Strategic Insights and Leadership Lessons from the Treasurers of Porsche and Tesco
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What do Porsche and Tesco have in common? Visionary treasury leaders navigating a rapidly changing global landscape!
In this special episode recorded at our Treasury Career Corner LIVE event in London back in November, we take you behind the scenes of two iconic organizations to reveal the strategies, challenges, and insights shaping modern treasury.
Join Mike Richards as he chats with these two global treasury leaders:
- Wolfgang Ratheiser, Vice President Corporate Finance & Treasury at Porsche
- Andy Henley, Director, Group Corporate Finance at Tesco
Featuring
About this episode
This engaging conversation is packed with actionable insights and career-defining lessons. From mastering international assignments to leveraging cutting-edge technology, these treasury veterans share their wisdom on building high-performing teams, embracing hybrid work models, and staying ahead in uncertain times.
For more information on the Treasury Career Corner LIVE event please visit this link
Episode Highlights:
- Discover how Wolfgang’s upbringing on a farm and Andy’s early career at PwC shaped their approaches to treasury leadership.
- Learn how Wolfgang and Andy navigated challenges such as electric vehicle adoption, geopolitical shifts, and global supply chains at Porsche and Tesco.
- Learn about real-world applications of treasury technology, from energy price forecasting to building scalable systems.
- Both leaders share how they maintain team performance and collaboration in a post-pandemic world.
- Advice on the key traits to look for in treasury hires and why investing in people is a game-changer.
- Discover why treasury professionals must be proactive business partners and trusted advisors.
- Wolfgang and Andy share lessons they have learned from their global experience including the importance of international assignments in broadening leadership perspectives.
- Ready to dive into the evolving world of treasury? Hit play now and discover how two global leaders are driving innovation and strategy in their fields! Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review to help us bring more industry insights to you.
If you’d like to get in touch with Wolfgang, you can connect with her via her LinkedIn Profile
If you’d like to get in touch with Andy, you can connect with him via his LinkedIn Profile
Are you interested in pursuing a career within Treasury?
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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 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: So welcome to this, our biggest ever treasury career corner live in London with over a hundred of you guys, lovely people. Obviously I’m putting it down to amazing panelists. They will introduce themselves shortly. Just a couple of housekeeping rules. I’m going to come to firstly, number one, you have made an effort to come here.
Mike Richards: In a quiet evening, horrible out there, a bit cold out there and everything else. I need your energy, your enthusiasm. Usually, I just kick off. A few of you have been here before. I’ll do the good evening. You like, wake up a little bit, fall asleep a few times, and then you say good evening, Mike, and stuff like that.
Mike Richards: We’re not doing that. So I’m just a big good evening, and you’re going to give it back. Good evening, London. Well, you didn’t let me down. Thank you very much, everyone. So that’s the first one. You got some enthusiasm there. Second one is being present in the room. If you’ve got your phone on, switch it off, please.
Mike Richards: You’ve made the effort to be here. Wolfgang’s come all the way from Stuttgart and he’s come from Hertfordshire. But the fact is the commitment’s there and make this commitment to you and your treasury careers. How often are you going to an opportunity to speak to two amazing treasurers? But before I do get into it, I’m very good at this.
Mike Richards: I’d make sure I want to thank our sponsors. Kristen, where are you? There you go. So keep your hand up, please. And I’ll have the guys from Chatham, Kiriba, Stagestream, TIS. Can you get your hands up, please? Look around. Those are the guys, there you go, Jackie in the corner. And we’ll put Baby in the corner, but we’ll do that with Jackie.
Mike Richards: But those are the guys that support this event. Lovely venue, and that’s, we were doing drinks with them afterwards. Now, it’s a bit different, because last time we were in the two rooms next door. We’ve been given the executive suite. Haven’t we, Kristen? Where are you? Yeah, over there. Look at that. Thank you very much.
Mike Richards: Yeah, exactly. It’s a very nice big room out there. So thank you for all coming this evening. Who am I? I’m Mike Richards. I run the Treasury Recruitment Company. Very big fat head there. Sorry. Started the business 25 years ago. I love talking to you guys. Treasury Reflections, all levels. That’s my day job.
Mike Richards: It’s also Katie’s day job as well, allegedly, when she does it. And we will help you find your next role whenever you need it. But I love talking to you guys so much, I started a podcast. This is it. These guys have both been previous guests on it, where I talk to treasurers about how they started their careers.
Mike Richards: Where they are now, where they see themselves in the treasurer profession going to next. It then led to this live event format, which I love doing with you guys. But I also need to tell you about the structure. So this is going to be the structure of the evening. So each of my guests will introduce themselves.
Mike Richards: We will then go through some of the topics. Obviously, they’re senior treasurers. Andy at Tesco, Wolfgang at Porsche. When we get later on to the Q& A. Ask them questions. How often do you get to ask treasurers questions that they will answer for you straight to your face? Longer than not. They won’t be hard questions, Andy, don’t worry.
Mike Richards: And then we do get to socialize. Let’s say, so when we go out of here, it does make a difference. Go out, head out, left, go up to the escalators, up one floor and turn left. Don’t want any of you leaving. We will be switching off the down escalators. So I’m going to get my guests to introduce themselves.
Mike Richards: We’ll start off with Andy. and go to Wolfgang, and then we’ll go through your careers. Thanks, Mike.
Andy Henley, Director, Group Corporate Finance at Tesco: Hi, I’m Andy Henley. Mike said I work, uh, so I joined Tesco a little over 18 months ago as the group treasurer. And being the group treasurer of Tesco was really my first proper treasury job. So I’ll fill in as we go through the Q& A on how that happened.
Andy Henley: But for the past six months or so, I now look after a broader remit. So I’m responsible as well as treasury for group tax. Financial reporting and the group control team. And as I think it says on the slide, as long as it wasn’t cut out, that includes looking after about 600 people in our shared service centre in, in Bangalore, in India.
Andy Henley: So like many treasury professionals, I started my career, another thing I said, Mike, on your podcast, join PwC because in my last year of university, I didn’t really have any idea what I wanted to do when I grew up and joining an accounting firm at the time seemed to put off that decision for three more years.
Andy Henley: And when I joined PwC, for those of you who’ve got, who’ve worked as an audit in the past for the first year or so. I thought it was the most boring job in the world. Carrying around a laptop, going out to talk to a client, who didn’t really want to talk to you. Questions where you didn’t really understand the answer to the question you were getting.
Andy Henley: But you don’t realize at the time it, it builds like tenacity and agility in you and you go on a really steep learning curve. So I ended up staying at PwC for a little bit more than a decade. Most of that working for PwC in London across a variety of different departments, audit, capital markets, transactions, accounting, accounting technical function.
Andy Henley: And also spent a couple of years on secondment working for PwC in Hong Kong. Then I got, so this is. A little over 10 years ago now, you know, the pressure from, from my parents wanting to become grandparents, back to the UK with my wife, stayed at PWC a little bit longer than that. Then took a role at Reckitt Benckiser, working, working for the CFO at Reckitt Benckiser in a job that had a more glamorous sounding title than this, that was essentially the CFO’s bag carrier.
Andy Henley: So working across M& A finance, investor relations. Other projects or whatever needed attention of the day. I stayed there for two or three years, then moved to work at Tate and Lyle, where I was the group financial controller and head of corporate finance. And the big piece of work that I probably spent somewhere between 50 and 75 percent of my time in the four years I was at Tate and Lyle was.
Andy Henley: a big disposal project where we dispose of controlling interest in the kind of commoditized division of Tate Lyle to private equity in the US. So if that took up 55 percent of my time, the other 25 percent of my time is explaining to people that Tate Lyle don’t make sugar anymore. Uh, Tate Lyle UK that will be familiar to many of you.
Andy Henley: Tate Lyle sold that sugar business 15 years ago. So actually moving to Tesco. It was quite nice not to have to explain every time I introduced myself. No, that’s actually not what they do. And indeed, it got to the stage where I just stopped bothering explaining that. And even my mother in law, when she would say, can you pick up some cheap golden syrup?
Andy Henley: And I’ll get some for you. Straight round to Tesco, of course. Let’s take it off the shelf and bring it up to her. And then, yeah, so 18 months ago, joined Tesco. So looking after group treasury app, uh, really. Exciting time for the treasurers more broadly. Liz Krauss had done her best to blow up the guilt market.
Andy Henley: So I remember going all the way from Googling, what is a liability driven investment, to suddenly being the kind of expert in these matters at Tesco. And we’ll come onto it. I think that’s, it’s a brilliant Kind of example of the expertise you’re expected to get in a broad area across kind of treasury and corporate finance.
Andy Henley: And before I run on too much longer, that’s where I was 18 months ago. And as I said, taken on a broader remit in the last six months. So
Mike Richards: we’re going to dive more into the international experience of both and the end. Wolfgang in a moment, but Wolfgang over to you, yourself.
Wolfgang Ratheiser, Vice President Corporate Finance & Treasury at Porsche: So that was impressive Andy, I didn’t know.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: I don’t actually know where to start, but Wolfgang Rathaus is my name. I’m Austrian and I’m very glad to be in London. Thank you very much for the invitation, Mike. We’ve been working together for quite a while in different companies, so maybe my background is a bit different. I must say maybe when I start very early, I was, I grew up on a farm, so I was the youngest of four kids and it was always foreseen that I would run the farm.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And that’s where I was, my first education is basically being an agrarian agricultural engineer. And I decided actually this is not enough for me. I actually worked five years at home with my parents and it was a dairy farm. And then I decided actually to move on and I wanted to go and do something else.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Uh, and a bit more international as well from Austria, small farming environment coming, I didn’t foresee that this is basically the future of my life. And when I actually went into university, my father died and I took over the farm. I did both at the same time, made sure that I had some. People working for my farming business and I could basically go on the international side.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So I started with KPMG afterwards at the end of the term of my university because I didn’t know exactly how I should start. I wanted to become a tax advisor, but after the internship I said, no, it’s too boring for me. Let’s go into KPMG and then I tried it as well. Everything backwards driven. I want to actually create things.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: I want to actually look forward to influence and steer the business. So I thought I might go into more turnaround management, stayed with KPMG. And then it was a bit of a life changing moment because I decided to go to a where we had, I think, six or seven different workshops in two days, and then companies came after me and were asking for interviews, and I actually wanted to go into banking.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Because all my friends went into banking, it was end of the 90s. We were in investment banking, come to London and earn the big bucks and learn as fast as possible, but all the corporates were after me. So it’s okay with my experiences and agricultural engineer plus a finance person and this actually were very attractive to corporate side, so I decided to go and start with Henkel, which is a blue chip company in Germany.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And the reason why I chose Henkel is I wanted to go overseas as quickly as possible. That was my dream, my, really my direction I wanted to go. I always wanted to go to the U. S. And six months later I was in Hong Kong. So, agility was never an issue for me. I started in Hong Kong, it was the 11th of September 2001.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So I think everybody remembers this date. And I started in corporate finance, so I didn’t know anything about treasury. Came back to Germany and worked in corporate finance and then they asked me whether I want to go back to Asia and I say yes, I really enjoyed the stint in Hong Kong and to run basically for the Asian Pacific Treasury or support the treasury in Asia Pacific and on the way there, the plane didn’t go to Hong Kong, it was turning to Shanghai.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So in 2002, I arrived then in Shanghai instead of in Hong Kong, where I was supposed to land, but the double tax treaty between Austria and Germany and Hong Kong was very unfavorable. So they barked me in Shanghai and said, you need to learn about how actually to run a virtual organization as well. So my boss sits in Hong Kong, I was sitting in Shanghai and covering the region in Asia Pacific.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: It was fun, so I worked five years for Enklo, and when I was in Shanghai, I realized there’s a lot of American companies that are very successful, so I wanted to see what the difference is between the different leadership styles, and then I joined an American company in 2007, stayed where it was controls, but back in Europe, so I had no family with me, so I was Totally free, and I wanted to come back to Europe as well for family reason, and I, when I had the interview, I said I want to stay in Europe for at least five years.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Started in Germany and a year and a half later, I was back in Hong Kong, taking care of Asia Pacific and the Middle East, which was very exciting and a big role. So it was a fantastic experience because a lot of growth turnover went from 7 billion to 12 billion in five years. And that was. Pretty exciting.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And then I came back to Europe, went from treasury out because I always had the dream to go to become a CFO. So I went into the business, took over the CFO role in Europe for the metal business, did a lot of restructuring, post merger integration. And then in 2017, I was asked whether I wanted to go back into treasury at Porsche.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So that’s why I Move to Stuttgart at that point of time. It’s a fantastic company. And the idea behind was as well, it is Porsche is part of the Volkswagen group, but to become independent. And if you going as a treasurer to a non independent company, then treasury doesn’t have really the essence of it.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So the IPO was very much straight from the beginning on the table from 2017 took us five years to 2022, where we went IPO. And yeah, build up the treasurer organization there and now we are a public listed company.
Mike Richards: So we’re going to go through here. We’re going to talk about different areas. We’re in fact, we’re jumping to the international side because both of you have spoken extensively about being in Asia Pacific and things like that.
Mike Richards: Now, do you think I was going to go into what the biggest challenges maybe you had when dealing with the different cultures there and what it was like being there? We’ll go to Andy and then we’ll come to you Wolfgang about that. Again, leadership style. Firstly, what did you have to adapt there? And do you think it’s necessary?
Mike Richards: I was talking to a treasurer just the other day and he was saying, yes, you have to go internationally. You have to have an international assignment. And I was like, but do you? And he was like, yeah, it’s brilliant if you do, because it really gives you that. with the different businesses and that’s really helped him.
Mike Richards: You’ve both done it. Do you, would you say that’s
Andy Henley: something everyone has to do with leadership? Mike, it’s a really good, it’s a really good question. I haven’t done it quite to the extent where the plane lands analogy. I was planning to go to Hong Kong, went to Hong Kong, stayed there a few years in there and came back.
Andy Henley: Taking a step back, what I would say is actually it’s, I think it’s desirable in life, right? To spend some time living. Away from your home country, irrespective of the benefit for your beer or otherwise. And when I was growing up, I didn’t leave the British Isles until I was 12 years old. So I always had this kind of desire to be much more international as I grew up and in adult life.
Andy Henley: And I remember at PwC, it was like the expected thing, right? At some point in time, you’ll transition and you’ll spend some time overseas. And what lots of people would do is either go to Australia. And have, what, like a brilliant time for two or three years, or they go to the U. S. But then a small number of people, each year, would go to Hong Kong.
Andy Henley: Because at the time, the two of the big trading houses, Jardines and Swire, were clients of BWC. So you would go out there and be one of those two clients, which is a fantastic experience. And it definitely teaches you, you learn a lot about how you can’t just have one leadership style, right? That’s what I remember.
Andy Henley: Going out to Hong Kong, and for those of you familiar with that part of the world, Mike, there’s a real culture of not wanting to lose face in front of more senior people. So often you would explain something to a junior staff and you’d say, Do you understand? And you would say, Yes, I understand. Even if I had explained something incredibly badly and there were none, why is it what I was trying to do?
Andy Henley: So it meant really for me as a leader, I adopted a much more kind of nurturing style and involved more junior staff in that learning. Okay. So explain back to me what I’ve explained, what I’ve explained to you. And it’s a bit of an Americanism, but it’s made me a much better coach with junior staff as I progressed back through my career in the UK.
Andy Henley: And it’s also a wonderful, when you spend a few years overseas, it’s wonderful to have another place, which is. It’s not home, home, but you still have, I still have a fantastic network of people out in Asia. So whenever there’s a, whenever there’s an excuse to go there, I will take it. Now that those of you who know Tesco know that French for most of its international expansion, but we do have a small saucy business based in Hong Kong.
Andy Henley: So when the opportunity came over, it came in the summer to go out there and spend a week with a sourcing team, I was like, yeah,
Mike Richards: and over to you Wolfgang, you jokingly said to everyone. He. got off the plane, it was a different country. But you drove that, you actually wanted that international experience.
Mike Richards: What’s that given you, would you say? Pretty much similar what Andy said, but
Wolfgang Ratheiser: maybe one anecdote as well. When I came to Hong Kong, actually not Hong Kong, but to Shanghai, I changed three things at the same time. Can you maybe have microphone up a bit more? Yeah. I changed three things. So first of all, it’s a totally different country.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So I came from It’s the first thing, the second thing, my boss was Chinese, and the third thing was I didn’t know anything about treasury. So that was really the first year was very hard, very hard, but I learned a lot as well because it’s not one leadership style. It’s basically in Germany was super well connected and successful.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And then you come in a different country and certain things that was very young, certain things just don’t work. So you need to adjust yourself. First thing you need to learn about yourself, being comfortable, getting off your comfort zone and basically build on what you are. Let’s learn and be a fast learner as well.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And curiosity is very important in these regards. And don’t give up. And then really listen to the people out there, because they are much better than you are. And learn from them. And just be their copycat in these regards. And I think this is what I harvest today. It was hard at the beginning, but it was Extreme steep learning curve and Hong Kong is a very different than, let’s say, Shanghai at that point of time that was the early 2000, 2001 to 2004.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: We, they were basically really everything is in, in developing mode and not many experts. So it was a different environment. But really to become a leader is different perspective from different angles and everybody is a contributor. He’s not, I know it all, no, there’s a lot of people that know it, me trying to bring this together and how you nurture that and how you really bring them success or value added to the company.
Mike Richards: So when I spoke to both of you on the podcast, you, a big, a strong theme was that you both are highly focused on developing those teams. Now you both explored it a little bit there, but Wolfgang, you went through a transition with your team that you were reshaping in the past few years, and then we helped you recruit some people.
Mike Richards: Cause I wanted to. Talk about how you refocus that team and then Andy, you and I were then just talking a moment ago about how are you building your bench strength and everything else. So I’ll come on to that. So I was going to go with you first of all Wolfgang, but how have you mentored and coached that team?
Mike Richards: Because again, this is a number of more senior leaders here and they’ve got teams. And they’re going, I want to hear from these two guys about how they’re doing it right. And maybe also some of the mistakes you’ve made or missteps you’ve made, because you never make a mistake, obviously, that we’re going to put in ever.
Mike Richards: But any missteps you’ve made? Wolfgang, for you?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Yeah, man, I think the first thing in building a team is you need to hire the right people. They need to fit in the cultural environment you’re in. And I always hire not for skills, I hire for attitude. They need to have the right mindset. Be willing to learn, fast learn, go the extra mile.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: That’s what I’m trying to figure out when I hire people, they can help me. Yeah, this is, with multiple interviews, going to events like this as well, that they see how I react, what kind of person I am, so that they can make a judgment as well, and trying to understand. There was different ways how they did that, but in my different companies, we did it differently.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: In Johnson Controls, for example, we had really The tendency that everybody had to say to it. If one says no, it doesn’t fit for whatever reason, then we agree to it. Now it’s a bit more different that we really have a lot of different rounds. We have as well assessment centers where You go through. It’s not a hard assessment center, but it’s you go through, especially when you acquire new people into the organization.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: How do you react in leadership style and situation? And it’s not about that. This is wrong or right. It’s about the cultural fit. And the German cultural fit is different than a Chinese cultural fit that American cultural fit, right? So you need to incorporate this a bit together. And I think this is one thing.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: The other thing is, which was very important as well. That I tried to build a team. They are very strongly minded so that they speak up and they don’t hold back and you need to create this trust environment as well that they speak up. So team building at the beginning is important. And then you hire people.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Then they are better than you are in certain areas so that you have a good team. You can trust and they can actually play soccer.
Mike Richards: And I think also you. Just to add in something there, we’ve both Katie and I have recruited for Porsche since that. And when you went through the development, I remember one of the guys actually got rejected for one of the interviews, or basically he turned up, he was five minutes before he wasn’t on zoom.
Mike Richards: It didn’t work properly. This wasn’t going right. And everything else. And Wolfgang Beck said that, actually quite a nice guy, but not right for us, because you can’t have those mistakes. What if you put him in front of the CEO and everyone makes a mistake? Why didn’t he go on the Zoom link half an hour before?
Mike Richards: Why not be prepared? And it was like, Oh, Mike, I’m sorry about this. But no, I sent it. We, today, we were just talking about the fact that Wolfgang flew over this morning and he had prepared it with an exec meeting. I was here an hour and a half early. Be there early, because otherwise it was going to be Katie sitting up here and she’d never talk to me again.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: This is a bit about respect, right? Being respectful to others. That means as well, when I come in, somebody is waiting there. It should be on time Thailand. Very much in Asia in a way as well. I was never late. But the Japanese, they are on time always. Yeah. There’s, if you have the Japanese, the German are on time, but yes, the Japanese are even more on time, time early.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Yeah, they are, because if this, the, the clock turns, the Japanese they call and that’s what you need to learn. It’s just respect, being respectful with people and I think this is the intercultural way as well. Respect is not black and white. It’s, you need to understand how they react, how you emerge into a different culture.
Andy Henley: I thought you were going to say that the guy turned up the interview in a Mercedes or BMW. No, that was on the gate. The guy said, no, turn him away. These don’t cover the air. Mike, I get to go back to your original question, I think. You can’t spend, you can’t spend too much time investing in your team. And for me, I know I had it right when Frank feel I’m learning more from my team than I’m teaching them.
Andy Henley: That showed you’ve got Some of the mixed white and you’ve recruited white and you’ve developed people in the right roles. I was very lucky starting at Tesco because Linda Heywood, my predecessor, had built a fantastic team and a brilliant mix of different personality types, some kind of fresh blood that had been hired recently and people that have been there 10, 20 years and indeed a group treasury accountant.
Andy Henley: I’ve been hired by Tesco the year I was born. So I thought, yeah, he’s pretty good. At least people read him again. Most upright. So really what I’ve done since then is. Try to expand the reach of treasury across the organization. I think in lots of organizations I’ve worked in and work with treasury and tax often lumped together, oftentimes like physically in the office and around the corner from the rest of finance.
Andy Henley: And I think people incorrectly think it’s a. inaccessible black box really hard to get into if you haven’t grown up in that world. So for me, one of the most pleasing things about building out, moving some people out and I’ll be playing and promoting people in the team to two things have been brilliant.
Andy Henley: One is being able to elevate and promote my, one of my direct reports to being a group treasury director. When we did the restructure to broaden my own remit, that was fantastic because becoming a director at Tesla was a big deal. So to be able to help someone through that process, that. Job satisfaction doesn’t get much better than that, frankly.
Andy Henley: And the other is a number of people who, in the 18 months that I’ve been there, who aren’t treasurers by background, haven’t worked in treasury, who now want to work in the treasury function. Because we’ve been much better in the last 18 months at getting out and facing into the business and helping them solve.
Andy Henley: complicated challenges, be that ups and downs of FX, be that the energy crisis challenge we’ve gone through. We’ve done a fantastic job as a team. Selling what is a fascinating job and a fascinating function to, to work in across the organization. And we’ve had people who are not even in finance, right?
Andy Henley: You’ve talked before about, I wouldn’t, somebody who’s in our commodities, governance, governancy, you’ve hired people from other parts of the, other parts of the business. And that for me is a brilliant measure of kind of building, building a team. You asked about like mistakes made from a team building perspective.
Andy Henley: The one that I think comes to mind is. And maybe it’s, it’s a bit more of a British cultural thing, but I think often we’re not quick enough at making tough calls. And sometimes you haven’t got quite the right people in your team. And the thing that I’ve learned over the years is if you think you haven’t got the right person, you definitely don’t have the right person.
Andy Henley: And the quicker that you resolve that situation, the better it is for you and your team. And if not more importantly, the better it is for that particular individual as well. So. I think I’ve got better as I’ve got grown up through my career at making those tough calls because a hundred percent of the time it’s worked out better for that individual as well.
Andy Henley: Yeah. And
Mike Richards: this is called the Treasury Career Corner. So it’s about careers and the career steps. So we’re going to talk now about hybrid. It’s something that pre COVID wasn’t a thing. COVID, if you like, accelerated flexible working by five, 10 years quickly. And obviously everyone’s had to get used to it.
Mike Richards: And now, as we come out the other side, Wolfgang first and then to you, Andy. But what I was going to say to you guys, just give them a second is in about 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes time, Katie will come round with the microphone. You are going to get the opportunity to ask these amazing treasurers. Don’t ask me questions.
Mike Richards: You can talk to me at the bar, but you’ll get to ask them. So think now you’ve heard a lot so far, but keep thinking about what tips you should be able to get from these guys. Wolfgang hybrid working. It’s. benefits, challenges. How do you do it with your team and make sure that it works for everyone?
Mike Richards: Communication. I know it’s a challenge. That was another thing on your play as a treasurer, do you?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Yeah, I think we were lucky enough that we basically could actually go from one day to the other. In the hybrid working environment, we were ready in 2020, I still remember 16th or 17th of March, when we basically turned the key and just said, okay, we work from home, we could do it.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So from that angle, that was very good. Did we have a lot of learnings? And when you look at how our business were prospering. Progressing and basically growing. We were very lucky and then fantastic environment as well, where we actually, from a treasurer team’s perspective, used this very well. But I think now, four years further, we see there are some limitations to it as well, right?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So we are human beings. We want to have, I think, connectivity, not through digital environment. I, I really, and that’s why I’m here physically and not. I like people in the room. The energy gives me energy, brings new ideas in. You have not always an agenda where you basically just run it through. You have people around to help you because you’re not very good, right?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Program Python, but my colleagues can, you just ask them, you have a minute, uh, in, in digital environment, you miss this. So I guess we lost a little bit in this respect, the connectivity and the innovation and the energy level. I think we need to adjust this. I think this hybrid work mode, you need to find the right way.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: I’m very lucky with the team I have because it’s treasurers. I don’t need to motivate them. They’re very highly educated. They are really driven. But of course, they move to different cities now. It’s a bit harder to bring them together. And we see slippage. We see slippage. And I think this is very important because Slippage in the way is a sense of urgency.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And sometimes you move then, okay, I’m in the office Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I’m not in the office. So let’s move it to next week instead of doing it on Friday because you’re anyway in the office, right? This is a bit the tendency what I see in corporates. And there’s a lot of discussions now in Germany in particular going on because the labor unions are coming from that angle.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Okay, we made the rule and now we are sticking to this rule. I think the flexibility is important. I don’t need the people to be around me. I need making the free choices doing a fantastic job, but no slippage, no moving of sense of urgency because we are in a competitive environment and this competitive environment needs that we are fully engaged in this regards and it put the focus on it.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And I think this is a where I’m a bit worried. How we actually, particularly in a very regulated environment, use that because I think we can have all the freedom, it’s just how do you balance it out to make sure it works.
Andy Henley: Yeah. I kind of hope within the next sort of 18 months or so we stop talking about this at the top of the conversation and it just becomes Yes, I was very old fashioned in the days before COVID.
Andy Henley: I was at work, I was at work. If I was at home, I was at home. But at the time we first went into lockdown, so March 2020, I’d been at Tate in our six, seven months or so. We were in March, year end. So I’m sitting there and thinking, Shit, we’re going to have to place the books, get all the dids. He had a letter from the FRC about last year’s accounts had come in and he Think I don’t know how this is going to work from home.
Andy Henley: It works incredibly well. And like I mentioned, the projects I was working on at the time, we sold half of the company soup to nuts remotely. Everything done virtually through things. And I think that it made people aware that you can, you don’t have to be physically present. You don’t have to be physically present all the time.
Andy Henley: You can still make it work. I think now we’re finding the right balance in most companies. I’m always surprised when I hear people saying we’re mandating five days a week back in the office because you think that’s not necessary. But equally, flexibility comes two ways. I get just as frustrated when I hear people complaining about having to come in a day a week or a couple of days a week.
Andy Henley: I think particularly as you’re building your career and you, or you’ve got lots of more junior staff working for you. You need to impress on them. Don’t underestimate the impact of being together in a room with other people. So particularly if an inquisitive person that wants to get on, it’s a kind of slightly lazy expression, but there’s this process of osmosis that you can learn by just by sitting with other people and hearing what’s going on.
Andy Henley: And I certainly benefited from that, that in my career. So I think now we’ve got the mix about right, exactly as Wolfgang says, I take a view that. I employ bright, hardworking adults, and bright, hardworking adults know if there needs to be a home or know if there needs to be any office or whatever else it may be, so it worked pretty well.
Andy Henley: The other thing I do gently remind my team about from time to time, if they’re grumbling about we now have a three day a week and a three day only office per week policy. I think you also have to look out across the board or organization. And I say, look at, at Tesco, we have 320, 000 people who have no choice about where to work, right?
Andy Henley: They have to show up every day in store. And by the way, that was equally true through the pandemic as well. So I think it’s very easy to look at things just through a corporate lens. And I think having an appreciation of the rest of the organization that doesn’t have a luxury to argue. Sitting in a nice office at the top of my house, appreciating that in silence time is really important.
Mike Richards: I think this evening proves that treasury professionals like to be in the room together. We’re going to collaborate afterwards, you’re going to get other ideas. And when we’ve recruited a number of our clients, it’s a warning sign to us as well. Someone said, I want a hundred percent remote and I want to be in treasury.
Mike Richards: I’m like, okay. Is somebody else’s number because at the end of the day it gives you a message that they probably aren’t right for treasury. There might be a technical discipline, they would be, but treasury by its very nature is collaborative. And that’s what we get all this different knowledge when I do the podcast and that’s what I’ve got so many times.
Mike Richards: When I started the podcast six and a half years ago, I thought was a pretty good recruiter. Now I’m a really good recruiter because I really understand so far and still work in progress. Now I understand 350 different treasurers and people said, Oh, when’s it going to stop? It’s not stopping. It’s, I thought we’d do 10, and actually, when I go to the conferences, within 10 feet of me are 10 different treasurers, and everyone’s got a different story.
Mike Richards: You all use the same tools, but in a totally different way. They’re laden, cash rich, private, decentralized. That’s why it’s so fascinating. But going back to you guys and technology. We’re going to jump into this. I’m not going to do AI. As you said, it’s as tired as hybrid. What I was going to say is I know that you and the, we’re coming to a bit of commodities, because obviously that’s a big thing for both businesses and things like that.
Mike Richards: You have integrated talent into that area as well. It’s going to do that a bit about technology and then come to yourself Wolfgang as well. a little bit more because a bit of an award winner or some of the team and things. So I’m going to come into why you think that’s quite important or some of the projects you’ve done as well.
Mike Richards: So with yourself, Andy.
Andy Henley: Yeah. So given that you called out Kyriba being in the room, I should say we should be able to mentor Kyriba. Thank you for sponsoring us Kyriba. Thank you very much. Works very well. The biggest investment that we’ve made in technology in finance or broadly at school and Tesco more broadly in just some years.
Andy Henley: It’s actually invested in people. So I mentioned earlier, we have a big Tesco business services, a GBS operation in, in, in Bengaluru. And our enterprise analytics team is almost entirely based out, out there. So when we set up the shared service center, you know, 14, 15 years ago, that’s longer than that, maybe 20 years ago, it was all set up out of salary arbitrage opportunity.
Andy Henley: Whereas actually now, the Indian universities are far better than the universities in the UK at churning out graduates who are literate in all of these new contemporary ways of working in the same is true of our machine learning team and our enterprise analytics team. The stuff that they can build for you really quickly has amazed me.
Andy Henley: So when I first started at Tesco, we were wrestling with what should we do with respect to our kind of energy hedging position. I had a chance conversation with a guy called Venkat, who is our enterprise analytics director in India. And he said, I’ll give me a couple of hours. And we were, I was hypothesizing about the different things that I thought might impact.
Andy Henley: And he built a really simple model in a couple of days that we genuinely used that year to determine the percentage that we would hedge. And it’s the speed at which we can apply those technologies that really amazed me. But the most important thing is the investment in people. And
Mike Richards: Wolfgang, it was tongue in cheek, but we’d had a conversation about There were a number of awards the team has won because it’s actually giving recognition of things And I know that was for some of the technology you guys have brought in What’s that been like for you guys and why is that so powerful?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Yeah, it was not all about technology, but I think it’s about the team as well. We did the transformation, right? We had so many different topics, but one of the things is, you know, Porsche is a 40 billion company and we have over 50, 55 percent is FX. Yeah. So it’s a huge implication, a very huge focus, how we manage that.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Very we don’t have a big team. So you need to have the right team as well We have the face and quantum for risk management purposes and we had to implement that we went out of Volkswagen, which they have a different system. So we built it from green, greenfield approach up. I knew this system before, but my team basically did the whole evaluation.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: It came just by coincidence out with the same, let’s say, provider than what we had before. But at the end of the day, it’s the basis, what we have right now. I always say it’s only the basis, the processes, and the basis needs to be right. In order to build on that, Of artificial intelligence. And they have a few people as well with data science in my team, which is amazing for me, when I look back in asset management, for example, as I need an answer for something and half an hour later, I get a presentation, one, two slides and I was like, okay, man, to do it with spite and artificial intelligence rather than GDP today, in order to build that very quickly.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And it’s right tool if you have the right data sources in technology in treasury in 25 years on and off in finance and different finance functions as well is continuously on the way where you actually find new tools, new developments, and it’s just actually progressing. And now we in a new age as well.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: I was just last week in. In Asia again, because I think in that angle, and especially in Singapore and so on, we, they are thinking in a different way than we think here. I agree as well, in India they have so many technology technicians as well, and fantastic universities. We can actually tap into that. We are happy where we are, but, uh, we are not applying a lot of, uh, artificial intelligence yet because it’s more really, how do you actually build up from the company enterprise perspective, a private cloud, which we are not totally ready and there’s other companies out there.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: They are totally leapfrogged
Mike Richards: us. Treasury being in the spotlight. I wrote an article a number of years ago where I talked about the spotlight being on treasury, there’s a crisis, everything else. Oh, actually crisis over. We’ve had Ukraine. It’s a thousand days now. And that through the spotlight onto treasury.
Mike Richards: And there’s been other situations. We had COVID we’ve had all these different things, global financial crisis before that, and everyone comes to treasury and then everyone takes a breath and it gets a lot better at things. How do you both keep the spotlight on treasury or do you, when you’re going through that?
Mike Richards: I know that treasury is not back office function. It’s a critical function that sometimes. It can be taken for granted a little bit. And this is, these are guys in the room that are thinking, yeah, how do we keep front of mind for CFO? We’ll go to Andy, maybe first on this. And then sure.
Andy Henley: Treasury is always front of mind of Tesco.
Andy Henley: We’re a 4 percent operating margin business. So you can’t afford to get, it amplifies the importance of treasury. You can’t afford to get those calls wrong because there’s nowhere in the P& L to hide. Hide if you do. So we don’t, I don’t. I don’t necessarily recognize that there’s time when things are straightforward and easy and therefore the role of Treasury is less important.
Andy Henley: I also think we’re living in a increasingly uncertain, increasingly volatile world. And if I go back over the last five or six years at least, I can’t think of any time where stuff felt passive. Which I think for Treasurers is brilliant, because you become a trusted advisor of the CFO, you become a trusted advisor of the CEO.
Andy Henley: You become a trusted advisor of the executive committee. Every time that there’s a speculation, who’s going to win the U. S. election, what’s Rachel Reeves going to say in the next budget? It’s a really, what’s the right way of describing it? It’s a very privileged place to be that those things happen. And the first person that the CEO and CFO or someone in the exec committee calls is the treasury function.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: In our case. I consider three KPIs where we have a huge impact, right? One is the ROS related to FX management, commodity management. Because FX in our case is so huge. 10%, 20 billion up and down, 5 percent up and down, it’s billions. So our margin in total is seven billion one two billion on the effects would be huge, right?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So that’s the first thing second thing is net cash flow net cash flow is on the forefront is Driving really the company value at the end of the day capital and it’s on the capital market very important So we changed that over the years as well when I arrived at porsche We had a net liquidity as a target net liquidity is for treasury very important, but not for the company per se Not for the organization because cash is basically It’s basically what it really drives, and that’s what drives the value of a company at the end of the day.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: The shareholders want to know how much dividends they are going to have and whether you apply the cash properly, uh, and what kind of investments you’re going to do. And then the third one is the financial result. So a financial result is maybe a lesser, uh, importance, uh, in these regards. It depends in, in, in what area, how much funding you have maybe to do, but it’s of course very important for the earnings per share perspective.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: We have, let’s say, developed a I sometimes my boss is much more in strategic topics, so I have a lot of leeways, so we are very important from strategic perspective, but there’s a treasure. And that’s what I always say is the best is if you don’t have sleepless nights right from the liquidity perspective, from the effects perspective that you have basically here is already set out.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And you need to think very strategically advanced because if there is a crisis and then you start on doing things when you are hyperventilating, it’s like diving. You jump in the water. You’re not prepared. You’re going under. You’re not going to be calm in the water and say what I’m going to do. And I think as a treasurer, that’s what you need to be.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: You need to really think advanced, strategically, have solutions in place if there’s a crisis that you don’t need to hyperventilate at that point of time.
Mike Richards: And that’s, I was going to ask then about the strategy going forward. There are challenges, you and I talked before, for your industry and for Treasury.
Mike Richards: What do you think are the main key challenges for you Wolfgang, for maybe the company, but also for Treasury going forward? I’m going to come to a Q& A in a minute as well, so have those. And then we’ll come to Andy. So
Wolfgang Ratheiser: our industry is on a huge transformation. It’s maybe everything coming at the same time.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: It seems a bit like electric vehicles, right? So it’s geopolitically different regions. There’s tariff implications and technological differences as well between the region. Because in the past, you can imagine, and that’s where we came from, is a luxury sports vehicle manufacturer. We produced and engineered the cars.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: In Germany, and we exported it because everybody around the globe, they just love our cars. Now, unfortunately, it is not the same case anymore. The U. S. has a different perspective, the consumer perspective. The Chinese have a different, just to take this too, have a different perspective in terms of what they expect from the electric vehicle, from the connectivity perspective.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And so, you need to be agile. Trust to this. Now, geopolitically differences as well. If you have tariffs, what does it mean from the supply chain, from the value chain perspective as well? And that has implications for treasury. How do you, just to name maybe one, is how do you fund your suppliers? Because your suppliers, they need to, you need to bring them along in this transformation.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: And you need to have the suppliers, they’re still producing and helping you to produce for the next 10 15 years ice cars. On the other hand, you need to have new suppliers coming in.
Mike Richards: How do you see what the treasury does in this room? What should they be doing? Reaching out to the business? Yeah, yeah,
Wolfgang Ratheiser: you need to be a business partner.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: You need to really listen and being close to them. The main job of mine is to really be close to the business and understand what their needs is and how I can actually create value in terms of a risk management perspective, but finding a financing perspective and offering solutions or have solutions already in it somewhere in the drawer, because sometimes you’re trying to push to the business solutions.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: They don’t want it. Okay. So you can push very hard, but it doesn’t help. So maybe you have somewhere, something in a drawer when the time is right, then you can go and implement it easy as well. But then you are valued strategic partner as well. And
Mike Richards: we will get takeaways as well. So Q& A then takeaways, but Andy yourself.
Mike Richards: Yeah. We have some
Andy Henley: immediate challenges. Chancellor helpfully dumped a couple of hundred million pounds worth of cost in RP& L. Yep. With the change in national insured. So A couple of weeks ago when you were a razor thin margin business like we are, those challenges that you deal with. But look, I think Tesco is an organization has proved in the past that it does.
Andy Henley: It does. It deals well with their uncertainty. And I think that the kind of the secret is reacting to those challenges better than you’re better than your competitors. So there’s some immediate challenge to deal with. I think that the Technological change in grocery retailing is clearly not as profound as an organization like Wolfgang’s, but I think as human beings, and I’m sure I covered this on the podcast, we’re becoming increasingly impatient as a species who, I did myself, you order something on Amazon and you get irritated if it’s not coming the next day, right?
Andy Henley: And that’s only going to get harder and harder, right? So again, being able to navigate that Change in behavior through technology is incredibly important. And I always give a plug for it, but Tesco, we run a rapid delivery service now called whoosh. So you can order your groceries and they come. I think the small print says in as little as 20 minutes, but it’s pretty bloody quick.
Andy Henley: And I think. Those are things that you have to get right. Just logistically as well.
Mike Richards: Audience, you’ve got this amazing opportunity. So Katie with the, There you go, nice and bright. Where you are. Questions from the audience please.
Andy Henley: I want to know what Wolfgang’s favourite
Mike Richards: car is before we get to it. Which model of car?
Mike Richards: Can you hear me?
Yes. My name is Victoria. I work for Mercedes Benz for quite a few years, also in Asia Pacific, based in Singapore and Tokyo. And I have a technical question to Wolkan. So Mercedes Benz approach in terms of fax hedging, we had a natural hedge. So we would usually reinvest the capital within markets we are working on.
And I noticed it even from my time in Singapore, you usually take a very different approach and. Just would like to know the reason why such a different strategy from very similar companies.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Yeah, this is actually a very good question. Thank you very much. On the one, one big difference is we are not a volume car manufacturer, right?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So we produce around about 300, 000 cars in order to look into a new production site and new facilities in a different region in order to do natural hatching. You should have around about 100, 000 cars. So when you look at Porsche, the 300, 000 cars, we have six different models and a lot of different derivatives.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Yeah, the 911, for example, you have a 911 Turbo and just to name a few, then you have a Cabrio, you have a GT3, if it, you have a lot of different derivatives and you have the same on the Cayenne side, a similar thing. So we don’t have enough production. Capital volume in order to go into different regions to do a natural hatching.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: We looked at it, but this is basically not necessary. That’s why we have a very different hatching strategy, which is in this regards, my all the production is in euro, and that’s why our effects exposure is very high. And that’s why it’s very much a big focus from our perspective to really Make sure that we have here a long term perspective on that.
Mike Richards: And it’s not, is it an unfair question what your favorite Porsche is or are they all the same?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: No, it’s not an unfair question. I think we have fantastic cars throughout the models. No, but really, when I drive, I drove a 911, but I just returned it. A Taycan, which is an electric car. I drive a Taycan already since five years.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: I have two cars, fortunately. My wife didn’t like the 911 too much because we have two kids, so she needs to have a Cayenne. This is luxury problems.
Mike Richards: Any other questions? Yes, thank you. And we will be heading to the bar shortly. So don’t worry. I can see a few thirsty faces We will be directing you the right ways in shortly.
Mike Richards: But yeah, please your question.
Hi, Sohil Shah I’m a head of treasury accounting at Anglin water My question is mainly India related. So when we talk about shared services or GBS is in India I know technology is a big Yes for india, but do we have enough treasury shared services and services in india?
Andy Henley: Yeah What I found in the time i’m in a tesco is it’s amazed me just the capability that we have in our Gbs in in india and I think A significant part of our treasury back office function is based there what we try to do in treasury and across the finance function Is every time there’s a vacancy opens up anywhere, even if that’s the UK based role.
Andy Henley: We’re now slipping the question the other way around. And why can’t this be in our shared service? And I’m sorry, I put it in step. I shouldn’t call it a shared service center. It says, yeah, we call it our global business center. And we found almost every time we’re able to buy and invite people in our GBS and enable them to do the roles.
Andy Henley: So it’s, and then it becomes, you get into this fantastic kind of Once you do that, we’re giving people, we’re removing that glass ceiling of the opportunity that exists in a GPS environment. And by my word, your attrition, like, metrics drop rapidly when you’re able to open up the world or the rest of the organization to people
Mike Richards: that work with VGS.
Mike Richards: I’m going to move to the takeaways for our panelists, because then you can actually ask them one to one questions when we’re upstairs and things. very much. And the yours are your key takes. So you can go through all of them. Let’s
Andy Henley: try and remember what I wrote now. I think a lot of these I’ve covered, right?
Andy Henley: The uncertain times, your role makes a huge difference. You’re only as good as your team, and over investing in your time in team development is massively important. I think that the biggest one I would, I probably haven’t talked about, that for me personally is really important is the bottom one, which is the importance of acting with integrity.
Andy Henley: I have two kids who are eight and six, and they’re getting to that age where if they need to, they can lie to get away with something. And I’ve been trying to say to them, Actually, integrity is really important and I always associate it as being, you do the right thing, even if nobody is watching you.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: So Wolfgang, you?
Wolfgang Ratheiser: I think I covered it pretty much as well. First one, I think strategically, I think very important. When I look at Porsche, we have around about 40 people in treasury. This is really business partnering, so you need to be part of a strategic, and create strategic value and business value by thinking strategically.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Be prepared is the mantra. Do your homework, make sure that you have some ideas and solutions in the table. What I really learned in China is, One solution is not enough for two. You need to have a handful, yeah? Because it always changes regulation. And I think now we have it on a global scale, even as well.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: One solution doesn’t work. Be a business partner. Working in your corner at home doesn’t get you anything or anywhere. You really need to reach out, get information, know how or what the business needs. So being a business partner is absolutely, extremely necessary. Be a trusted partner and then hire the best people.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: You can’t do it alone, yeah. And the best I, I, I can relax when my People are working and they know what to do and they actually drive me and ask me that I can help them. Then I know then the team is working and it’s and I don’t get many calls. That’s the other thing. Yeah. I have had one at some point of time is okay.
Wolfgang Ratheiser: Manager told me, okay, I like when people call me. I say, I don’t like when people call me because then I have a problem most of the time. And I know that the organization is not mature enough at that point of time. The best is actually that you can. Create new things, or they come to you and say, I need your help.
Mike Richards: Okay, my slide. Now, some of you will have already seen it. It’s not really changed very much. And actually, Carly, who you’ve all had emails from, has said, oh, do you want to change this? I went, no. Actually, mine is, first of all, still give yourselves a pat on the back for actually being here today. There were a few people, I said to someone before, Apparently, we’re all snowed in, it’s a blizzard outside, because someone said, and I looked at them and I said, where is, where’s this lady based?
Mike Richards: She’s based in London. So be careful out there. Yeah. Abominable snowman and all that. And she went, oh, it’s the snow and the trains. I went, really? But you’ve made the effort and actually invested this hour with these amazing treasurers. But then connection, going upstairs in a minute, I jokingly all say, I’ll have a beer and things, but do.
Mike Richards: Because otherwise, you can, in a minute, you can just go get the down escalator. You can just leave. We were saying before, oh, what if people, if you want to leave, go. There’s free booze upstairs, but secondly, it’s free advice. There’s other colleagues that treasury is collaborative. You can actually get some, you can connect with people and take some notes.
Mike Richards: I talk about this lots with Chris Fulton, great networker in the U S he always makes a note on his phone or takes a business card. You might meet someone up there that could be your next colleague. Could be someone that works for you might be your next boss that just by investing this time. Essentially investment in yourselves.
Mike Richards: That’s one of the key things.
Andy Henley: I was wondering where you were going to stop with that, Mike.
Mike Richards: Colleague, next boss, okay. No, that’s it. No, we’re just stopping there. But send me your CVs. And then follow up as well. So, if you make a good connection tonight, refer to it on LinkedIn. Don’t just send them a quick automated connection request.
Mike Richards: Actually follow up and go, oh, we met at this. Love to be part of your network and follow up. You guys are great networkers. You proved it by being here. I want you to put your hands together for these amazing guys.
Andy Henley:
- Leadership in Uncertain Times: Treasury’s role is vital during challenges.
- Invest in Your Team: A strong team is key; focus on their development.
- Integrity is Crucial: Always do the right thing, even when no one is watching.
Wolfgang Ratheiser:
- Think Strategically: Align treasury with business goals and plan for multiple outcomes.
- Be a Business Partner: Engage with the business to address its needs.
- Empower Your Team: Hire great people, trust them, and enable independence for a mature, high-performing organization.