This is why corporate treasury is great – The laymen introduction to corporate treasury

| 09-01-2018 | Pieter de Kiewit |

My father was a civil engineer and would have liked one of his kids to follow in his footsteps. Regretfully for him we all went in different directions, me landing an engineering degree of the wrong type. What I did like to learn from my first business management professor was about creating bridges between various functional areas. That is what I have been doing as a recruiter for almost 25 years, the last 8 solely in corporate treasury. Why treasury?

All organisations, even the small ones, can benefit from good treasury. Only the bigger ones hired permanent experts. The main three areas, perhaps oversimplified, they focus on are:

1. Money logistics: opening and closing bank accounts, doing (bulk) payments, forecast money coming in and going out;
2. Managing (treasury) risk: understand and manage the implications of interest or currency fluctuations. If your manufacturing costs are in Euro and you sell in Dollars and the price of the Dollar drops, what to do? What to do if you have excess cash on your current account;
3. Funding: where do you get your money for new or current business? Bank loans, equity, mortgage, leasing?

This does not sound sexy, does it? But do understand that during the crisis treasurers found solutions for companies how to survive. They found funding to pay salaries, helped sales finding creative funding solutions to make complex transactions achievable, helped prevent companies going belly-up due to currency exposures, forced banks to offer better solutions at a more acceptable price.

Treasurers manage huge amounts of money and operate very close to the CFO. They are involved in mergers & acquisitions, reorganisations and international expansion. They act in small numbers but have huge impact if they would stop doing their work. And the job type evolves continuously. Creating new treasury bridges to traditional job types like accounting, tax, sales helps all doing a better job. The academic world is showing increasing interest. In the Netherlands the post graduate education at the Vrije Universiteit is becoming more prominent in the treasury community. Corporate treasury is very dynamic!

What I love doing is helping CFO’s, HR, internal recruitment and senior treasury managers with their staffing questions. What qualifications and personality type matches best with your current and future business situation. If you only hire one treasurer per year, what do you need to know to choose the best candidate? I hope now you can understand my passion for creating bridges in treasury and recruitment.

I look forward to your thoughts to the above and further contact,

Pieter de Kiewit
[email protected] / +31 6 1111 9783

 

 

Pieter de Kiewit
Owner Treasurer Search