Published: March 05, 2024
Through roles at both a bank and a multinational corporate, plus a consulting business in between, Craig Busch has experienced treasury from all angles. Newly retired, Busch shares insights on his successful career, how treasurers can overcome market shocks, and what the future holds for the profession.
Having recently retired following 17 years as Global Treasurer at Worley, the Australia-headquartered engineering professional services multinational, Craig Busch reflects on how his treasury journey began.
“I had a number of years offshore in Japan, looking after the Japanese and the South Korean business for a bank, and ended up as treasurer for one of the Aussie banks,” he recalls.
When that bank was taken over, Busch set up a risk advisory business, and this role proved to be his stepping stone to the corporate treasury world.
“After I did some consulting work at WorleyParsons [now Worley], I was approached in 2007 by the then-CFO and asked to set up the treasury operation for the company,” Busch continues. “That was supposed to be only a three-month consulting gig, but it turned out to be a 17-year career with the company.”
Comparing the bank and corporate approaches with treasury management, Busch finds similarities regarding understanding the various products at the treasurer’s disposal and the micro and macro levers of those products. At the same time, there are differences.
“The CFO who appointed me once described me as a poacher turned gamekeeper,” grins Busch. “Corporate treasurers have a more protective role over the assets and liabilities of the business. We have a broader mandate.”
At one point, Worley had more than 50,000 employees and operated in 50 countries, including some locations where the company’s banking partners would be a little more specialised. This placed an added emphasis on treasury knowledge.
“A corporate treasurer needs to be a jack of all trades,” continues Busch. “You need a level of legal and product background in addition to the cash management fundamentals. I had a wider remit in corporate treasury than I had previously in some of my earlier bank treasury roles.”
That broad knowledge base Busch describes has been particularly essential for treasurers in recent years. Issues such as the pandemic, supply chain snarl-ups and generationally high inflation and interest rates, are outside the treasurer’s control yet pose specific challenges to corporate cash management. But these are simply the latest in a long line of external shocks.
“There have been so many macroeconomic shocks over my career that I’ve probably forgotten at least half of them,” jokes Busch. “The classic one for me was in 2008, when we were issuing a private placement. It turned out we priced on the night that Bear Stearns collapsed, one of the key events of the global financial crisis!”
Indeed, it was managing the response to these types of unexpected events that Busch relished throughout his corporate treasury career.
“I really enjoyed the diversity of challenges,” he says. “Every day starts with looking at what happened overnight. This could be a massive event, like the global financial crisis, or a very company-specific issue in a particular country, but there’s always something to address.”
The best way to approach events that are beyond the control of corporate treasury is to build flexibility into the working day, enabling the treasury team to have the agility to respond promptly.
“For any new treasurers, just plan approximately 60% of your week in advance because you’re almost guaranteed that 40% will be dealing with in-country issues and geopolitical impacts, like those we’re seeing now,” Busch advises. “I also think back to 2020, when we saw oil go negative and drop in price by around 300%. There’s always something.”
Managing external events together with the day-to-day cash and risk management job greatly emphasises successful workflow management. Busch attributes the trend of process automation as the most significant innovation to support treasury workflow during his career. This was particularly vital when Worley purchased the energy, chemicals and resources business of the Dallas-headquartered Jacobs Engineering Group for US$3.3bn. This transaction effectively doubled the size of Worley.
“We then had 1,100 bank accounts and around 110 unique banks,” recalls Busch. “Without the sweeping technologies and bank account automation processes that we ran, we would have drowned trying to manage all those bank accounts.”
Throughout his career, Busch has been attuned to the evolution of the treasurer’s role, particularly regarding its strategic importance to the business.
“The more strategic element in treasury started when the CFO role started to move away from what you could call hardcore finance and accounting to more of a hybrid COO role,” comments Busch. “That gave treasurers broader opportunities to look at enterprise-wide issues within the business.”
That transition occurred at the same time as the spotlight from the board and senior management was fixed on cash and liquidity management, particularly from the global financial crisis onwards.
“Today, the treasurer has to be focused on cash visibility and cash mobility,” continues Busch. “There are certain countries where cash is not that mobile, so as the treasurer, it’s vital to understand how to optimise that. It’s an ongoing challenge for companies.”
The trapped-cash issue links to another perpetual priority for treasurers – finding ways to improve cash flow forecasting.
“Cash forecasting improves incrementally, every year, but when a business is in 50 countries, there are some really smart technologies [being used] in certain parts of the world that may not exist in others,” notes Busch. “It can be challenging, depending on where those pockets of liquidity sit.”
Using technology to find ways to bring cash back to group treasury is an ongoing topic, with options such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies potentially creating new channels to achieve this.
“Swift has to, and is, responding to all of these new payment methods,” suggests Busch. “I think we’ll see a more enhanced payment gateway in the near future. Treasurers moving funds between 50 countries need the timing to be as close to real-time as possible, and it’s not right now. Multinationals are crying out for an improvement in payment gateways.”
Reflecting on the concept of mentoring, Busch underlines the value of getting together with peers to chew over approaches to the role. “It was always good to sit down with other treasurers and discuss what had worked for us and what hadn’t,” he reflects.
Indeed, this is the same collegiate approach that Busch employed at the peak of his treasury career when mentoring mid-level members of the treasury and finance teams. “It was all about explaining to them why we chose certain structures or why a decision for specific aspects of the role had been made,” Busch outlines. “There was a strong learning interest in Worley, with people wanting to understand why we chose a specific path.”
While being a treasurer can feel like being in the middle of some pretty cyclonic forces, Busch’s approach at Worley was to think about how to best manage an exposure rather than trying to beat the markets. “Rather than trying to pick tops or bottoms of market fluctuations, it was always about how we approached managing the risk of the particular asset or liability sitting on the balance sheet,” he says.
The ability to remain calm under pressure is essential if treasurers are to survive the additional scrutiny the role receives today. Busch puts part of his success in the role down to the best advice he received in his career.
“I had a CFO who always said to me, ‘Don’t worry, it will work itself out,’ and, most of the time, it did,” he recollects. “It comes back to trying to manage the business in an up cycle in the same way that you would manage it in a down cycle.”
Thinking about what excitement lies ahead for the next generation of corporate treasurers, Busch sees a clear next step in the evolution of the role.
“Thanks to automation, there will be less focus on processes, enabling treasurers to look more at enterprise-wide risk from a high level, trying to get a little closer to where those macro events could occur,” he predicts. “It’s all about trying to forecast those macro events better and then, by definition, what that could mean to the business. That’s where the value is.”
Kicking off his retirement in style, Busch is speaking to TMI from a surfing trip to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, catching waves rather than analysing market movements. But he is clear that his affinity with the corporate treasury profession remains and will continue even into retirement.
“I won’t be going cold turkey,” Busch concludes. “I’ve loved my time in the profession and have met and worked with some great people. I will certainly stay connected in some shape or form.”
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