly maybe not for the faint of heart. You’ve got, you’ve got decisions coming from the Fed, you’ve got tariffs, you’ve got other geopolitical risks going on. There’s significant volatility around the FX market, so certainly the technical aspect of making sure that you’re positioned yourself properly and again, that you know there’s nothing maybe that you should be doing that you haven’t done.

Keith Gaub: That’s certainly step one. I think the IT aspects and the use of AI in treasury is a real big one. Certainly as I don’t think resources have been growing. So looking for more automations and systems to free up people to do more of the analytical work is certainly beneficial and challenging at the same time.

Keith Gaub: And then for me personally, I never managed a team this large before coming to Bristol Myers. I, I, I certainly had people report into me, but it was a large team. So in addition to mentoring some of the younger folks. Ensuring that the technical skillset is to where we need it. You also have to make sure you’re really trying to get people into their ideal career fit.

Keith Gaub: People that have come into treasury, they have all different aspirations. Some of them wanna just grow and be a treasurer. Some of them are happy in their current role. Some of them wanna rotate and see different things. Some of them want to be CFOs. So what we think about our people aspect, how do we position them?

Keith Gaub: In the right roles and lay out the right plan, get them the right developmental opportunities to make sure that we’re setting them up on the best path to ultimately achieve their career aspirations. So that for me, because I had always been managed smaller teams, I was doing more of the hands-on work and could focus more just about delivering the product.

Keith Gaub: That’s still important today, but making sure that the culture of the group and your fostering careers is equally as important. And how many are you managing now, people wise? On what levels? It’s moved around a little bit, but let’s just say about 10 and have everyone from senior managers up through senior directors and those there in between.

Keith Gaub: It’s a great group, lot of treasury knowledge, so that’s one of the things that I think allows us to do some of the exciting things that we do is that. We’re not necessarily just a rotational group. We do certainly have people that come in for a couple years and do on to different things, but I think at the core, someone like myself, Sandra, and some of our other leaders have years of treasury experience, a depth of knowledge, a real solid technical background that, that we’re comfortable getting to some of the more exotic or elaborate type of transactions that you can do in this space.

Mike Richards: And looking at some of those individuals without naming names, it’s okay. We can cut them out in the edit anyway. Don’t worry. Yeah. Um, but joking aside, the, of the, your team, you’ve got more junior members of staff or less experienced, and then you’ve got more experienced. How do you. How do you manage them?

Mike Richards: How do you, how does the approach contrast if you like? Is it, I know that such and such. Yeah, they’re great. You just set them off and off they go and we’ll, I’ll see you in three months for a coffee or this a bit more handholding and coaching them or what are the, your keys to success? ’cause I know that you and I talked about this and it’s a preloaded question.

Mike Richards: We’ve already talked a bit about this, but this is for the listeners now.

Keith Gaub: Yeah. So I, it’s interesting when you manage a larger team, you realize that. People are very different, and everyone stylistically has different approaches, right? So I do think. The overwhelming key theme and certainly not breaking new ground here is communication.

Keith Gaub: Yeah. We in treasury, pride ourselves on being just a transparent group. I’ve said that our treasurer, Sandra, who you obviously know very well and we spoke about Yeah. Is the most approachable SVPI think I’ve ever come across. Our most junior level people are just comfortable having an honest conversation with her, so everything starts there.

Keith Gaub: When your chips are on the table and you can speak honestly and openly, then you don’t really have to worry about reading the tea leaves too much because it’s just being said too directly. And then the other thing is just turn people’s skill sets loose. Just unleash your talent. There are certain areas where obviously I.

Keith Gaub: Mistakes have gotta be limited or completely eliminated. And then there’s other areas where you can give people flexibility to have some kind of trial and error and verse directly, giving them the assignment, Hey, this is what we need to do. These are the steps, A, B, and C. Let them take a shot at it. And then C, what comes back for the product?

Keith Gaub: And then talk through maybe some things that could have been done differently or maybe you’d have considered a different approach, but unleash the skill sets. Don’t, don’t micromanage too much. Is the biggest thing. I think people, these are all professionals, regardless of their junior level. Sure, some might need a little bit more guidance than others, but even people at the director level are people that are 12 to 15 years in their career.

Keith Gaub: Some of them with a wealth experience. You have them on your team for a reason. Let them do what they do and just make sure that as you oversee and manage, that you’re being constructive and helpful, but allow people the freedom and flexibility to do their thing.

Mike Richards: One of the points I’ll make, and you and I, you’ve mentioned obviously Sandra.

Mike Richards: I’m good friends with Sandra and things like that. Sandra shared the stage with me, treasury Career Corner, live in London, so that was really good. One of the key things we talked about was after the session I said, she said, oh my God. Oh, how was I? Was I okay? She’s brilliant, we know this, but she’s not a natural extrovert sort of thing.

Mike Richards: You’re a little bit more, I would say, extrovert than maybe Sandra when I then called her to be. I guess with me, she’s gonna be share the stage with me at a FP Boston. I called her and she said, oh God, do I have to Richard? So I was like, yes, you’ve gotta join me. She was like, okay, yes, I’ll do it. ’cause she was getting out of her comfort zone and people I think will be surprised that Global Treasurer, Bristol Wise, like she’s not naturally into that.

Mike Richards: She’s had to lean into that. Now you’ve got that extrovert, outgoing, how do you manage that when you see others maybe that haven’t got it? You’ve touched on a little bit there, but I just wanted to explore that a little bit.

Keith Gaub: Yeah, and please don’t edit this because I want her to hear it. I think she’s a lot harder on herself than actually comes across in that space.

Keith Gaub: I’ve heard her podcast, I’ve seen her speak on these panels, and she certainly seems very natural. But to your point, there’s not necessarily a blueprint formula, right? There’s some people that are really comfortable. Openly speaking and being in front of management. I’ve taken some of my younger people and have conversations with our CFO and it looks like they’ve been doing this for a decade, and then other people are maybe a little bit more reserved.

Keith Gaub: Again, I always say lean into your strengths. Let’s talk about the areas that need to be developed and how we can develop them and then go from there. We’re all different people, and I think one of the things that Sandra and I have taken a lot of pride in is building a very diverse skillset. And very different personality types.

Keith Gaub: If you came and you met our treasury team, there’s, they’re certainly not clones of each other. Yeah. We’re all different in our own way. We all bring something unique to the table, and I think just honing in and accentuating those strengths and then looking to develop areas if people are certainly maybe a little bit more introverted, let’s look for opportunities to, to have them present at town halls and just get more comfortable with this.

Keith Gaub: Like I, I do believe. That talent is just a commitment to preparation and that most skills can absolutely be developed, and that is including certainly being a little bit more introverted, but being completely capable of doing presentations and being comfortable in front of management and other stakeholders.

Mike Richards: It’s a practice skill as well. I’ve said before, remember doing this breakout. At one time I was doing a section in Chicago and I just stood on stage. I suddenly broke the fourth wall and I went, guys. I hate public speaking. And they’re like, really? I was like, no, I’ve trained myself to do this. ’cause that’s how you, that’s one of the skills you, it is not my favorite skill.

Mike Richards: It’s the thing you learn, isn’t it? And develop now. And coming from that, I wanted to, what advice would you give to Treasury? We’re not that far off the end of the show, but would you give to treasury professionals if they are, you’ve moved industries. From and financial services, but then also some different corporates and things.

Mike Richards: If someone is thinking about doing that, is that’s the way to go, do you think, obviously treasury is treasury, right? They would cross the piece.

Keith Gaub: Yeah, so the advice that I would give them is a couple of things. The first is patience. Things do not happen overnight. From the time that I decided I wanted to cross over.

Keith Gaub: Onto the corporate side. It was probably a good year and a half before I landed, but over that time period, my desire to do something different never wavered. So certainly patience. The second is, again, just what I tell my younger people is never make a. Short term decisions that are gonna derail your longer term aspirations.

Keith Gaub: So if you see yourself, you’re sitting there and I’ll just use banking again. ’cause we’ve talked about sitting in banking and you’ve got a significant title and your compensation is significant, but you see yourself as a corporate treasurer doing nothing has consequences too. Should you turn down an opportunity and stay where you are just because you don’t want to take a title decrease or a pay decrease.

Keith Gaub: Then are you really helping yourself in the, in the longer term? And I would argue no. And then the other thing that I would say is people should really, and this is why it’s a great platform for this, and treasury personnel, certainly speak to each other, be mindful of your network, people you come across, people you meet.

Keith Gaub: I like to say that every interaction with someone, you’re either building a relationship or you’re tearing one down. And I think if you use that as the backdrop, you surround yourself with people that can share their experiences, that can maybe help you on your journey. Just leave a good impression on people.

Keith Gaub: When you’re in roles, work hard, be a team player. Be someone that’s reliable and that other groups can count upon. Be someone that people want to work with, potentially wanna work for. And you’ll usually be just fine. I’ve said this a hundred times, I’ve yet to see someone. That he or she is smart, hardworking, a good cultural fit, really reliable and pleasurable to be around that just can’t get the right opportunity.

Keith Gaub: I just don’t, I don’t see that if you, people are always thinking about what’s their next opportunity. But if you take care of the one that you’re in now, your next one will find you.

Mike Richards: Oh, lovely. We’re gonna, that’ll be, we’ll be playing that back on repeat. I think. Love that bit, but I’m not gonna give a shout out.

Mike Richards: It makes me feel sick saying this. But Leanne Perkins, great friend of the business and share the stage with her a number of times. Exactly as you say, she calls it, and I won this phrase, but as she says, your net is your net worth. She works at that agree more. She’s bloody brilliant at that stuff, so I couldn’t agree more.

Mike Richards: Ugh, God,

Keith Gaub: Mike, on that front, one of the people that I’m still closest with to this day is a boss of mine that I haven’t had, that I haven’t worked for 20 years. He and I still talk multiple times a year where we are in our career. Obviously he’s getting a little bit closer to retirement, but we still stay active.

Keith Gaub: And it, it’s just the value of your network. People that you’re, that you can go to for advice sounding boards if you have concerns or questions. Hey, am I thinking about this the right way? People, there is so much that people don’t know and can’t necessarily solve from themselves. They may have a good idea, but just having someone.

Keith Gaub: That you can trust to bounce things off or multiple people, which your network would be to bounce things off and give you career advice, even if they’re more junior. It, it’s just you’re looking for someone to help you think through things that maybe you haven’t thought out and be comfortable that you’re landing on the right decision.

Keith Gaub: It’s invaluable. So I, I always give that to young people. Be really cognizant about building relationships, not burning bridges. It’s a very small industry. Careers are long. It doesn’t mean you have to do something that you’re. To be fake and disingenuous and things like that, but just ensure that you’re putting yourself in the best possible position to succeed.

Keith Gaub: And having a really diverse and expansive network is certainly priority on that list, and both you and

Mike Richards: Sandra exact examples of that. And that’s what you’ve done and you’ve done it, and you’ve took. Those decisions, if you like, not the risks, the decisions. And that’s the great way we did it in early in your career and things.

Mike Richards: We’re gonna put your LinkedIn details in the show notes, and this is our weekly, the weekly wrap up on the podcast takeaways. Now that can be for people, maybe early, mid-career, late career, some of the, that’s why people tune in. They like to hear some of the stories from yourself or the advice. What advice are those levels are you gonna give for people to take away with ’em today?

Keith Gaub: The advice that I would give is be very calculated. I am very deliberate in everything I do. If you look at my resume, you’re not gonna see a ton of movement. You’re not gonna see a lot of things where it’s just, Ooh, I don’t make that. Doesn’t necessarily make sense. So be deliberate. That’s not to say anyone’s got the crystal ball to know if their next move is gonna be a good one or not, but ensure that you believe that.

Keith Gaub: You’re taking your next opportunity for the right reasons and the right reasons, again, for me is your starting point and a finishing point. And for me it’s linear. Everything’s about moving on that line. You can take a step backwards, that’s fine, but ultimately it’s still beneficial to getting to ultimately where you want to end up.

Keith Gaub: So I’ll always tell young people that. And the other thing is do what you’re passionate about, not necessarily just what you’re good at. If there’s areas of interest that you want to get in. That are really exciting. You just go for it. Have the courage to go for it. I have this, I had this friend of mine, I.

Keith Gaub: When we were younger, who had this theory that every game of solitaire could be won if you, it doesn’t matter how you dealt them, if you made every move correctly, it can be won. Now, I think mathematically, he’s completely in incorrect, but he was 12 at the time, so let’s cut him some slack. Yeah, yeah. But the reason I say that is because I think a corporate career can be on that parallel.

Keith Gaub: If you play your hand correctly, if you realize the opportunity in the moment and you handle it correctly, you’re gonna have a very successful career. You just have to be careful about stepping in the pitfalls or doing something that’s relatively difficult to unwind. So be very deliberate, calculated. Do what you’re passionate about, build a network and enjoy the ride.

Keith Gaub: Amazing. I, I won’t

Mike Richards: repeat all that ’cause it was just a great wrap up, Keith. Thank you very much sir, and looking forward to seeing

Keith Gaub: you in New York very soon. Thanks again, Mike. Appreciate you having me. Great platform. Love what it does for the treasury personnel. Thank you, sir.

Mike Richards: Today’s episode of the Treasury Career Corner was brought to you with the support of our partners ICD.

Mike Richards: If you are looking for a smarter way to manage your short-term investments, ICDs independent portal gives you access to a full range of investment products, integrated analytics, and a simple centralized platform built specifically for treasury. If you head over to treasury recruitment.com/partners, you can learn more and we’ll be able to connect you with the right person at ICD for both you and your business.

Mike Richards: Many thanks for listening to the show and thanks for your continued support.