My Life in Treasury: Jan-Martin Nufer, Borealis

An Interview with Jan-Martin Nufer, Director of Treasury & Funding, Borealis

As winner of multiple TMI Corporate Recognition Awards, Jan-Martin Nufer needs little introduction to regular readers of TMI. We have been delighted to feature a variety of articles from him and his team at Borealis over the past two years, and in this feature, Jan-Martin discusses his career with Helen Sanders, Editor, and offers advice for aspiring treasurers.

How did you come into treasury and what attracted you to the profession?

My career can perhaps be characterised by ‘seizing opportunities’ right from the beginning. My first role after vocational training as a banker and studying economics at the University of Mannheim in Germany was in banking, when I joined Bayerische Landesbank’s excellent trainee programme. This involved a rotation across different departments, and a variety of assignments internationally to gain some breadth of experience. During this time, I received recognition for a project on regional airports I was engaged with, and was offered a new opportunity with VIAG AG, a long-standing client of the bank, which subsequently merged with VEBA to become E.ON AG. VIAG, one of the ten largest industrial groups in Europe at the time, was moving its corporate headquarters from Bonn to Munich, and needed help in treasury to support the new set-up. I didn’t know much about corporate treasury at that stage, and had expected to pursue a career in banking. However, with only 24 hours to make a decision, I researched the company and corporate treasury as best I could, and ultimately decided to make the move. What was clear at the time I joined VIAG in 1995 was that the corporate treasury profession was not yet very clearly defined, and being part of the generation to shape and extend the treasury remit has been an exciting element throughout my entire career.

How did your career progress through to the role that you hold today?

VIAG was a huge, diverse conglomerate with a very professional treasury set-up, which was an excellent start for a corporate treasury career. We had established our own trading room and aimed to be a centre of excellence across our operations. Although we acted as a centralised treasury and advisory function for the group, subsidiaries were not obliged to work with Head Office treasury. As a result, we had to offer better conditions and a better experience than a bank, which gave me valuable negotiation experience. Furthermore, as a conglomerate incorporating a range of industries from production, through logistics and trading to utilities, each business unit had quite different treasury and corporate finance needs and cash and risk dynamics, so it was important to understand their requirements in detail. I was responsible for the telecoms portfolio which gave me an ideal background to my next role in Connect Austria, when we received the local licence. From then, I fulfilled various treasury, finance and consultancy roles besides others at Babcock & Brown and Swiss International Airlines, and ultimately joined Borealis in 2006.

How have demands and needs in terms of treasury changed over the course of your career, and what particular skills does it now require?

Treasury has only been shaped over the past 20 or 25 years in Germany and the surrounding countries, although it has existed for longer in the UK and US. This meant that there was some uncertainty about the role and content of treasury, especially during the early years of my career, but this also gave more flexibility and ability to shape the function, and indeed, there is still lots of marketing to be done about what treasury is and what it does. When I first started in corporate treasury, technical skills were the priority: cash management, risk management and hedging, systems, financing, etc., but it has evolved to become a partner to the business, and needs strong links both internally and externally to support the organisation and bring professional strength through expertise and relationships. As treasury’s sphere of influence has expanded into areas such as long-term funding and other contracts, M&A, investor relations, insurance, credit and many others, the breadth and diversity of relationships has expanded. As a result, while treasury earlier used to be relatively secluded, there is now a far greater focus on interpersonal skills, influencing and management of complex, multi-disciplinary projects.

The complexity of the business environment has also grown dramatically, and treasury is responsible for managing a wider range of risks globally in an environment of increased market volatility. While mathematical and other techniques are important, treasurers also need a clear sense of risk and the confidence, skills and mandate to react quickly.

What is your greatest professional achievement to date and why?

I have been fortunate enough to have seen both treasury and banking from the perspectives of each other, which has given me a unique insight into the needs and constraints of each party. In addition, I have been involved in major milestones at the companies for which I have worked. For example, during my time at Connect Austria (later Orange Austria), we went from effectively being a start-up with 30 people to a mature company employing 1,200. As one of the very few original finance people, this presented me with a huge opportunity to get involved in a wide range of issues and build a high performing team from scratch that could support the company’s ambitious growth strategy.[[[PAGE]]]

Innovation has been key to every role in which I have been involved, and it has been a privilege to participate in a number of industry ‘firsts’. For example in telecommunications we built a real-time credit checking process for retail customers that provided immediate response within a few seconds to the shop or call centre agent while being engaged in the sales or activation process. Other ‘firsts’ included building an entirely new fuel hedging programme at Swiss International Airlines, and while I have been at Borealis there have been significant opportunities for innovation, particularly in financing. I discuss this in more detail in the next edition of TMI, but we have been pioneering for the company US private placements, retail bond issues, Schuldscheine amongst others and in a quite unique combination.

I am particularly proud to see the results of the holistic treasury transformation programme I have been able to run at Borealis since 2007 and the wonderful team I have built in the course of that journey.

I have always found it very rewarding to find new ways of allowing companies to meet their corporate objectives, and in doing so, contributing to the wider industry.

What qualities do you look for when you are recruiting for your department?

Some of the basics have not changed throughout my time in treasury: people need a solid degree of educational achievement and the ability to quickly develop the variety of technical skills that treasury requires. However, as people do not arrive with university degrees in ‘corporate treasury’, I look for the wider professional and interpersonal fit. Some will have developed their skills in another corporate treasury, while others will come straight from relevant degree courses, but as it’s rare to find a ‘ready made’ treasurer during the early stages of a career, you need to make a more personal assessment, including an individual’s passion, enthusiasm and willingness to shape the role and to exceed. Although we access the local market in Austria, a lot of treasury functions here are subsidiaries of foreign multinationals, so we have built up a cosmopolitan team by attracting people from further afield.

We have a two- or three-stage interview process to build up a picture of a person and their approach, and ask lots of conceptual, problem-solving questions as well as specific treasury questions.

How important do you think a formal treasury education is, as opposed to (or as well as) more general finance qualifications?

There is quite a lot of diversity in the treasury education that is available across markets, so it is not feasible to specify that a formal treasury education should be a prerequisite for a role. Furthermore, while a treasury qualification provides a baseline of knowledge, treasury professionals need to be flexible, innovative and responsive, which is difficult to teach through a qualification that is by its nature uniform. Treasury training and education has a role in career development, however, and we work with the national treasury associations to develop and source education and training opportunities, but these tend to come later in a treasury professional’s career, rather than as a precursor to joining the profession.

Based on your career so far, what would your advice be to finance professionals who are perhaps in their first treasury role?

Many people leaving university now think they can go straight to the top in their chosen career, but it is essential to learn along the way and build up your credibility and network gradually. Ask questions and listen in order to understand the business and your role within it, and be open to feedback. Once you have fully got to grips with the role, and its relationship to others, look at how you can develop it to become more effective. This involves seizing opportunities at the right time, and also making the decision to exit if there is no longer a real fit.

What would your ideal holiday be?

I have enjoyed travelling since childhood, first with my parents who showed me the world and introduced me to different cultures, and later on my own and with my family. There are so many beautiful places to see, interesting cultures and cuisines to experience, and fascinating people to meet that I would not pick a single one. Skiing in Austria, diving in Thailand, Bali or the Maldives, hiking on La Réunion, or holidays with friends simply driving to France, Italy or Denmark all appeal. I’m lucky to have family in southern France and in the German Black Forest area which pre-determine some beautiful locations for vacation.

What book have you read recently or what film have you seen recently that you would recommend, and why?

At the lighter end, in the suspense and action category, I would recommend the Jussi Adler-Olsen novels, that demonstrate the way in which Nordic writers are able to combine an intriguing plot with unique characters. I tend to read many books at a time, which has also become the way that my eldest son ‘devours’ books. This slowly leads to a problem of space, as although ebooks are great, they are no substitute for a big paperback in your hand on the beach. So at the moment, I’m reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and one of the earlier books of Haruki Murakami.

I am a keen movie fan, and I would recommend looking for the gems amongst recent French comedies and the new German cinema. While I certainly also love viewing the latest blockbusters with my boys, I enjoyed the lightness and natural flow of French comedies like Un peu, beaucoup, également, Hypochondriac and Romantics Anonymous. If you want to see very strong acting on a difficult and tough subject, see Die Auslöschung, with Klaus Maria Brandauer, the story of a brilliant mind who gradually loses his fight against Alzheimer’s. I saw it recently and it puts things into perspective.