From Tax to Treasury: How Cross-Functional Skills Fuel Career Growth

Matthew Rose, Director of Treasury at Bromford Flagship: I’d certainly say take any opportunities. I was very, very pleased over my career. I was fortunate to be offered the chance to cover for a. Colleague in Canada for just under six months. One of the things you certainly get from it is not working in a head office, but working in a subsidiary gave you a very different perspective on things because often many people in treasury are in head offices and are less effective probably in working with parts of the business unless they’ve actually had the chance to do so.

Matthew Rose: That was one chance where I definitely did work in a, an important subsidiary that wanted some degree of autonomy, but was still part of group rules. So definitely take opportunities to work abroad. Get involved in any projects as well where you can, because. Again, they won’t come along that often, whether it’s an m and a project, if you’re lucky enough to be see able to know that and become a probably an insider on that.

Matthew Rose: So you’ve gotta be careful on that. So take advantage of any opportunities. Seek out companies that are doing interesting things and do the qualifications. They’d be some of the things I would definitely be saying to more junior members of the treasury community.

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 joined by Matthew Rose, the director of Treasury at Bromford Flagship. Bromford Flagship are a housing association providing affordable housing and specialist housing support services with over 80,000 homes across East, central or Southwest of England. A proven track record ability to deliver at scale.

Mike Richards: They’re committed to investing significantly to improve their services for all of their members. They are locally focused and accountable teams, and they tailor their approach to their, all the different people and communities that they serve. But what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go back to the beginning of Matthew’s career and how he first started.

Mike Richards: In treasury, but in actual fact, you didn’t, you started in tax and then made the transition. So, you know what, talk us through the beginning and then how that that transition came about over to you.

Matthew Rose: Yeah, firstly, Mike, great to talk with you today and Sir, and thank you for including me amongst the illustrious set of treasures that have been on your podcast.

Matthew Rose: So great to be here anyway. Thank you. In terms of my career path, I originally did economics at university and I actually did a summer job at the Bank of England during one of the summers, which was, uh. Very interesting thing to do. I remember when I was there, I recall the bank was actually speaking with a range of building societies to see if many would be keen to convert to banks under the recent legislation.

Matthew Rose: So it was very topical. Yeah. At that point in time. But colleagues there actually recommended I become a qualified accountant, so I did. Charter accountancy and then mainly worked in tax both in the profession as well as doing audits as well. I joined my first company, which was ICI, then a very well known chemical conglomerate In the nineties.

Matthew Rose: I worked with a lot of the international divisions and many cash and foreign exchange issues came up. Um, my then taxation controller, old style name. Yeah, was on a number of the Association of Corporate Treasurer’s Committees, and he strongly encouraged me to do the treasury exams to add to the accounting and tax skills that I built up.

Matthew Rose: So I did that. The timing was very interesting as I signed up shortly after my son was born, and that doing exams as a new dad was an interesting challenge.

Mike Richards: And when you did that and you said, oh, do the treasury exams, was there much of a linkage there between tax and treasury in those early days?

Mike Richards: Because I get, I do get approached by junior guys and they say, but just this morning I’ve got a guy in consultancy saying, Hey, should I do the exams? Will that help me broaden into corporate treasury quite similarly. Did that help?

Matthew Rose: Yes. I was increasingly working with the treasury teams as tax teams in particular were amongst other things, asking for real cash transactions to take place usually on the last day of the year.

Matthew Rose: There were a lot of funds moving around, often on the 1st of December, which was very popular ’cause we needed to do evidence those on bank statements to demonstrate those transactions had been undertaken for audit or for, um, then inland revenue purposes. I worked on a number of m and a transactions, often negotiating the proceeds and how they would be allocated and received, and I took a lot of pride in wanting to see the transactions complete and then everyone was talking all this jargon, all these weird three, three letter acronyms I didn’t understand.

Matthew Rose: So partly doing the exams helped me to understand that and then obviously be a better able to participate in these type of projects going forward.

Mike Richards: And then you carried on with your taxes as a sort of mainstream, and then we’ll come to it and moved across. So talk us through the next couple of moves I think.

Matthew Rose: Yeah. One of the interesting things was that back in those days, treasury was a sort of ivory tower. Yeah. And literally in physically it was that. Sometimes treasury was in upper floors or restricted access areas, which I think added to the mystique, which I think a lot of the treasury teams, they didn’t like necessarily to be out in the open.

Matthew Rose: But then clearly you, you operated with dedicated terminals and dealing phones and trades were literally on old style recorded lines. So whilst that’s changed, treasury I think had more of a. A of surprise and mystique that’s hopefully has changed. Now, I then did a lot of treasury work whilst in tax teams, particularly when there were companies that I worked for, I-C-I-B-T and later Taylor Wimpy.

Matthew Rose: That all got into situations where they were raising finance or restructuring and many of the funding transactions had to them. And back in those days, let’s say the late nineties, early two, there was a lot. Let’s call it structured finance transactions, which had a very strong tax element to them. And so people working on those collectively were, I think seen as quite valuable to treasurers as well as tax teams.

Matthew Rose: So whilst those type of transactions may have finished, it gave me a lot of skills that you’ve taken forward into how you obviously use treasury in tructure. Normal m and a or commercial transactions. So one treasurer I remember working with made a very key comment and actually said, remember, it’s the post tax rate on borrowings or investments that’s vital.

Matthew Rose: And then obviously made sure that treasury and tax work more together. So I think there were a number of number of areas where it brought the two teams and now. I would say there’s probably a very strong number of certainly larger corporates where the two are under the same, the same sort of report of the CFO, if not directly to the CFO, because they’re the two functions that have to work together very frequently.

Mike Richards: And I think you’re right, and I saw it as you and I have known each other for many times, that there was, it was always tax and treasury were very separate, literally physically separate. And then suddenly they were talking a lot more and then they were sitting next to each other. And then actually you’d have sometimes ahead of tax and treasury.

Mike Richards: And I’ve seen that come back, but not in gray abundance. But I think that’s also tax. Guys are so busy. So are treasurers. But you did that ’cause then you as, when you went to raw mail, you took over both hats or what was that like?

Matthew Rose: Yeah, when I joined Roel, it was as head of tax. I was asked a few months later if I would be interested in being a candidate for the head of Treasury as well as the head of treasury.

Matthew Rose: There was due to retire the following year. Yeah, and as it turned out, that is what happened. It was an honor to do. It was a bit challenging as I was obviously a newcomer to actually leading treasury, even though I had worked on many treasury transactions and leading a well established team through a period of upcoming change and being accepted by the team was quite a task even before we started to get negotiate with governments, advisors, and everyone on what became the IPO.

Matthew Rose: A few, a few years later.

Mike Richards: And what was that like? You’ve gone from this public sector ish type organization to, then we’re gonna go through an IPO and you know, proper challenge sort of thing, toughest moments. What was that like for you?

Matthew Rose: Plenty of interesting moments, and we may touch on some of those as well.

Matthew Rose: During the IPO. It’s now 12 years ago, hopefully. Hopefully reasonable documented and royal males changed. Ownership obviously recently as well. Moved on. Uh, there were lots of interesting phases. Clearly there hadn’t been a. What I term old style privatization for many years. So a lot of the advisors that had worked on all the ones I guess in the eighties and nineties were not the same people that were working on them now.

Matthew Rose: The banking world had changed, but trying to negotiate a more than a billion pounds banking syndicate from scratch and you know, renegotiate a number of pensions and tax items at the same time, as well as adapting to having to have insurance, not essentially government backed. There were lots of things that all had to fall into place.

Matthew Rose: There were huge numbers on the regulatory side and commercial side and managing the union. So it was a huge project across many disciplines, and it was obviously very pleasing when that was finally completed in October, 2013. Yeah, so yeah, that’s definitely a career highlight. But that was effectively just the start of the journey.

Matthew Rose: It’s amazing. Many people think, oh, I’ve done the listing in October, 2013. Yeah, Peter, end of story. Actually. That was just the start of the next phase to actually move on to then getting a track record, delivering to the city and being able to then do a standalone credit rating and public bond, which we did a year or two later on, which was very pleasing to take that to the next level.

Mike Richards: And you got recognized as a team, you won a treasury team of the year. What, again? I’ve talked to some of our other clients where they’ve gone for these awards and it’s just a recogni. I’ve said, oh, you’re doing it for the prize? And they went, no. It’s for the recognition of the team and the effort. What was that like?

Matthew Rose: Look, we didn’t go for the award. We were very surprised to be nominated and it was, it was very pleasing to hear that. Yes, I remember our CFO at the time said it was the one award that. He was really pleased we won because it was to other treasurers. Acknowledging as peers, which treasury team was probably worthy of recognition that year, and a number of the team who were slightly lower profile were slightly surprised, I think, to have their picture in the treasurer a few months later.

Matthew Rose: But that was the, that was the case. It was probably before LinkedIn had much of a much of a presence. So it, it was good. And no, I remember that and I had no idea that we were going to be. The team of the year, and so whilst two or three of us were actually at the ceremony, it was still a bit of a surprise to be part of that, but it was, it was good and clearly it took the team forward and hopefully gave it the recognition that hopefully it deserved and.

Matthew Rose: Recognize the work that we’d done over the previous three or four years in particular. Not just in one month, but at some point when a bond happened the previous summer. Yeah.

Mike Richards: And then you, so you’ve stepped, you did the joint role tax and treasury and then you went back to tax for a period of time. Did you miss treasury or what happened?

Mike Richards: I think

Matthew Rose: with hindsight, that’s, that’s team in the year award and the, um, refinancing that we did probably slightly ahead of schedule led to. At that stage, my CFO saying that probably like a number of people after the privatization, we’d almost done things to a faster timescale and we’d almost done ourselves out of a role.

Matthew Rose: So I ended up leaving Rome mail in the autumn of 2015, and then an interesting opportunity came up with. A less well known organization called Seadrill, which was a, an interesting set of entities with presence in a number of territories, Norway, Bermuda, the us, and around the world as a provider of, or oil exploration rigs.

Matthew Rose: Yeah, it had a very interesting structure. It’s been quite well documented. It went in and outta chapter 11 in the US a few times, and. Tax and treasurer, again, very closely linked. I remember going to numerous bank meetings with over 40 banks and 13 syndicates, and it was a complicated structure to put it mildly.

Matthew Rose: And uh, so clearly we were heavily involved in refinancing. And then the structuring around chapter 11. Which again is a process that it’s interesting to go through. Hopefully not too many times, but you, you, you get a totally different perspective on the, the US structuring and the US legal process that that’s required.

Matthew Rose: But it was a great discipline. We the, at that stage, it was probably in the tax team, but we worked extensively with the treasury team. ’cause almost everything needed clearance from at least one set of banks and we took over the proposed. Corporate structure that would follow from that to try and set everyone better for the future.

Matthew Rose: There’d been a bit of a, I would say an opportunistic set of financing taken in the, what I term, the boom time in the early 2010s. But really we need to have something a bit more sustainable going forward. So I’d like to think that we were able to apply some combined rigor and strength to that going forward.

Mike Richards: One of my previous guests actually on the show, he actually talked about, he’d gone through chapter 11 and he said it was, and someone had described it, it was character building. I said, oh, what was that like? And he went, I already, I, it is all right. I already had a character. I didn’t need it anymore building.

Mike Richards: He said, but we got through it and it came out. And I said, oh, and, but I said, oh, and what was it like afterwards? It was time for a change. He said, I was literally just, it was quite exhausting sort of thing. And you, so you did that, you went through those periods of time and then LaRue talk us through the next move or how did that come out?

Mike Richards: ’cause you got back to, but then you did a broader role, tax, treasury and investor relations.

Matthew Rose: I did, yes, that’s true. So look at the start of the pandemic. I think one of the first things that happened was exploration for new energy projects was almost cut, not surprisingly, made some management changes.

Matthew Rose: That was not a great surprise. Uh, it was interesting. Obviously very well known for. Printing the currency and providing a lot of labels on many tobacco and alcohol products ar around the world. So people and, and in fact on an awful lot of Microsoft products. So I probably got, uh, a label on it. Uh, without realizing it, the opportunity came up a fairly short notice, which was fortune at the time.

Matthew Rose: And as you say, it was a combined role, tax, treasury and investor relations. That was a good challenge for me ’cause I’d not formally led investor relations, certainly on the equity side before, and they were going through a. Serious financial restructuring. And so joining at that stage when a number of people had chosen to take launch redundancy and I had I think about two hours collective handover amongst the functional heads of those, which was, which was character building.

Matthew Rose: If you building, absolutely, you just, uh, just get into it and have to go straight into working with it. It’s amazing what a small world it was. ’cause a number of the advisors, both tax and treasury and legal work. Those that I’d worked with at at least one of the previous two companies. So it was quite, quite, you wore back in the room, you’re

Mike Richards: like, oh, your usual seats there.

Mike Richards: There you go. Yeah,

Matthew Rose: it was, it was mainly virtual rooms at that stage. But yes, so once you did get back into physical rooms, it was a lot of familiar places in, in the city often, but No, that’s fine. Look, it was, again, it was an always work at a, a company with a lot of deep heritage and to go to. Almost full circle because I remember gonna the Bank of England printing press app in the northeast London where I didn’t manage to go when I was the summer student many, many years before, just wasn’t possible to do.

Matthew Rose: And I remember going there, but trying to manage a banking group when you’ve been in a distressed situation, maybe I was getting a bit of reputation for that. So as a, at a few companies, but that’s where you really own your, own, your crossroad, isn’t it? Yeah. When you’re actually managing the difficult times, it’s, I’m not saying it’s always easy in the good times, but it’s certainly the time when you.

Matthew Rose: Spotlights on you. And actually I, yeah, I just add a lot of value. So that’s where I think it was helpful managing what had been a, I believe, a challenging refinancing process. And hopefully we stabilize things for a few years. And I know one of the aims when working with the chief exec was, can we try and move.

Matthew Rose: Back to the, what I term, regular relationship parts or banks rather than permanently be with the restructuring teams of banks. Nice people that they were, they clearly have a different mindset and clearly therefore, we wanted to get back to regular relationship banking transition. Yeah. And not the slightly challenging situation we had, I think in the months before.

Mike Richards: I just wanna pick it. That’s great actually. Nice segue. Thank you very much. We recently did a video about the spotlight coming onto treasury. In fact, using the prop in the corner. And actually I talked about how times of stress crisis, the spotlight is on treasury, but then it drifts away. How did you maintain those?

Mike Richards: One of the things with the banks, you obviously right, we wanna be with your normal teams now, please. We’ve got back onto a stable. Footing and things like that. But you as a treasurer, how did you keep your, you, you wanna get your breath back. You get your breath back. Great. How did you keep up the image of treasury and with that seat at the table?

Mike Richards: That was,

Matthew Rose: again, this was during 2020 and early 2021. So it was in a virtual world, in, in all senses. So look, I think one of the features ironically during the pandemic was that people I think were less, less wary about actually just. Sending a message and speaking to people, whereas I think people probably beforehand wouldn’t have necessarily gone to the CFO or CEO’s desk or room somewhere in a different floor or in the corner of a building.

Matthew Rose: So I actually think it was an opportunity to just get in touch with people. And the worst happens is you see someone green on teams or Skype and they don’t respond, but in many cases they do. As someone relatively new, it was an opportunity to really try and learn, understand, make sure people realize that we had signed up to quite.

Matthew Rose: Extensive what I term monitoring by the banks. We had to provide quite regular monthly or quarterly updates and therefore it gave me an opportunity to build relations with key parts of the business to understand whether the forecasts that we were providing were realistic. And if not, then we had to bear that mind.

Matthew Rose: And with an investor relations hat on. You’ve obviously got the, what I term, the investment banking brokers community to manage as well. I, I remember being told the night before the half year results that I was doing, the equivalent of the presentation of that, which I hadn’t either realized or had as, uh, spelled out to me.

Matthew Rose: I suppose many people had assumed that. So I did have an extensive day of media training with, with someone to be ready for that. You know, lots of ways that then, yes, you were a bit more high profile and had to manage some of the tech as well as the external communities.

Mike Richards: And then the next couple of moves, because I want to get onto your time at Bromford.

Mike Richards: Just just talk us through. So you’d finished there, you came out of COVID and everything else. Just bring us up to date.

Matthew Rose: Yeah, so I, I was working at Dru. I wanted a more in-person role when the pandemic was winding down. And I took a role at, uh, different organization with Leica, which was in person more tax role.

Matthew Rose: It was an interesting move into a private, privately owned entity, but certainly more comfortable in an organization that’s got more formality and heritage to it. I would say I got an opportunity to join, was in Bromford Housing Group in the summer of 2024, which was a starting to plan the merger with a similar.

Matthew Rose: Type of organization, flagship housing group. That obviously involved a lot of detailed work and planning with many colleagues, and that’s merger completed at the end of February, 2025. And subsequently, we’ve implemented a lot of the transactions that were earmarked and required as part of the consents to do so.

Matthew Rose: Since then, we’ve done a whole range transactions. We’ve done new bank, both drawn and undrawn financing. A private placement, uh, an EMTN program and a bond last month. So we’ve done quite a lot in the last six months, and hopefully we’re now ready to be able to finance the future having got to where we needed to within six months of the merger date.

Mike Richards: What would you say is the most challenging part of that? The integration, if you like. So you are, you’ve got the challenge of integrating treasury, operations and cultures. Surely they’re just two large housing associations. They’re exactly the same. Plug them in. That’s it. There’s still a lot of work

Matthew Rose: going on.

Matthew Rose: Integrating very effectively. ’cause everyone’s on slightly different systems. The ethos and the cultures are. Very similar, which is one of the reasons I believe the organizations wanted to come together. And that’s a, that’s a key part of the thinking that took place at the genesis of the transaction.

Matthew Rose: There’s a lot of work to do this in such a way that it’s seamless for all of the stakeholders, including the customers. Most customers shouldn’t see a huge amount of difference if there’s largely local management, but there’s an awful lot of systems and data and processes and contact centers that all have to be.

Matthew Rose: Managed to suitable standards, but generally, most operation areas have been very well managed and continue to provide services. But clearly in the, let’s call it central services or back offices, we want to bring things together effectively, and we are obviously doing so in a. Transitional way. And so far we’ve got through all year end audits and everything’s been published on track so far.

Matthew Rose: It’s been good, but there will be, um, opportunities to develop that before Yeah. From there next year end. Yeah.

Mike Richards: And you and I, we talked about this before, that you’ve positioned treasury there and you’ve drawn from a lot of your past experience to be much more of a business partner, and, and that’s a key thing I know for you that you want the treasury function to partner with the business.

Mike Richards: How did you. Sell that story to, how did you share that with people? Not resistance. You are trying to explain this to people. How did you get out there, overcome any sort of, not, again, not negative things, but actually you go out there write, hide, by the way, where Treasury. How did you do that?

Matthew Rose: To be fair, Treasury’s had a reasonably high profile in Bromford and now Bromford flagship.

Matthew Rose: Partly because, yes, the sources of funding, the housing associations are largely. Borrowing and government grants, and obviously people do work with the various government agencies, homes, England and others, on, on grants, but debt forms the majority of it, so you have to have awareness and recognition of where we’re getting funding from and the quality of your.

Matthew Rose: Business quality of your management all feeds into the assessment that the credit rating agencies undertake on us as We have two credit rating agencies. Some have one, some have three in the sector, but we’ve got two and we’re one of the strongest in that, and we placed very high, high value on that. So trying to be very cognizant of the drivers of getting a high credit rating.

Matthew Rose: Features highly on the, the way the organization, and I think many housing associations operate as well with strong governance and particular focus on the features that give you a good score on the assessment with their agencies, and they’re an important stakeholder that we need to communicate with at the appropriate time.

Mike Richards: And we talked before. Again, I wanna talk about the future or the current challenges that face Treasury, if you like. Certainly from, maybe from your seat if you like. What are the challenges coming for treasury at the moment? We, we see everything about AI from, but then different challenges about the markets and things like that.

Mike Richards: What are the key things that you are keeping an eye on if you like, you are keeping your spotlight on if you like.

Matthew Rose: Yeah, I think at the end of the day there’s still a strong element of. Relationships with people. Part of our role is to ensure we’re communicating the current performance or the intended activities of organizations, staying abreast with what’s going on in the markets.

Matthew Rose: And at the end of the day, banks don’t do things by AI in terms of the way they make decisions for communicating either loan requests or changes you might want to seek. You’ve gotta still get on with the appropriate people at the right levels, keeping up the. Working relationships with the relationship managers is an important part of senior treasury people’s roles, and I think we’ll continue to do that.

Matthew Rose: Clearly you’ve got to get the compliance and the systems organized and keep those under control. I think that’s effectively taken as a given or taken for granted now. But I would say at senior levels, essentially you are, you’re hired for your judgments, not for being able to approve something in a, in a reporting system.

Matthew Rose: And I think that’s the key point, is can you actually do the analysis? Give the right level of insight to senior management and to key relationship partners out externally

Mike Richards: to help people and stuff. And as you say, there, treasury has evolved massively all the, throughout yours and my careers. What do you see as the, if you were coming into treasury now or earlier stages, what are the.

Mike Richards: Most the key skills you think for the next generation of people coming through and some of the maybe your junior or mid-level team members, what are you encouraging them to do?

Matthew Rose: It’s interesting. Treasury, probably a bit like some areas I’ve seen in career, some slightly more specialist roles as they’re perceived are not ones that you’d start off in.

Matthew Rose: Most people start off in normally in a regular accounting or mainstream finance role, so at some point it’s how did you get your awareness of treasury is gonna be the point I think. It’s partly for treasury functions and the treasury community to make sure people are aware that if you wanna take it down, whether it’s physical or electronic, cash is still going to be a vital part of any organization.

Matthew Rose: And so I think one of the real opportunities for people in treasury. Now our upcoming is to make sure they realize they are part of the lifeblood of the organization and to actually recognize that. I remember it a few previous companies, slightly larger ones to be fair, the Royal males and the bts. When I was there before, there was a strong policy of trying to rotate people into.

Matthew Rose: Central teams such as treasury to give people a better understanding when they possibly then returned to other parts of the business community or the finance teams that they were in, and hopefully would have a better appreciation of that. So I would say it’s partly down to us, the community, to make people aware as the community and people such as yourselves and the A CT do regularly, but it’s also people should be inquisitive, I would say.

Matthew Rose: People need to be obviously. Thorough and to recognize that it’s actually an opportunity to work with people outside of your organization. There’s an awful lot of finance roles that are very, and you just basically talk to your teams and your line manager and possibly your sister function. Treasury does give you the opportunity to work with, obviously, banks, lawyers, people you hopefully do want to work with if you come into treasury.

Matthew Rose: Yeah. But it does give you an important presence as well as obviously whenever you are talking to auditors, you’re effectively. Making sure that you are representing the company. ’cause they’re thinking about you as someone who is the gatekeeper of going concern and the audit report can depend on how you communicate with them.

Matthew Rose: So you’ve gotta be very aware at all times of the position that you actually have as a key central part of most, most finance functions.

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Mike Richards: Let’s get back to the episode, and you, you’ve every, you’ve been one of our. Attendees who come along to our treasure Career corner live events where we interview treasurers about their treasure careers. I sit there on stage and we do a similar interview to this, but with two or three treasurers and then we get to their, what’s keeping them up at night?

Mike Richards: What are they keeping one eye on and things like that. Any other issues you think? Other treasurers should be thinking about maybe for the more experienced the soul out there listening today.

Matthew Rose: Uh, look, I certainly for the more experienced ones, I guess we need to make sure we’re sufficiently familiar with the developments, particularly on the technical side, and obviously recognizing that the world is developing and changing.

Matthew Rose: And even though our skills may be best on the people side, we’ve got to be slick on systems reporting and still managing things like know your customer and we’ve got some interesting history stories on that. Know your customer as well to to cover, but. Which, which doesn’t seem to be moving on very quickly.

Matthew Rose: It’s interesting, you still seem to get numerous demands. So actually being well plugged in with all of your corporate functions to gather the relatively sensitive data that you have to provide on people’s addresses or dates of birth or whatever other information the banks are obviously needing to include on files.

Matthew Rose: But I would say it’s definitely. A plan for the future and think, where’s my next 2, 3, 4 years worth of funding going to come from? Am I confident that there’s no warning signs that I need to be flagging in terms of risks to covenants, deadlines, reporting material, adverse effect, or whatever the technical terms would be.

Matthew Rose: So it’s really trying to think two or three steps ahead, not trying to be negative and a doom and gloom merchant, but trying to be realistic as to those things that could change the dial and mean you need to be. Flagging these up to people going forward. Sometimes they’re monetary limits. I was gonna say, and it does link to it, but there’s a number of often fixed monetary limits in a lot of reporting that sometimes you have to do for a range of treasury or tax areas.

Matthew Rose: And knowing if you can see your company’s revenues about to hit that and knowing you may then need to be ready to provide even more data or have even more resources available is as a skill. You’ve got to be able to predict.

Mike Richards: You talked earlier, just, I just wanna reflect as well about the Royal Mail big challenge for yourself and the IPO and things, but are there any particular challenges you reflected and you were thinking about doing this show and things, any projects or challenges that pushed you out of your comfort zone and what you’ve learned from them and that you would share with others?

Mike Richards: One

Matthew Rose: I can think of from, from the royal male time was, yeah, when. When we were in discussions with government as to whether they were going to sell more or less than 50%, and they did eventually sell more than 50% if they went over the 50% sale and it became obviously not a subsidiary of government. Yeah, there were a range of things.

Matthew Rose: Which kicked in particularly on the insurance side. There’s a lot of insurance. ’cause remember, Ronell presumably still does have one of the largest fleets of vehicles, one of the largest property portfolios, and obviously very large employee base, all of which have quite heavy insurance demands. Many of the insurers were looking for guarantees at that stage, which had not needed to be cash backed.

Matthew Rose: And if we went over 50% sale. We may have needed some serious cash backing. And that was a binary choice and it was hard to have that conversation with the relevant institutions until that was clear ’cause it was such a huge choice. So having a lot of contingency plans and then the whole discussion about how much directors and offices insurance is needed for the privatization was another interesting one with governments on that.

Matthew Rose: So there’s been a few things that. Definitely were not things that I would instinctively have done as a trust accountant 15 years beforehand, but obviously then got into those and I would say treasury issues were at times the most high profile part of my role, even if I was covering three or four different areas.

Matthew Rose: And some treasury functions do cover a broader range of issues than others. Some cover insurance and business planning, which at times can be. Really important to boards sometimes on an individual personal level, but you’ve obviously gotta manage all of the day-to-day operation issues as well. And a key part of the way I look at these things is to remember it’s not the.

Matthew Rose: Not the people in the glamorous roles that you have to think about. You do need to think about the rest of your team members as well and keep everyone happy so you’re not creating a sort of two-tier member of your team. ’cause that’s not good for morale or for keeping the basics going and without the basics you can’t really do the high profile.

Matthew Rose: Yes, the team-based sports, I think.

Mike Richards: Yeah,

Matthew Rose: definitely.

Mike Richards: And we’ll put your, again, as we do each week, we’ll put a link to your LinkedIn profile. As you mentioned earlier, people can connect to you and you’ll get a flood of it. Looking through the different levels, and this is where we give the advice, and you’ve heard it on the previous ones.

Mike Richards: If you were to go back or if you are well Junior in your career, mid-level senior, what kind of two or three bits of advice would you give to anyone listening today?

Matthew Rose: So I would definitely say do the. Relevant professional exams, do a treasury exam or certificates. I think it definitely adds credibility.

Matthew Rose: Clearly the A CT is the obvious route for that, but even in the uk And then you’ve got C TP in the US as well? Ab? Ab, absolutely. Absolutely. So I’d certainly recommend that. I’d certainly say take the opportunities. I was very, very pleased on my career. I was fortunate to be offered the chance to cover for a.

Matthew Rose: Colleague in Canada for just under six months and it was really, it was an interesting stage of life. I just bought a flat and I thought, do I really want to move? When ID just bought it, I thought, you know what? You’re not gonna get many opportunities. Yeah. And I was really pleased. I did. One of the things you certainly get from it is not working in a head office, but working in a subsidiary gave you a very different perspective on things because often many people in treasury are in head offices and are.

Matthew Rose: Less effective probably in working with parts of the business unless they’ve actually had the chance to do so. That was one chance where I definitely did work in a, an important subsidiary that wanted some degree of autonomy, but was still part of group rules. So definitely take opportunities to work abroad and then probably lastly, get involved in any projects as well where you can, because.

Matthew Rose: Again, they won’t come along that often, whether it’s an m and a project, if you’re lucky enough to be see able to know that and become a probably an insider on that. So you’ve gotta be careful on that. So. Take advantage of any opportunities, seek out companies that are doing interesting things and do the qualifications.

Matthew Rose: That’d be some of the things I would definitely be saying to more junior members of the treasury community.

Mike Richards: Great closing advice. Thank you very much Mr. Rose, and looking forward to seeing you at our next event coming up in November. So thank you very much and yeah, I know people enjoy it. Thank you very much, sir.

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

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