How Treasurers Move from Operational Roles to Strategic Impact | Treasury Careers Podcast

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: This week’s podcast is one of our treasury career corner live event podcasts. I interviewed three amazing treasurers in the heart of New York at Bob Kane corporate treasurer, Neptune Retail Solutions to Parley Choler, chief Treasury Officer at Moody’s, and Keith Gob, vice president, assistant treasurer at Bristol Myers Squibb.

Mike Richards: It was a great night, a great way to kick off our events for 2026. We’ve got lots of them come along to them. They’re amazing, and I have some amazing guests that come and join me. Let’s give you a little snippet from each of our speakers just so you know what the uh, episode is about. Enjoy.

Deepali Chawla, Chief Treasury Officer at Moody’s Corporation: I was lucky when I was looking, there was an opening in treasury and then I was like, I don’t even know what that means, but one of the finance senior person who was there in the organization at that point, he said, why don’t you come have a chat, see what it means, and if it interests you, then what’s that lose?

Deepali Chawla: I was like, yeah, sure. So I went to the uk, had a chat. And it was fascinating. I just felt like all that money that I can move around, all that money that I will be in control of, maybe somebody’s gonna trust me with that. Why not?

Keith Gaub, Vice President & Assistant Treasurer at Bristol-Myers Squibb: Four years ago, I got to a point in my career where I felt like home run opportunities only, like there’s just no reason to take jobs that you’re uncertain about or industries or sectors.

Keith Gaub: I was in the absolute no-brainer, can’t turn it down. And at that time, Bristol Myers was hiring further assistant treasurer, Sandra the treasurer, put out some feelers to some banks that said, do you know any people that are probably ready for that role? Some of them com commented that you might wanna talk to the guy at Zoetis.

Bob Kane, Vice President, Corporate Treasurer at Neptune Retail Solutions: Well, when Opportunity calls I, I would say you go for it. When I was a very young child, there was a game shoots in ladders Stop.

Keith Gaub: Yep.

Bob Kane: Careers can be kind of like that when you ing along, going up a couple levels and suddenly you hit a slide and down somewhere where you are out where you can get a ladder and you can shoot.

Bob Kane: So I always just recommend that if you need yourself, are you ready? And if not, you, who? And if not now, when you turn down an opportunity like what came to me, it can go away and it can go away forever.

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: right? Oh, this is fantastic. Well, great turnout. Thank you very much for all coming here to Treasury Career Corner, live in New York. Hands up if you’ve been to one of these things before, look at that. We must be doing something right. Hands up if you haven’t been to one, but you’re definitely coming back again and we haven’t even started yet.

Mike Richards: Great. No pressure, Bob. But you’ll listen to Bob’s story and you’ll want to come back. So you see this each time we do the energy thing. We’re not doing that today. I’m gonna get big, big, good evening from you guys. Good evening, New York. Good evening. Ah, there you go. Yeah, yeah. Keep Brian under control.

Mike Richards: Someone please. So the structure of this is, firstly, you are gonna get to hear through three amazing treasurers. You’re then gonna get to ask them some questions. When was the last time you got an intimate setting like this where you could ask them about their treasury careers, get some tips for success.

Mike Richards: Basically, the last time was actually last time you were here, but three different guests each and every time. Their stories are different. And how did this come from? Well, this actually started with a podcast. So I’m a treasury recruiter. I talk to treasurers each and every day. I love talking to you guys, even Brian.

Mike Richards: And the key thing is we also do lots of other stuff. We do our salary survey, we do the podcast. Started it seven years ago, grown and grown, 400 plus episodes. And there’s the team that support me doing it. But one of the key things, these events wouldn’t happen without the support or without the support of our sponsors.

Mike Richards: So firstly, welcome you here, Chrysler Coalition Greenwich, can you put your hands up where you go? Come over there, right? No, stand up please. Get up. Yeah, let there. Stay standing please. Trade Web. Trade Web. Get there. And Treasury Spring. Treasury Spring. Great. You need to go to them to get your drinks, tickets, otherwise you’re gonna be very thirsty later.

Mike Richards: There you go. But joking aside, we couldn’t put these events on without their support. So we really thank them and they come along. And also Herbert Smith. Oh sorry. God. Yeah. Better off. ’cause Ken will get me. So Ken partner here and looks after us. And we’ve had some amazing sessions today as well. But getting onto it, this is what we do.

Mike Richards: We talk about people’s treasury careers, how they started, where they are now, and whether they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next, we’re gonna do this across the panel. They’ll each introduce themselves. I’ll let them do that. They’ll do better than me. And then what we’ll do is we will go through how they started some of the bit as they progress their careers a little bit more.

Mike Richards: And then you will talk about lots of other topics. Yes, we will cover AI technology. We, yeah, it’s the thing, but we will cover it not in too much detail. You will also then q and a, we’ll do some wrap up and then we’ll get to do some networking drinks. And what we will be doing is we’ll be here from seven 30 till about quarter to nine, and then Herber Smith have been lovely, but then we’ll be going around the corner to economies.

Mike Richards: But I’ll show you some of that later. So firstly, I’ll hand over to Bob. Bob, over to you, sir.

Bob Kane: Okay. Robert Frost always likes to say I took the other road and it has made all the difference. So my career is a lot different than probably many of you. Are experiencing. It’s not linear through treasury. I spent the first 20 years of my life at Exxon and Pepsi in controller roles, financial engineering type roles.

Bob Kane: I segued into private equity with a Carl Icah owned company and started there as the head of FP and the treasurer there was take one step back. It was a private equity owned, they owned West Point Stevens, which became West Point Homes. It was a towel and a sheet company. And when Carl Lock Cam bought him, he basically terminated the group down south and hired all new people.

Bob Kane: So we had an entire new finance group and the treasurer, they had stayed of month and then announced he’s taking another job that he was looking for when he got our job. So the CFO came in into me and said, after a month, how’d you like to be treasurer? And my first response was, God, I’m not even sure what that means.

Bob Kane: Lemme think about it over the weekend. So when I came in on Monday, he told me he went to someone else on the list from when he was hiring people. So I lost out on that opportunity. Fast forward three months. And that person was terminated and he came into the office and he said, how would you like to be treasurer?

Bob Kane: And I said, yes. So I’m kind of a quick learner. So that is how I got my first introduction to direct Treasury. But again, I kept the fp and a role, but added the treasury cap to that. Now there were holes to fill, so I needed a place to find, find where I could fill in. The parts I didn’t really understand.

Bob Kane: And someone from a bank at Wachovia said, you need to get involved in a FP, and I think there’s some A FP members here. But basically they wanted me involved in that because they said they can kind of show you and lead you to people that will fill all those holes for you. So I’m very much indebted to a FP and absolutely a disciple for them.

Bob Kane: Currently I’m with Neptune Retail Solutions, which is another private equity deal.

Mike Richards: What do they do? Can you tell the bit more?

Bob Kane: Sure. It used to be the digital marketing arm of News Corp, the Fox News guys, and it was spun off to private equity and we had to change the name because it was News America Marketing.

Bob Kane: We weren’t allowed to use the word news

Mike Richards: and we’re gonna come back to you to Parly, if you would, and to Parly. I talk about the podcast you, Keith has already been on there, one of our top performing episodes, so no pressure Keith. Yeah. But to Parly has recently recorded one with me as well, so you can get a more in depth listen on that.

Mike Richards: Treasury career corner.com. But Parley, if you would, over to you.

Deepali Chawla: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks all for coming in. I’m deeply humbled to be in a room full of such great treasury professionals. My stepping into treasury was, I would say, just by chance, nothing planned. I moved from India to Belgium right after I got married.

Deepali Chawla: And as I did that, I was challenged to find a job in a French speaking French slash Dutch speaking country. And my first landing was in finance operations, working with the AR team, the accounts receivable team. Which I did and ended that stint with a transition of that function to a shared services team in Bangalore, in India.

Deepali Chawla: And then it came to the point of a what next? And as a family, me and my husband decided, let’s move to uh, uk. And for me the obvious thing was, you know what? Let me just try and find an internal transfer because I don’t wanna start with the whole searching for job again with a new company, a new country, everything.

Deepali Chawla: I was lucky when I was looking, there was an opening in treasury and then I was like, I don’t even know what that means. But one of the finance senior person who was there in the organization at that point, he said, why don’t you come have a chat, see what it means, and if it interests you, then what’s that lose?

Deepali Chawla: I was like, yeah, sure. So I went to the uk, had a chat and it was fascinating. I just felt like all that money that I can move around, all that money that I will be in control. Maybe somebody’s gonna trust me with that. Why not? And then I took that and I came to UK and that was my start into treasury. And that was again with the Hewlett Packard.

Deepali Chawla: So spent 11 years in total with, and that was somehow my foundation school. And I just seen John walk in. He was my last manager actually in HP before I left. Yes. So Jonathan was there and a great stint with Hewlett Packard moving across different treasury roles from analyst to systems implementation to what we call an in-house consulting team, advising the businesses, being a stakeholder partner, and then eventually leading that team and then finally leaving.

Deepali Chawla: Thought I would like to take a break in my career after 11 years having two kids, take some time to spend with them. But that wasn’t to be as I was soon headhunted for a job, G Capital, where they were trying to build their own treasury function. Taking it away from the US back to the regions to support better the bank-like institutions that we had.

Deepali Chawla: And so that was my next stint in treasury work there. Fascinating time, lots of learning. And again, the decision was made at one point that G is too big, the conglomerate has to then wind down G capital. And then that’s where I started working on being a part of the team, selling piecemeal by piecemeal our capital businesses.

Deepali Chawla: And just when that was ending and I thought, you know what? Now I definitely will take a break before the kids go to big. I was asked for this role in Huawei, which is where they were setting up their risk committee for financial risk evaluation for known unknown as they look through their processes and across treasury.

Deepali Chawla: And this role was reporting into the CFO office and the role was really to report out to the CFO after reviewing each function on sort of white papers to them. On what they can do better or where other inherent risk and how they do what they do. So two years with that and wasn’t really looking, but then Moody’s happened and again in a role where they were trying to set up the International Treasury team, the international treasurer role in the, in uk.

Deepali Chawla: So took that and seven years and here I’m sitting as the treasurer for Moody’s. So that in breed is my career. You back,

Mike Richards: you’re actually in New York now as well.

Deepali Chawla: I, I did. For all my sins. I relocated to New York last year. I, again, professionally, I think it just made sense and personally as well, which I can go into later if there was time to where I was at the stage where, you know, empty nester gets out doing their own thing and I’m here thinking like, why not?

Deepali Chawla: Let’s do it. So moved to New York last year. It’s been a year already now. So yeah, so far so good.

Mike Richards: We’ll go deep, deep dive on some of our guests, a bit more about some of the early steps they made and everything else in a moment. But Keith, I’ll hand over to you.

Keith Gaub: Thanks, Mike, and thanks everyone for coming out.

Keith Gaub: Glad to be here to speak with a bunch of treasury professionals about their journey. I think mine is extremely arbitrary as well. So I played baseball in college. I traveled a lot, I missed a lot of class and I really wanted to graduate on time. So I went to one of my professors and said, is there anything I can do to make up extra class time?

Keith Gaub: And he said, look, if you can come up with a really compelling independent study, I’ll give you some credit for it. And I happened to be having this conversation with someone in the dorm person across the hall, said, my father works for Lehman Brothers. Maybe he’ll talk to you and you could do something over there.

Keith Gaub: I didn’t even seriously know what Lehman Brothers was, but had a conversation with him. He said, sure, come on in. We’ll figure out something that you can do. It was like an unpaid thing. And uh, I started working there and really just doing some things for my class, but then I started engaging in what they were doing and it wasn’t, it wasn’t anything business facing, it was more of an accounting area, but I just took an interest.

Keith Gaub: And they started giving me responsibility that this rotating analyst was gonna do when they started. So I was doing the job at this rotational analyst and the day before the analyst was supposed to start, he or she took a job somewhere else and my immediate boss was all angry about this. And she said, when do you graduate?

Keith Gaub: And I said, six months. And she said, could you work part-time until then? I said, sure. She said, do you want this job full-time? I said, fine. She said, well, $45,000 a year worked. I mean, this was the negotiation that we were in and I just accepted on the spot and then a year went by, I’m in this group, but it was very back office.

Keith Gaub: It was a lot of shared services, a AP AR style, and that same SVP called me into his office and he said, look, he said, you seem like a young, ambitious person. Like why don’t we maybe put some feelers out and see if there’s areas more in finance, closer to the business that you might be interested in. He said, I know the controller really well.

Keith Gaub: And I know the treasurer really well. I’m gonna send your resume to both. So he sent my resume to the treasurer and the head of controllers treasurer responded back right away and said, we have three open roles. Have him come interview. If he likes one, we’ll see which one we like him for and maybe there’s a match.

Keith Gaub: I went over there, I interviewed for all three. I preferred asset and liability management. They agreed and they made me an offer. And right as I accepted the offer, the controller got back, and this is going back in the early two thousands and said, I think he was in Japan. I didn’t see this until now. We have open roles, send him over.

Keith Gaub: And I didn’t wanna go back on on my commitment, so I, I honored that and I stayed in treasury. And I do think back sometimes by how different a career might have been had he not been in Japan and had I preferred that area, I do think there’s an arbitrary nature to almost all of our careers. So I was at Lehman and my first two years in a LM and really enjoying it.

Keith Gaub: And that SVP called my boss’s boss and said, we have an open role back in our group. I’m gonna make him a young VP and we want to bring him back. And that boss called me into his office, talked to me about this opportunity and said, look, I don’t have anything for you now, but we wanna keep you. What I can do is I’ll put you in a special projects role.

Keith Gaub: I’ll have you support the liquidity management desk and if any of those roles open up, you’ll be, you’ll go on the trading floor. So I said, fine, I’m gonna take a flyer. And he said, look, I gotta be honest with you, there’s probably not gonna be any opening for any reasonable period of time. And sure enough, three months went by.

Keith Gaub: One of the people went to Merrill Lynch and I got the call to go down and the guy who was running the desk was all screaming. He was kicking stuff ’cause he didn’t want to take me because I was a young guy and he didn’t fail all the seasoned enough. But I spent three great years with him. I went into a few other business units within Lehman Brothers secured financing, municipal sales desk.

Keith Gaub: Then the financial crisis happened. I ended up leaving Lehman just before they went bankrupt. I went to work for an asset manager that then went bankrupt because of their exposure to Lehman’s. So Lehman still got me, and then I saw a random treasury job at shearing. I applied for that job. They called me back and they said, look, that job’s already been filled, but your resume got flagged during the interview process.

Keith Gaub: It’s a job doing modeling for a marketing group if you’re interested in. At that point in time, I was like, let me just take any job out there. So my first day, I’m in my apartment, I’m getting dressed, I’m putting on a suit to look nice, and I see a big announcement that Meck acquire shearing plow. I’m like, do I even go in?

Keith Gaub: I’m not even sure what this means at that time. So I was at cheering, plow Merck for a year, and then I got a call from someone to go back to Barclays who acquired Lehman Brothers assets. I was at Barclays for three years. Just had a different feel to it. Two companies that saw the world through very different ways, very different lenses.

Keith Gaub: And at that time, Pfizer was spinning out their animal health business. I had a former baseball player that was on my team in college, said, look, we’re spinning out our animal health unit. I know they need treasury people. Are you interested? And I said, let’s do it. So I went over to Zoetis. I spent a great nine years there.

Keith Gaub: Robins in the room now who took my seat when I moved from treasury into ir. But it was a really unbelievable opportunity to stand up a treasury function. I mean, I think most people’s roles you step into, someone has been doing it for some period of time. You come in, you make it your own. But we were just building this thing and I found it really engaging, it really developed some of the skills that I think really helped me advance even beyond that.

Keith Gaub: And then four years ago, I got to a point in my career where I felt like home run opportunities only, like there’s just no reason to take jobs that you’re uncertain about or industries or sectors. I was in the absolute no-brainer. Can’t turn it down. And at that time. Bristol Myers was hiring further assistant treasurer, Sandra the treasurer, put out some feelers to some banks that said, do you know any people that are probably ready for that role?

Keith Gaub: Some of them com commented that you might wanna talk to the guy at Zoetis. She and I had a informal conversation, went through the interview process and I’ve been there for four years, really happy. I oversee our capital markets group, which is really extensive. I oversee all of our interest rate hedging, all of our cash investments, our FX hedging, and our international treasury group as well.

Keith Gaub: So it’s the journey and there’s always arbitrary nature of it, but I’ve seemed to weave in and outta treasury and I just keep getting pulled back in.

Mike Richards: Cool. So we’ve got quite a mixed audience here. So we’ll start with Bob and then we will mix it up on the panel as well. So we won’t just all do this, but we’ve got a range of experiences.

Mike Richards: Some guys more junior in their careers will get more experienced questions, but you had that unexpected start in treasury. Would you recommend that to people you know, talked about study and a FP supporting you? And then we’ll come to you Deley, ’cause you’ve got your own views about that as well. We’ve talked about it.

Mike Richards: And then we’ll come to you, Keith, about the move from banking to corporate. But with yourself, first of all, Bob, what are your thoughts or what should some of these guys at the earlier stage of their career, what would you think they should be doing?

Bob Kane: Well in opportunity calls? I, I would say you go for it.

Bob Kane: When I was a very young child, there was a game, shoots in ladders, we stop. Yep. Careers can be kind of like that when you become taping along, going up a couple levels and suddenly you hit a slide and you’re done somewhere or you’re out where you can get a ladder and you can shoot up. So I always just recommend that if you need your self on you, ready, and if not you, who, and if not, now when you turn down an opportunity like what came to me, it can go away and it can go away forever.

Bob Kane: So, uh, I We’ll just jump on that.

Mike Richards: Yeah. The study and HP and you did a range of different roles as well.

N/A: Yeah,

Deepali Chawla: I think

N/A: specifically in

Deepali Chawla: terms of qualifications or studying for treasury, I think, so my background is I have my math honors and then I did A MBA in finance. I think for me, the most learning was on the job, and I think that is where I felt was the most in terms of doing these horizontal movements across, trying to grab any role that I could do within treasury or outside with collaboration projects outside of Treasury and try to learn and expand my skillset like that.

Deepali Chawla: I don’t know how much of us in early on in our life are very committed to say that, yes, treasury is where I wanna spend the rest of my career. I don’t think I was, at some point I wanted to navigate my way through and see where else I could land up. Pretty much like what Keith is saying, treasury kept pulling me back.

Deepali Chawla: Must be the stars aligned for that. But. If you have that clarity, definitely. I would say having a good treasury qualification is an asset, but I wouldn’t restrict your career progression with the fact that you don’t have one. So you should not think about a career in treasury. I think it’s all right now, the way the world is changing, and we’ve been talking about it in the last couple of hours as well, with the way the tech space is changing with AI and everything, the skill sets.

Deepali Chawla: I don’t think, Mike, a job description that I would’ve handed to you and say, Mike, help me find somebody, is going to the same that I gave you today. Because I don’t think I would put as much focus as a hiring manager on whether you have a treasury qualification. I would look more in terms of your agility or adaptability or you know, how much you can play with different skill sets around that present themselves right now.

Deepali Chawla: I think that, to me is more important than a formal qualification.

Mike Richards: So I do a weekly newsletter, I’m gonna come to Keith. But on that, we do one of our most popular ones recently, which where I just big statement, I don’t do banking in the nicest way ’cause I don’t, I recruit corporate treasurers like yourselves.

Mike Richards: I did do banking and the first two roles I recruited, funny enough with heads of a LM for Barclays Bank and then NatWest and then was like, wow, there are lots about Alco and value at risk and everything else, and things that I never want to remember again. But Keith, you sort of skated past that a little bit.

Mike Richards: We had a very popular podcast with you because you made a definitive choice about banking moving into corporate. And I think maybe just explore that a little bit more if you would, because I think it was a fascinating choice at the time. A lot of people commented on it.

Keith Gaub: Yeah, and I can’t remember exactly how I phrased it on the podcast, but the move to leave from banking, which was Barclays at the time, was the only time I ever actively.

Keith Gaub: Sought to get out of a role for anything other than just what I thought was the best opportunity. It was just culturally not where I saw myself. And I, again, I think it’s reasonable. I’m sure they have all these issues sorted out by now. It was a long time ago, but you had two organizations that again, maybe wanted to do things differently and it was so much infighting and friction that it was just hard to get things done.

Keith Gaub: And I made a point in time in my career that I just wanted to do something different and I figured it would be a good time to just try something outside the sector. And Bob used kind of shoots and ladders. I think if everyone has seen the movie Karate Kid, you know where he is getting taught to fight, but he’s really like, he’s waxing floors and doing all that type of stuff.

Keith Gaub: That’s kind of how I felt when I got into corporate from banking. I had been molded in ways that I didn’t even actually know until I got inside of a corporate. Like I felt like I was very polished ’cause I’d been speaking to clients and really senior people with inside Lehman. So that when I was in front of management and CFOs inside Zoetis, like I just had a very comfort level or a very strong comfort level around them.

Keith Gaub: And then in banking, the technical expertise was in so much demand, the level of complexity that we had to go down on the corporate side, it was softened up a little bit. So I felt like I could take like relatively complex challenges that we were trying to solve and just products and bring it down to a level that management could understand.

Keith Gaub: And I felt like that enabled us to really open up more possibilities to what we can do. So I loved the banking in the treasury background for sure. I would certainly never say it was mandatory, but I found it so much more beneficial than I thought I would do because it was really just learning a new business.

Keith Gaub: When you go from a bank balance sheet to a corporate balance sheet where you’re manufacturing products, you have things to learn there. But the skillset I, I felt very prepared.

Mike Richards: Okay. I’m gonna stay with you for a moment. Talk about mindset as well. ’cause you and I have talked about. How recently you’ve did big some big deals at Bristol Myers, and one of the key things you and I talked about is how brutal a process, but you had all your internal relationships, uh, and you’d worked hard at those.

Mike Richards: I wanna talk to you about that and then we’ll come back to De Paley and then, but, and again to explain to these guys listening here, how do you maintain those? We had some talk today about banking partners, which I’ll also dig in with the three of you, but how do you keep that going? How do you manage that internally?

Mike Richards: And we’ll talk about external in a moment.

Keith Gaub: So managing up the internal stakeholders. Yeah, I mean, I think you approach everything with some level of humility that, that, I think that is just the way to go about it. I think you want to make sure. That we talked a lot about it in the round table sessions, like really understanding the business, understanding your business partners, understanding what their core objectives are, and then focusing everything at the enterprise mindset.

Keith Gaub: I think the problem that some groups can fall into and some individuals can fall into is when they get just too micro. Everything we do at BMS is enterprise mindset. I remember one time early on at BMSI was in a meeting and it was with my boss’s boss, who a very senior person, and it was a cross-functional group and one of the members on that call made the mistake of saying, well, that’s not in my shop.

Keith Gaub: And he said, there is no in my shop, like we are an enterprise. Everything is our shop. And I do think that has allowed me to gain more of an understanding around the various different areas and things they’re trying to accomplish and how I can enable that through the treasury function versus thinking about necessarily like.

Keith Gaub: Not competing groups. You’re really, you may be trying to accomplish different things, but it’s all part of the broader enterprise strategy. And I think when you embody that mindset, you’re gonna build those relationships. You’re gonna establish trust across your organization, and you’re just gonna be a little bit more dialed into what ultimately are trying to accomplish.

Mike Richards: Partly you and I, when we did the podcast recently, we talked about global teams and how you’ve led those and you communicate with those guys. How do you do that? And again, I think you could share it with the room because that’s a challenge.

Deepali Chawla: Yeah. I think the, I would say since COVID, it put everyone on the same level playing field.

Deepali Chawla: I would like to think, right? So no longer people were coming into the offices, no longer were you getting that in person advantage if you were based in an hq. And I think that opened up a lot of opportunities for many, right. Including myself, I would say I wouldn’t be probably considered for my role, which has always been based in the HQ while I was back in London.

Deepali Chawla: And the fact that the board and my CF at that point thought I could do that role from there was because, somewhat because of the fact that we are in this environment today. But I think going back to the global, global role and global leadership style, I don’t think leadership style really has to change based on how big or how small or how widespread the team is.

Deepali Chawla: I think right now from if you really have to, you have to lead by example. And I say that because you need to start embracing a lot of what we want the teams to be and how we want them to perform. There are four or five things as an organization that we have really come out with as our cultural values and guiding rules for everybody in the organization from right, from the top to the bottom and that two of which I’ll state here.

Deepali Chawla: One is own it. If you see something is broken, if you see something is not working, even if it’s not in your function, say it and own it and run with it. I don’t think anybody would question you. If you come back and say, I think we could fix this process and this is how we should go about it. Go ahead.

Deepali Chawla: Even if it’s not yours, we’ll make weight where it has to be fixed. And then no spectators right now we all have to be, first of all, focusing on ourselves, our own cos making sure that we can push ourselves in the direction in which, how it aligns with our career aspirations. And you cannot do that by sitting on the edge.

Deepali Chawla: You have to be in it and own it to be able to move that forward. And I don’t think that’s a job of the leader essentially to come up to you and find opportunities for you. Yes, if you, if the leader knows exactly what you want to be and where you are planning to go next, that is the, the leaders need to be helped by you to, so they can help you.

Deepali Chawla: So that’s how I would put it. So that’s the way I would, I’ve always been with the team in terms of try and create those. Avenues for yourself, self-help yourself. And then of course you know that things will fall in place.

Mike Richards: And Bob International, I was gonna talk about international teams, but we talk more about relationships, we talk more about your internal relationships, but also one of the things we did around tables were maintaining external relationships with your banks and things like that.

Mike Richards: I know that’s a key part of your success, so talk to that, if you would, how you’ve done it with your teams across the group and things like that. Bring us.

Bob Kane: Okay. Well, the, uh, raising the financial literacy of non-financial players at our company is a major accountability of our team to expect all we work hand in glove with the fp and a team.

Bob Kane: When you are relatively new, I make sure that you truly understand on my team that we’re, how we make money, how the company makes money. And then from that learning, then they share their learnings on the financial literacy towards the other functional personnel. Internationally, we don’t have, we don’t have a strong footprint.

Bob Kane: We don’t count Canada as quite international. It’s more like a 51st state.

Mike Richards: But then also, sorry, but we were also talking about the other thing, so I was gonna move on to was banking and banking partners and stuff. ’cause I know that was a big topic that came up and we were talking about this. So we’ve done some round tables in a time when you’re busy, obviously you’re talking to your banks all the time, but when it’s quieter, that’s more challenging sometimes.

Mike Richards: How do you keep feeding them or what, what are your keys to success to manage those relationships? And then we’ll pass that back across the panel.

Bob Kane: Well, we do meet resume, I guess you would say, or or teams with our banks on a monthly basis. We want to go over what’s out there, what’s new, what they can do for us.

Bob Kane: They’re always looking for a little bit more of a share of wallet and we’re always looking for a better deal. So we have an open relationship with BMO, who’s our primary, we’re owned by private equity and they did a deal with Cerus. So a lot of our debt is, we did an acquisition about a year and a half ago and we did a deal with Cerberus.

Bob Kane: That relationship’s a little bit different. We make sure that we hit our covenants and we are communication’s always key. If you’re going to fall short, you make sure you don’t surprise your bankers. That’s never a good idea. And when we do that, we usually get a positive response.

N/A: Yeah.

Deepali Chawla: So for us, it’s a bit of a tricky one because banks, we don’t only deal with them, it’s both buy and sell for us, right?

Deepali Chawla: So banks are our key customers as well. So for us, the share of wallet management and the whole RCF becomes a very sensitive discussion. Sometimes when our CEO is going to meet a bank, he’s going for a different agenda. And I can’t say, oh well, but this bank is not really doing well in this. I have to tell him exactly what we think we can do, how much we can support from a finance perspective.

Deepali Chawla: And then of course he has to have that informed discussion with the on the, with the C-suite. So I think for us, there is a lot more that goes into thinking around how we distribute that wallet across our banks. How we work with them. And then the other side of that also is the banks are our key advisors.

Deepali Chawla: So when we are looking at putting together our annual guidance for the year, which we just did, the banks are a key advisor in terms of what they think the year would look like in terms of the issuance, in terms of generally what’s happening in terms of the m and a market. Because all of that goes into how we plug into our models and how we then plan project in terms of what the year would be.

Deepali Chawla: And then also in terms of the analytics, which is other part of our business. So ratings for all those who are not fully aware, Moody’s is not just a ratings company. We also are, we are 50% rating, 50% analytics, which is where we provide all the tools that help you with your credit assessment, KYC, and all the good stuff.

Deepali Chawla: So that part of the business also is where we have to be. We are partnering very closely with some of the banks to do proof of concepts and stuff like that. So again. For us, it gets a little bit on a sensitive side of how we manage that relationship. But I think like any other corporate treasury team, we would go down.

Deepali Chawla: We would not just give away business because we have to please somebody. No, we have the decision making in terms of we bid out everything and we will select the blessed. But of course the banks are aware there is a way in how we look at them as well.

Keith Gaub: Yeah. So I think the most important thing in this area is just transparency.

Keith Gaub: So I’ve told every bank this, I’ll tell my management team internally that the banks don’t work for us. We’re business partner. They extend us capital and return. They look for opportunities to generate revenue. Like any corporate that makes the mistake of thinking banks work for them is probably heading down a little bit of a dangerous avenue there.

Keith Gaub: So what we do, and I think we do pretty well, is we’re overly transparent. So we have a $5 billion, five year revolving credit facility. That we extend every single year. And while we’re going through that extension process, I talk to the relationship manager at each of the 19 banks and say, this is how I see the year playing out.

Keith Gaub: These are what I think the opportunities are. Now granted we come at it from a little bit of favor position ’cause we have such a large flow business with five and a half billion of interest rate derivatives, 12, 13 billion of cash, 11 billion of fx, two or 3 billion of cross currency. So we have a lot of natural flow to do, but I had a bank tell me, Hey, without M and a business, it’s gonna be really hard to remain in your facility.

Keith Gaub: Here’s our capital hurdles. No problem, we will replace your position. We have banks that that want to get into our revolver and we work to get them out. So there’s just try to limit the number of surprises. Like there’s a few banks in our facility that say, Hey, if you could leave on, if you think you can give us some level of assurance that you could leave a $250 million deposit on with us all year, that’s probably gonna get us there.

Keith Gaub: There’s other banks that say, warrant it for the long game. I don’t care if it’s a lean year. We know that ultimately you guys are gonna be inquisitive, you’re gonna hit the capital markets, you’re gonna do things like that. So as long as the bank understands where we’re coming from and we understand the bank’s needs.

Keith Gaub: Then the relationship is good. And I do think we provide a lot of advanced analytics to the banks. We have no problem showing that we have a gigantic matrix of every trade that we bid out where the banks came in. So using FX for example, I can tell them by currency, here’s the number of trades we showed you.

Keith Gaub: Here’s the number of that you hit on. Here’s how wide you are to the competing other banks. So it’s just all open book. I mean, I know there are certain, I’m not gonna name them by name, but I’ve spoke to some of my peers at other pharma companies that are literally open up their wallets to the bank and say, this is what I see you made this year.

Keith Gaub: Is this revenue consistent with kind of what you need to further the relationship? I don’t think we’re quite that open with it, but we do make sure that they understand what the year is gonna look like. And if for some reason it’s not a good fit, let’s make a change.

Mike Richards: Cool. We’ll stay with you for a moment, but just to give you guys notice.

Mike Richards: So in about 10 minutes we’ll go to questions. So do put your hands up and I’ll come round and get some questions from you. Then we’ll do some wrap up with the guests to do that. But before we do, we’ll stay with you, Keith, for a moment. A lot of the people here in this audience, your three successful treasury professionals, allegedly, that’s why I went to Bob.

Mike Richards: Bob keeps telling me this. Yeah. And he buys me dread, so that’s fine. But joking aside, what advice would you offer to some of this audience that they’re maybe looking to move from the operational side to become more strategic as treasurers? Or how should they develop? What are the steps that they, you should think they should do?

Mike Richards: So we’ll start with yourself and then come back through. What should they be looking to do?

Keith Gaub: Yeah. I don’t know if there’s a very prescriptive plan there. Mm-hmm. The way that I, so when I, I mentor a few people with inside BMS and some young people, and I get really careful about giving specific advice. I will say, I’ll never tell you you should do this or you should do that.

Keith Gaub: I’ll talk through things with you, give you things to think about and consider, but the one. Overarching kind of analogy that I use is have an idea what the end game looks for you, right? Like you play chess, you line up the pieces on the board, your goal is to checkmate the other king. How you get there is how is a strategy that you’re gonna determine best suitable to your career.

Keith Gaub: So if you know that your goal is to knock over that king, every move you make needs to be in that direction. It doesn’t mean you can’t go sideways here or there, or even take a step back, but everything has gotta be ultimately towards that goal. I’m a very purpose driven individual. Like I don’t do things just to do them.

Keith Gaub: Not to say you can’t take a chance on a role that sounds interesting, but I always have an idea as to like, where am I going after this? Don’t just move to move. Don’t develop a skill that you don’t know what you’re gonna do with it. Like I am a plan in place kind of person, and I go from there. So if your goal is to be a treasurer, every single move you make has got to be to acquire a skill that is gonna allow you to be successful in that role.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Deepali Chawla: I would say two things primarily, and again because we have a range here from very early professionals to mature senior professionals for the early ons. Start being connected at the core of what the organization that you work for, if you wanna progress in the organization. Again, a good place to start would be start tuning into earnings if, if you have, if you work for a publicly listed company, see what MA moves the needle for them in terms of the market for them.

Deepali Chawla: And I think the more you listen, the more you understand, the more you start connecting to the top in terms of where the organization is headed or where the sector more broadly is headed. And I think that’s just a good way to familiarize yourself outside of just the day in and day out of what you do.

Deepali Chawla: Second, I would say is network, give, invest in yourself. I think early on in our career, we can just get lost in a lot of other things, but I think the time and the commitment that we put in our own. Career through networking is and events like these, I think they’re very important and a good way of doing that.

Deepali Chawla: And again, third I would say is make sure you make your career aspirations known to your mentors, your managers, and talk openly and very freely about that because, and that’s how you get to understand where are the gaps that you need to fill. The growth doesn’t always have to be like this. It can go like stepping stones to what just Keith said.

Deepali Chawla: You can move along different ways and then get to where you want to be as well. So

Bob Kane: Al Newhart was the chairman of Gnet when they created USA today, and he had a little thing in his book, confessions of an SOB that speaks probably to people at the beginning of their career to further on. So he basically went like this through your teens.

Bob Kane: Play all you can in your twenties. Take all the risks you can in your thirties. Learn all you can in your forties. Earn all you can in your fifties,

Keith Gaub: like

Bob Kane: moments like this, lead all you can in your sixties. Prepare to turn it all over with the most grace that you can. And can anyone guess what you do in your seventies and beyond?

Bob Kane: Play all you can

Mike Richards: and partly we’ll come back to you for this one. ’cause again, we discussed this on the podcast, but also today we’ve done these round tables. We did about people. We also did about cash and investments and various bits. But one of the key streams was AI and technology. So whoever’s gonna ask about that.

Mike Richards: Sorry, I’ve got in there first, but you and I talked about it, there’s a lot of noise. Where should you or where do you think treasury professionals, like these treasury professionals, where should they focus their energy? What’s a false flag or what should you do? And we’ll go to you and then to keep them back to Bob.

Deepali Chawla: Yeah. Again, a topic that we discussed at length earlier as well, I think we cannot avoid it. If you’re sitting on the fence thinking that this is probably something that will go away, it’s not going away. It’s here to stay. So acknowledge that and get in it. Get on board with spending time in terms of upskilling your, whatever tool you have, whatever your organization has made available to you, or even it’s worth spending the extra dollars to try and get a subscription and try and just play around with it.

Deepali Chawla: But do take the time to familiarize yourself with ai, the tools that are available more broadly as a function. I think definitely it requires taking a step back and thinking through whether we are talking about pure automation or whether we are talking about AI or Gen AI or agent ai. We cannot solve for everything all at once.

Deepali Chawla: I don’t think things are broken to the extent that we need. AI will come and solve it all for you. So pick up where the most impact will come, and then focus your energy there. Because remember, this is in addition to your BAU and day-to-day jobs. So you want to make sure that there is a right balance there.

Deepali Chawla: But one thing I’ll send, this connects back to the earlier question on the courier, and there’s a very interesting book for Marshall Goldsmith, if haven’t read, what Got You Here Will not get you there. And that sort of resonates for me all the time that whatever skill set that we acquire, maybe to where we reach today is not necessarily what will take us forward as well.

Deepali Chawla: So we need to keep adapting and changing ourselves and that’s where the agility piece comes in.

Keith Gaub: Yeah, and that’s really well said. So I’ll certainly won’t add on to that. I’ll take in a little bit of a different direction. But what I would tell young people or in treasury or people that are have moved into treasury is it’s not an operational function.

Keith Gaub: Can’t look at it that way. It is a strategic function. And I remember when I joined BMS and I had my list of people who they wanted me to meet. I went into my CFO’s office and he just sat down, he said. Tell me about yourself. Like, who are you? What do you stand for? And I said, here’s who I’m, I said, I’m the type of person that is going to leave no stone unturned.

Keith Gaub: We are gonna chase down every single idea. We are gonna generate ideas and we are gonna assess it if it’s something appropriate for this company. Because if you ask me about something, Keith did we look at this? And my answer is, yes. We didn’t think it was appropriate, so we didn’t bring it to you. Even if you disagree, I can live with that answer.

Keith Gaub: I made a decision. You may not be aligned with it, that’s fine. But if they say, did you look at this? And we said, no, actually we haven’t. Let me get on that. That’s a bad answer. That’s just not gonna be acceptable. I won’t accept that from the people that work for me. So I don’t think. At one point, maybe treasury was looked at as kind of like a keep the lights on type thing.

Keith Gaub: It’s not that anymore. There’s just too much opportunity. The landscape changes too quickly. We’re too spidered into the organization from a capital structure standpoint, from a risk management standpoint, to think our jobs are just to make sure nothing blows up. It’s that, and then it’s way beyond that.

Keith Gaub: So that’s what I would tell anyone in treasury is look for opportunities. They’re there and at a minimum assess them.

Bob Kane: Cool. Well, relative to ai, I would just caution, and I’m a little more conservative than some of the people who are on panels today, but make sure we’re not doing any harm when we look at ai.

Bob Kane: Make sure we’re not sacrificing or outsourcing judgments or security in the interest of speed and efficiency.

Mike Richards: Great. Very summarized answer. God, that caught me by summarized, so I know. It was great. You’ve, the three of you have navigated across different industries, global markets. What do you think is gonna define.

Mike Richards: Success over the next decade within your people’s treasury careers. Yeah. We’ll stay with you, Bob, because you, I mean, I love the examples there about leading and things like that, which is great. Maybe it links into that, or what do you think is gonna define success for treasury professionals as we move forward?

Bob Kane: It’s a good one. Sorry. That’s all right. I’m not sure. It’s changes a lot. We have a specific role, we have a specific job to do. Our team looks at relative to cash security, then liquidity, then yield, then cost. It’s kind of a simple model for us and kind of in that order. So if there’s anything safety, security wise, stop the presses.

Bob Kane: We’re not moving forward. Could be ai, it could be something else. That way we would approach on that.

Deepali Chawla: I think, again, the role of treasury and change, I agree, we still have, is still responsible for our capital allocation more broadly into which everything else feeds in. Ultimately how we manage cash, how we manage.

Deepali Chawla: Our, in terms of our derivative debt portfolio, everything feeds into that. So to me that is the one big pillar of that, that as a function that cannot change for us or as a accountability that cannot change for us. In terms of looking at what success means, I think given where things are, as long as we have built ourselves like a robust data set to work through, with good visibility, with good infrastructure to support ourselves, I think we are going to the stage of where we are now at the convergence of these things and we are trying to reduce the information float as a deliverable to our organization.

Deepali Chawla: We want to make sure that whatever we produce as our end product is decision grade. And I’m loving this term decision grade more and more, something that is coined by our ratings team, but it’s decision grade because nobody is then spending additional time scrubbing the data. Questioning that data because we know that is where, that is the the rule book of what defines everything that we would do as a corporate.

Deepali Chawla: So again, I think for treasury, the function, I think the goalposts aren’t changing, the role isn’t changing. I think it’s how we execute on those definitely is changing. So I think the sooner we try and get on board with that, the better

Mike Richards: for us. So we go to you, Keith, but then we’re gonna do questions and you will also get to mingle with the guests afterwards.

Mike Richards: So if it’s a more one-to-one question, but if it’s something you think’s gonna add value to the room, but Keith, over to you.

Keith Gaub: Yeah, I think for me it’s strong execution. At BMS we always kind of have a slogan. It’s the say to do ratio. So it’s something that we keep really top of mind. Probably one of the legitimately proudest moments I’ve been is that our CFO got back from the JP Morgan conference in January and equity investors were complimenting him on treasuries, financial discipline, and capital execution.

Keith Gaub: And I couldn’t believe that because I was in ir and equity investors didn’t really seem to be overly concerned with those things. But the reason why is because in 2023, heading into 2024, we ended up doing three acquisitions. We ended up putting on debt north of $20 billion to fund them. And we really wanted to maintain our A two credit rating at Moody’s.

Keith Gaub: We knew we were gonna be on a thread there and we sat down with our CFO and we said, look, this is how we can get there. We did all this long-term cashflow planning. We looked at the levers we can pull. We looked at the way we could structure the debt to pay it down. We met with the Moody’s analyst, we walked them through and we said, this is our plan.

Keith Gaub: Can we deliver it? And our CF said, Keith, can we message this externally? Are we confident? And we said, we can get this done and we delivered on it. And I think a track record of providing management with things that you can execute and then being able to deliver on them is just the, should be the pride of any treasury professional.

Keith Gaub: And then for me personally, I’ll define success. By just the people on my team being future leaders. I see myself after corporate going into an education career. I wanna be a college professor or something in that nature. So while I’m at BMS, I see myself as someone that’s trying to cultivate future leaders, people that we can put in the organization in really key positions.

Keith Gaub: So I’ll take a lot of great pride in making sure that I’m keeping their talent development on track, putting them in positions to succeed, which is great for them and great for the enterprise.

Mike Richards: Great. So questions. There we go. Trish. Straight away. She’s straight in there. Be careful.

N/A: You’ve already talked a bit about the differences in corporate culture and the impact that has had on your careers, your decision making.

N/A: I’m curious to hear not just how corporate culture has impacted treasury specific decisions, and I’m gonna stare directly at Holly ’cause I’m most interested in your response here. Not just corporate culture, but culture as you’re crafting treasury strategies in different companie. And what was the most similar and what was the most different about treasury in those different countries?

N/A: And what surprised you the most about those similarities or differences?

Mike Richards: Great question.

Deepali Chawla: Yeah. Thank you. So I think the, if I look at, I’m thinking back here because in all the organizations that I’ve worked with, there’s always been that corporate view at the top, right? So there are no regional or country specific rules that apply in how you manage treasury.

Deepali Chawla: Yes. As there is a tendency that when we are based or when we establish these centers, so if I was to talk to somebody who manages my APAC team, she naturally would be a bit more inclined to talk that language of the business and be a bit more of a partner to the business as opposed to thinking from a corporate hat perspective, that’s natural because you’re there, you are looking at that sort of operations in and out in terms of how you wanna look at, in terms of being the, being a good partner to them on the ground.

Deepali Chawla: So I don’t think there is much in terms of the, the flexibility that I would inherently want to offer in terms of saying start creating your regional playbooks or country playbooks on how we manage it. There has to be a bit of flex flexibility but with a bit of control and governance at the top such that we are still making sure that we are playing by the rule on how we are not putting something at risk more at the corporate level.

Deepali Chawla: So I dunno if that answers the question, but it’s more to where it has to be balanced. You can give some flexibility, but you cannot let them define the rules of the game, so to say.

Mike Richards: And any other contributions from you, Keith, or

N/A: no? No.

Mike Richards: Good. Perfect. Right. Other questions?

Bob Kane: Come on. Hands up.

Mike Richards: Any other questions?

Mike Richards: I know you’re thirsty. Ah, there you go. Thank you.

N/A: Thank you. I have a question to Keith. I wanted to expand a little bit on their ai. What are the most recent successful integrations of AI that you implemented in treasury?

Keith Gaub: Yeah, and I think, as Mike mentioned, we had a working group session. We talked a lot about ai, and I think we’re all having similar themes.

Keith Gaub: There’s a lot of good uses for it. I still think everyone might be looking for sort of that breakthrough use case. And I think at least with the teams that I manage, they’re looking for once it’s fully integrated with some of the other systems where we can don’t have to pull data out and manually feed it in.

Keith Gaub: It’s sort of spidered into our SAP system, our TMS or Data lake. But a couple of the things that we’ve found truly remarkable from an AI perspective is on the short-term cashflow forecasting side. It’s completely changed the way we do that. So we have it completely fed in to our SAP system. We pull in the receivables, the payables, it’s giving us a remarkably accurate short-term forecast.

Keith Gaub: And then I have a member of my financial risk management team who. On a monthly basis downloads from Atlas, all of our FX positions, right? And it comes down in this big massive Excel file and it’s just, it’s like fragmented, right? It doesn’t have all the rows perfectly copied down and it’s just probably takes hours and hours for them to format it without any AI background.

Keith Gaub: He just went into copilot, asked for a Python code that could help format this spreadsheet, put the Python code in, took that out, put it in VS code, and in VS. Code drop down this Excel spreadsheet in a matter of seconds. So I still think we’re scratching the surface around those types of things around it.

Keith Gaub: Efficiencies around reduction of time with manual processes. I think we’re still in search of the one that’s gonna be like the real value add case. And I think it’s a process that’s gonna evolve. But I think we’re finding ways to do things with AI in that nature. We just haven’t found like the exact one that’s gonna be like sort of the home run there.

Mike Richards: Okay. Time for one more question? Or will we go to, there you go. A moment.

N/A: Thank you. As treasury professionals, do you have any experience or advice to treasurers managing expectations of the CFO around how treasury should be run through? No. For well of their own. Historically they have come up through the accounting side of the house versus the treasury side.

Mike Richards: Who’s taking that first?

Deepali Chawla: So I think this is again, where there’s a reason why the CFO has then you as a treasurer. So she or he doesn’t have to bother with these things, right? And then you become their sounding board or the guide on these matters. And I think, again, this is where, and I’m not saying that we are, we have to be at the forefront in terms of.

Deepali Chawla: But I think we are at a position where we should anticipate what A CFO would look for, right? When she or he is going for a board meeting or an earnings presentation, what are the things that the street can ask or the board can ask them and be able to provide them and share to them and build that trust and confidence in working with the CFO to prep them.

Deepali Chawla: And I don’t think that when the, the CFO should, I believe the CFO should not be questioning in terms of why the need for real near time data, why the need for investment in this TMS or why do you need to have this done in a certain way? Why can it not be done if I don’t have the data in a week’s time, or it takes a week to pull the data?

Deepali Chawla: Why, what, what would happen? And this is where we need to go back and have that discussion with the CFO to be able to explain that and articulate that, because I think the results will show in terms of how we drive the data. And in times like this, right, where things are changing so quickly, you open one day, the markets are somewhere else, and then the spreads, you think there’s a rate cut, but there’s no rate cut now or you think the spreads are tightening, but they’re widening.

Deepali Chawla: All sorts of things are happening right now, and I think that’s the power of where the treasurer comes in and in terms of proactively keeps that information going to the CFO and the C-level suite to be able to tell them and guide them with what they need to know of.

Keith Gaub: I can add one thing there too that we implemented at BMS is we meet with our CFO on a quarterly basis and we call it our treasury strategy meeting.

Keith Gaub: We walk ’em through our FX forecasting, or sorry, our FX hedging program, cashflow forecasting, capital structure, interest rate, risk management, and we just talk through the environment as we see it. The risks that we’re identifying how we’re mitigating them. We just get him engaged in what Treasury’s doing and realizing the importance of it.

Keith Gaub: I mean, if you think about right, like Treasury’s at the center of Cash, every company’s value is based on its discounted future cash flow. So cash is the single most important asset of a company. We try to get him engaged in that process so he understands when he wants to do a business development transaction.

Keith Gaub: His treasury team’s telling this is how much we can do without changing our credit profile. When he is wondering what our dividend rate should be, we’re showing him, Hey, this is where we are relative to our peers. This is what an increase would do, share a purchase, all these various different things. We just make him a part of the treasury engine and I think that’s really helped him get grounded in what we do, understand the importance of what he do and feel like he’s in there with us to some extent.

Bob Kane: Yeah, if I could just add that so ’cause an old seven habits of highly effective people and seek to understand and then be understood. So I don’t know if the specifics of the transactions you’re referring to, but having an honest conversation and say, Hey, where’s this coming from? What is it you’re trying to achieve?

Bob Kane: Having that kind of a conversation hopefully could end up with a very positive reaction. I grew up on the controller side and that was open. The books close the books and they thought their job was done. But in with treasury, we’re thinking about the future and we’re funding for the future, and it’s a critical role.

Bob Kane: So again, not sure what’s behind it. You can expand if you’d like.

Mike Richards: So we’ll go through some amazing takeaways from these guys and then I’ll give you a challenge as well. So first of all, yeah, we’ve done the questions well, takeaways,

Bob Kane: well first one’s up there, but you own your careers. Do not expect that anyone should or will have everything that’s in your interest on their mind.

Bob Kane: So you must own it and react to it that way. Always seek out opportunities outside of your area. I’m, I like to be a net explorer of talent, so I’m very happy flipping treasury analysts with fp a people bring them in and giving ’em an opportunity like that. Most careers, and Keith, and I don’t wanna speak too much for yours, but feels like I win hyperbolic in all within kind of a treasury way.

Bob Kane: My career is more like a subway map. It bounce back and forth between accounting, fp a treasury and the like, and I wouldn’t change that for the world for what I want. College,

Mike Richards: a portfolio career. It’s great. A portfolio career, a wider range. De,

Deepali Chawla: I think I’ve said it through the discussion as well. Again, very important to be invested in how you would like to understand how your role impacts your organization.

Deepali Chawla: So please take that time. As I said before, earnings releases are a good place to start and get to yourself familiarized with that or more broader context as well. Uh, and the network and ally, again, make sure that your career aspirations are known to your organization, whoever matters in that space in terms of furthering your, furthering the opportunities and making sure that you are able to get those opportunities in the organization and not only within the organization, but try and have a mentor, even if not in the direct line, outside or inside the organization, that all of these things help a lot.

Mike Richards: Okay, Keith?

Keith Gaub: Yeah, so maybe starting with the bottom one. I can’t really, I use that chess analogy and put it on the board, but there is no right or wrong way. To do a career. I mean, I’m sure there are things that are wrong, but there the moves you make are unique to you. I don’t know if there is a com, a blueprint that’s gonna fit everyone.

Keith Gaub: So make the right choices for you. Not what you think is the right choice or what someone is telling you is the right choice. Make it because you believe it’s in your best interest and it’s ultimately gonna to help you get where you want to go. And then the challenge yourself. There was a quote from, I forget who it was that they said, confident basketball players shoot shots to make shots.

Keith Gaub: Unconfident. Basketball players shoot shots to take shots. Shoot to make a shot. Don’t be afraid to fail. Have confidence in yourself. Everyone’s gotta make a vertical climb. When they do something different, you’re gonna get in there. You’re gonna build comfort, you’re gonna build confidence. And if you fail, as Henry Ford said, it’s just the opportunity to start again this time more intelligently.

Mike Richards: Cool. So mine, yeah, talking about people. I’m going to go with that one. Stay in touch and follow up connections with or or fail if you don’t nurture, they’re all good. But to be honest, what is more important to me actually isn’t up there. It is actually what’s in this room. And I’m tempted in the hours leading up to this session.

Mike Richards: We get the emails come through, my daughter’s poorly, my dog get my homework. I can’t make it. I’ve sprained my toe and I sometimes the hardest thing for me is to look at the empty chairs and to really to go, oh no, we could’ve. And then, and this is the great thing about this evening, I don’t look at them.

Mike Richards: I look at your faces and look at what fabulous time you’ve had. And I actually now feel a bit sad for those guys ’cause they’ve missed out on this. Yes, they can hear it on the podcast, but do they then get to now network with them and have some one-to-ones? Uh, well it comes on to my challenge, which I do.

Mike Richards: So this is your live challenge. Now, I’ll take this back to Texas. Did this challenge Texas with a guy who was. As he said afterwards, Mike, I’m a terrible introvert, he said, I’m really find it difficult. I was surprised he managed to come to the session. He said, this was the thing I said, right. My challenge to you, and we didn’t do it on the screen, was to go and make five connections, to talk to five different people.

Mike Richards: And he wasn’t allowed to just go along. Same to you guys. You can’t just go, great, let’s connect on LinkedIn. You could, but that’s not what this networking is about, is it? You’ve come here to enhance your treasury careers, so do that. Invest you’ve invested in yourself. You’ve come here, whether it’s for 10, 15 minutes, meet another, lease, three people, maybe five, because that’s gonna help you and your treasury careers, and that’s why you’ve invested in yourself.

Mike Richards: So when you go outside, yes, we have some nice networking drinks and stuff, but this is an investment in you. So as well as in a moment, you’re gonna thank and congratulate when you put your hands together for our speakers. I want you to put your hands together for yourselves as well when you’re doing that.

Mike Richards: Now, we will also see that we are here till just before nine. And again, you can, the networking carries on and don’t worry, Brendan’s cards behind the bar, so that’s fantastic. But put your hands together for the amazing panel and yourselves and above us away. There you go. Thank you.

N/A: We head off, we just released our latest treasury salary survey.

Mike Richards: Most people take part for one reason. They wanna done it if they’re underpaid. Fair enough. That’s what it’s in for. Now with over 1700 treasury professionals already in the dataset spanning right the way across the uk, the US and Europe. We can give you a pretty accurate, but here’s the bit most people don’t expect.

Mike Richards: It’s not just about the salary, because when you dig into the data, as we do each and every time in our survey, the number one reason people are unhappy in their roles isn’t pay. It’s lack of regression, not bonus. Benefits progression in their actual roles. That tells you a lot about where the market really is right now.

Mike Richards: So if you listen to this, they’re thinking, am I being paid fairly? What does someone like me earn in the market? What are the averages? What are the ranges? And actually what’s next for me? You can head to treasury salary.com or go to the treasury recruitment website. Look for the salary survey. Take part three minutes later, maximum.

Mike Richards: If you’ve done it before, it only takes 30 seconds, but you can benchmark your salary. Get a clearer picture of where you stand. The more people who take part, the stronger the data becomes for everyone in the treasury profession. So fill it in, share it with your team as well. Thanks again for listening.

Mike Richards: I’ll speak to you next week.