A Man for all Treasury Seasons

A jam-packed career so far has seen Andre Olivier graduate from cutting his professional teeth as an analyst during the 2008 financial crisis to heading up treasuries across both corporate and fintech worlds. Here, he discusses his professional trajectory, reveals the lessons learnt, and predicts challenges and opportunities ahead for treasury practitioners – if they are prepared to embrace change. 

There can have been few, if any, more challenging periods in recent times for a budding treasurer to begin their career than the 2008 financial crisis. Yet that was the fate of Andre Olivier, Vice President, Global Treasury at PayU, the global payments platform and fintech investor.

Just on the cusp of the worldwide upheaval, Olivier had joined commodity trading company Trafigura as an enthusiastic, ambitious, but – in his own words – very green treasury analyst with no inkling of the chaos ahead.

He recalls: “It really was a baptism of fire but also, of course, a fantastic learning curve. Most of us who began our journey in treasury around that time would agree with that. As a kid fairly fresh out of university, there was a heck of a lot I did not have a complete grasp on in those early days at Trafigura. But I learnt continually during my time there, and that was incredible.”

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