Treasury Trading to Smelting Furnaces – A Treasurer’s Journey Into Industry

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: This week we’ve got a double bill for you. We’ve got Eric Holman, the group treasurer at Meyer joining us on the show. But as it was, I’m not sure of the podcast, Eric and I just wanted to catch up. I’ve known Eric for a while. I just wanna talk briefly about his treasury career. Given the length to the episode, it doesn’t really qualify for CTP credits.

Mike Richards: So what we’ve done is recorded that maybe more for our UK and European listeners, or maybe for the US listeners, if you, you might find it interesting. So have a listen. It’s only about 15, 20 minutes. Well, then what we’ve also done is we published our Treasury Career Corner live session at tpo, and this year’s TPO conferences in San Antonio with three amazing treasurers, Jeremy Reiss, Dania Stewart, and Martin Van Steam po.

Mike Richards: That’s a full episode and you can still receive your CTB credits, so enjoy ba, maybe the double bill or just enjoy one or the other.

Mike Richards: 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 joined by Eric Holtman, the group treasurer at Alco Wire, headquartered in Helsingborg Sweden. El Alco wire group is a leading manufacturer of copper and aluminum wire products, serving industries with high quality solutions for energy transmission, rail infrastructure, and electrical engineering.

Mike Richards: With decades of experience that committed innovation, sustainability, and delivering tailored solutions across Europe and beyond. Elk web operations in Sweden, Germany, and consists of five different business units, rod wire strands, high voltage rail and specials. But I’m gonna get into that with Eric later on in the show.

Mike Richards: Eric, if you would, we had a chat before this previously. How did you first start in finance and treasury? I know that you started in trading a while ago, so give us the origin story if you would, over to you, sir.

Erik Hultman, Group Treasurer at Elcowire: Yeah, so the background was that I did law and business studies. I thought I was gonna be a corporate lawyer.

Erik Hultman: From start, they sometimes tend to study some business and finance on the side. And I did that and I realized that the business and finance more interesting and more fun than, yeah, than the law side of it. After doing my military service, I did my double degrees, moved from the south of Sweden to Stockholm.

Erik Hultman: We started a family and I got into trading. At Penske at the time, I did seven years there, starting as a junior, basically bookkeeper, helping out the head traders, keeping track of risks and everything. I eventually moved on to get my own risk mandate and ran my own books. Moved on to another bank after the financial crisis, nor this is the biggest Nordic bank, and I eventually moved from Stockholm to Denmark to Copenhagen to their head office.

Erik Hultman: I did five years with nor commuting over this, the famous bridge that many of

Mike Richards: you now are aware of, but you were doing all this trading and things you did, so it was a good introduction to world of finance trading. What’s that like as an environment? What’s the, how did that prepare you for the world of treasury, if you like?

Erik Hultman: Well, it gave me the. Market knowledge and market expertise that are so sought after in the corporate world. With larger corporates and larger balance sheets, they eventually have to start managing their financial risks. So I took the knowledge and my expertise from the markets and I, yeah, that’s how I got into corporate Treasury

Mike Richards: instead.

Mike Richards: And then you moved into Spar Bank. And if you can explain who Spar Bank and were, that was a fresh start or fresh role, they didn’t have a treasury. What was that like for you? Setting up a treasury at Spar Bank And who are they?

Erik Hultman: Yeah, so Spar Banking is a small independent savings bank in the south of Sweden.

Erik Hultman: When I joined, it wasn’t really a, like a structured treasury function in place. The processes were there, but they were scattered on other functions and roles in the

Mike Richards: bank. And how did you then, when you go in there, you’ve got a blank sheet of paper you were in, but you were in a bank. There’s a regular, yeah.

Mike Richards: What was that like and what frameworks did you have to put in place?

Erik Hultman: Well, started by mapping out where the risks were. Liquidity rate risk funding. And from there I had to build the basics, cashflow forecasting, get risk policies in place, get the routines for managing the daily liquidity and the funding.

Erik Hultman: And then it was also a, like a more of a background work where you set up proper governance and reporting and. So just making sure that all the decisions were transparent and supported, and I mean, properly documented. Very hands on. Yeah. Very HandsOn, but and also so, so rewarding to just. Once

Mike Richards: it all, yeah.

Mike Richards: Blend together. And you’ve gone from, so you’ve gone from trading and market risk per se, and then you become more of a controller of that risk being the treasurer and everything else.

Erik Hultman: Yep. Someone

Mike Richards: is listening today and they’re thinking they might get offered a role in a bank. Do you think it’s a good place to be?

Mike Richards: Did that really help you? You’ve done the trading bit, that was great, the front office. Then you’ve done more of the middle office type function by actually leading the treasury there. Is that a good place to be? Do you think that really helps you as a treasury professional?

Erik Hultman: Absolutely. It also depends on what you want to do.

Erik Hultman: You want to be like staring at the screens, being a trader, following the market, then

Mike Richards: do it. So then you’d, you worked in the bank and then you thought, right, it’s time for a corporate treasury role, Alco wire. And I know that you, we had this great bit when you got to Alco wire and what the Forge was like and things.

Mike Richards: Can you talk us through the transition and getting into corporate treasury?

Erik Hultman: Yeah, well, I meant just to round off the Spar banking in years, like the big task at Spar Banking was that they had a mortgage book with an external partner, which had to be moved to a new partner. So what we did was that we.

Erik Hultman: Took on the mortgage book, partly on the own books. We had to fix the bridge financing or this transition, and then eventually moved the mortgage book to a new partner. Right. And this was the main task during my years there. Once we had done that, like mortgage book. Transition. That’s when I felt that my work here is done.

Erik Hultman: Yeah. Time for a change. Time for a change. Exactly. And that’s when elk wire popped up on my radar. And what was most intriguing there was that, yeah, one build a treasure function from scratch again. But I also really liked that they were big player in the copper market. So that was a chance for me to learn commodities.

Erik Hultman: And again,

Mike Richards: fiscal commodities. You’ve done financial markets all the time. You’ve done finance. Finance and banking, treasury. So you joined Elco Wire as the treasurer, but that was the shift, if you like, from banking to corporate treasury. What’s been that? How’s that felt? How has that different, if you like, and how have you partnered with the business?

Erik Hultman: Yeah, so corporate treasury is, it’s different and it’s not, but your perspective widens. You still. Managing risk. I mean that’s, I’d say that’s the main task of a treasurer, but now it’s just so more, very much more embedded in the whole company’s in operations and the strategy. You really need to move from this like short term perspective and a short term performance to get the structure in place.

Erik Hultman: To have a longer term impact.

Mike Richards: Yeah. ’cause you’re moving from that trader to protector on you and that you’re looking after the business and then partnering with the business. Exactly. Yeah. And then I know you gave me this sort of great example of Elco wire as a business itself. You talk about that’s copper and everything else.

Mike Richards: You went to the Forge. What’s the operational side of Elco Wire? What’s it? It’s a bit different. You walk into a trading room, it’s like that.

Erik Hultman: Yeah.

Mike Richards: Slightly different. What’s

Erik Hultman: that like? It is, I mean, this is one of the things I really like. So it’s heavy industry, right? But it’s also like modern and we’re working very hard on sustainability.

Erik Hultman: Making carbon free copper, for example. And it’s pretty cool ’cause the whole entire value chain is visible, right? When I go, when I take my, uh, the car to work in the morning, I can see the vessels docked outside the port. And I know they have x tons of copper on board, or hopefully they do. And we have like literally a burning furnace with the.

Erik Hultman: Copper being loaded. And then on the other side of it, you got this. Really high performance wires and power rail networks and wind power plants, subsea cables and everything. It’s, yeah, it’s quite different from being in a bank. In trading

Mike Richards: room Is treasury, if you like, sometimes misunderstood by the business.

Mike Richards: Do you think it’s, do you think it needs to change how it partners with the business and things? I know that in the. Passed on a recent podcast I had, one of my guests was treasury, went off into the corner, was the specialist area, and now it really partners with the business comes back in the mainstream.

Mike Richards: How do you do that? Or do you think it’s been misunderstood?

Erik Hultman: The best way to add value for a treasury is to be in the middle of strategic planning, not just reacting to whatever crisis pops up and doing the daily firefighting. We need to be, as a treasury, you need to be like a proactive communicator in that perspective.

Mike Richards: And I know that you’ve talked about making treasury really relevant. Haven’t you gain the where organizations where treasury’s not really front of mind. How do you push treasury to the forefront? How do you make it relevant, if you like, without annoying people or forcing it?

Erik Hultman: Yeah. Well, you need to meet people where they are, right?

Erik Hultman: You need to start understanding their priorities. Doesn’t matter if they’re like sales or operations or procurement or supply chain or whatever, and then show how T can support them and how you can add value to them. Yeah, just as an example, explaining how the ethics risk is gonna impact what they do and the importance of really capturing it.

Mike Richards: How do you do that with the business? Are you just giving them the numbers, really showing them, or when you’re talking to fx, you, I know that I’ve spoken to some treasuries and they do like a corporate treasury 1 0 1 and they go round and they give explanations of treasury. Is that what you guys do? How have you done it?

Erik Hultman: I haven’t done that, but that’s actually a good idea. I try to be like a regular speaking partner, but many of the stakeholders have just put in a regular weekly meeting the. Risk is obviously that it’s gonna be something that you is done just for the sake of it. I mean, the whole point is to actually,

Mike Richards: yeah, add value in your previous role at Spa Bank and you covered everything from risk to investor relations in this role at, in your current role, I know you’ve got lots of different priorities and lots of different hats you’ve gotta wear.

Mike Richards: How do you make that work? It’s that

Erik Hultman: constant balancing between the daily firefighting and having your eyes on long term, long term goals and the right, the structure. It’s cliche, but you need to focus on what moves the needle.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Erik Hultman: But then again, you have a. Some, somebody’s yelling somewhere because that’s a crisis.

Erik Hultman: Yeah. Need to deal with that at the same time.

Mike Richards: Yeah. As you say, I, I know that again, you had talked about how you’re quite strategic with your time as well. How do you do that sort of thing?

Erik Hultman: Well, I try to be just, I wonder those annoying guys that sort of block my calendar for, to not get into interrupted.

Erik Hultman: Right. But it’s, I mean, it’s the only way to get that time. Yeah. It’s, I. I can’t just sit around and waiting for emails to drop in and for my phone to call and then, and just solve other people’s

Mike Richards: problems. Yeah. You’ve gotta do strategic planning as well. Exactly As you say, deep thought type of thing. Yeah.

Mike Richards: And I know that we’ve also talked, you know, how does treasury improve moving forward? What do you think treasury needs to do better sort of thing. You’ve been there and I go to conferences and things like that, but. And we talk about this, how does treasury get better over the years sort of thing and get improved?

Mike Richards: I think it, like a big challenge

Erik Hultman: is getting away from this, and I call it the firefighting, the reactiveness, and then trying to be more, more proactive. You need strict frameworks for what to do when things happen. And that goes hand in hand with like a scenario analysis. Yeah. If A happens, what do we do?

Erik Hultman: Yeah. If B happens, what do we do? I mean, if you have the, if you have this framework and the structure in place, then there’s no need to panic and get stressed. You just follow your framework and then you’re fine. You don’t even have to, you don’t even have to ask questions. You just, you do what you’re supposed to do.

Mike Richards: And I talked to a global treasury yesterday, and you mentioned it before, about being a good storyteller to the business and to explain. Things, not just with investor relations external, but also that helps you with your influencing, didn’t you? You and I talked about that.

Erik Hultman: Yeah, no, it’s like I mentioned before, be close to your stakeholders.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Erik Hultman: It could be a formal meetings or it could just be dropping in the office, exchanging a few words, see what’s going on, what’s the latest. Being, being present.

Mike Richards: And obviously there’s a company, corporate Europe, commod, you’re linked to commodities. So you’re a big part and you’re a part of a key part of the supply chain.

Mike Richards: There are tariffs there, political tensions, there are things happening. How are you planning for the risks that are coming along in that world? ’cause obviously every day is different, unpredictable and things like that. What, how do you plan from it?

Erik Hultman: Yeah. That was actually something that surprised me when I started at like this physical commodity markets.

Erik Hultman: Like from a, coming from a fixed income world, this methods market, they are incredibly illiquid and yeah, but that’s, again, you come into this scenario planning, right? Let’s put it, that’s, that’s, that’s how high I, how I manage. Yeah. These challenges. And you’re looking at long, is that clear mandates and Yeah.

Erik Hultman: Follow the framework. It’s more, it’s really more. We’re very much like hands on. Yeah. It’s not a theoretical framework, it’s just if a happens, we do that. And yeah, like I said before, it’s,

Mike Richards: yeah. And you’re saying about commodities there, so hedging is a big thing for you and for you as a company, and you’ve done the trading side of the balance sheet and now you’re hedging if you like seeing on the corporate side of the fence.

Mike Richards: How does that work for you guys and how has it changed?

Erik Hultman: Yeah, that’s a big difference from a previous role as a trader now. Everything I do is about risk mitigation. The risk is, I mean, the challenge is to define and capture the risk once. Once you are aware of what it is, it’s all about just reducing it.

Erik Hultman: Yeah. We’re not expected to run any ethics, risk, or proper risk or any kind of risk. That’s not where we are. Yeah. Expected to make any money.

Mike Richards: Obviously technology and systems, and I know that you are in the middle of an SAP project at the moment. What are the challenges? Does that throw up sort of thing?

Mike Richards: What are the things that you’ve identified as a treasurer?

Erik Hultman: Yeah, it’s, that’s quite an interesting challenge. You don’t realize that your systems are only as, as good as the data going in garbage in, garbage out. Yeah. So we’re working on aligning our processes and how we work with our ELP throughout the system.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Erik Hultman: And also for, I mean for me, in my role, I try to automate as much as I can to free up

Mike Richards: time. And we’re not that far off the end of the show sort of thing. But I just think for you, you are a treasury leader, you understand the risks, you’ve understood it from the banking side, and now you are the corporate side.

Mike Richards: How do you, as a leader, when you are understanding the risks, how do you share that around sort of thing?

Erik Hultman: Yeah. I think that goes back to what we had talked about before about trying to influence things not a, rather than just being an like an authoritarian.

Mike Richards: So it’s more cell, so it’s cell not tell, you’re not tend to.

Mike Richards: Right. This is where you’re doing it. Yeah. That’s a good

Erik Hultman: way of expressing it. Yeah.

Mike Richards: And then, so as I say, we’ll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes and looking back over yourself. So the thing, you’ve been a number of years in treasury as well, both banking. What advice would you give to yourself or to the listeners today sort of thing?

Erik Hultman: I think, I mean, people can do this differently, but as I think and made it clear by now, I, I think it’s good to build the relationships. You don’t win in treasury by like always being the, or trying to be the smartest guy in the room. It’s about being trusted and being involved. Getting involved in time.

Erik Hultman: That’s a, I think that’s a good way of doing, uh, or doing, you know, being a treasurer and in general, I think you just need to, you need to like what you’re doing. Stay curious. Yeah. Don’t get comfortable and don’t get caught up with like small technicals. Keep your eye on long, longer term goals. Yeah.

Erik Hultman: Brilliant.

Mike Richards: Well, as I say, thank you very much, so we’ll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes and we’re looking forward to seeing you when you’re next over in London. It’d be lovely to see you.

Erik Hultman: Yeah, looking forward

Mike Richards: to that.

Erik Hultman: Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Thanks

Mike Richards: everyone.

Erik Hultman: Pleasure talking to you

Mike Richards: and you. Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode just as much though to recording it now.

Mike Richards: Don’t forget to subscribe on your usual platform, whether that’s Spotify, apple Podcast, wherever you listen to your podcast, so you never miss a future episode. Wanna stay ahead in treasury? Fantastic. Sign up for our newsletter. There’s a link in the show notes. You’ll get instant access to my pay review action plan for you.

Mike Richards: Treasury Professionals free guide to help you prepare for salary negotiations, maximize your salary at your next pay review. You’ll also get early access to our 2025 Treasury salary trends, white paper. And if you take part in our salary survey as well@treasurysalary.com, we can send you our January review of salaries as well, and.

Mike Richards: By signing up to the newsletter, you’ll get access to our CB resume templates, career tips, what could be better? It’s amazing. If you’re looking for a role, go to the website, treasury recruitment.com, or maybe even join us at any of our 2025 events and conferences. We are right the way across. We’re going from the US back through the uk, right the way across Europe, Dublin.

Mike Richards: Uh, it’s gonna be a great year in 2025, so looking forward to it. Go to our events page, treasury recruitment.com/events and sign up. Meet us in New York in March, or anywhere else you wanna see us in the rest of the world. Thanks for listening. Until next week, see you soon.