Treasury Analyst - Interview coming up

Anglein:

Not entry level. I have a year of somewhat relevant finance experience. Thanks for the response Cries.

"Treasury Analyst" is very vague... Like the other guy said, you need to know what you will be doing. There are many areas in a large company's treasury department, from extremely boring stuff like wiring money and compliance, to more interesting things like trading, managing capital structure, cash flow projection, and risk analysis. Unfortunately, most of the treasury jobs have to do with the back office sort of work like money wiring, compliance, trade support, etc..

Even MORE than what questions you are going to be asked, I'd be thinking about ASKING the right questions. Like "What exactly will be my function in treasury? Give me typical duties I will be tasked with." etc... It may be a good thing to ask those things prior to the interview...

If it has to do with trading or trade support: think ABS, SWAPS, Bonds, Treasuries, and Funds of Funds. Those are the primary instruments of a corporate treasury's investment and liquidity portfolio. Know the general black-sholes model, know how ABS's work (+risks/benefits), know SWAPS, Treasuries, and general analysis of Funds (Jenson's aplha, treynor ratio, etc.). Know general portfolio theory.

If it has to do mainly with wiring money or compliance, politely ask where the exit is unless you are into those sort of things. Easy, decent money (at least at F500), and good hours.

If it has to do with capital management: think WACC, theories of capital management, dividend effects, stock buyback effects, stock issuance effects, effects of M&A, etc.. This is an uncommon role (F20 may have 5-10 people experts on this stuff), but nice role as it works with FP&A, corporate div, strategy, and senior management.

Anglein:

Thanks guys – I guess it would be helpful if I gave you more background about the position:

The company’s market cap is around the $500m mark and it has about $150m in cash and short-term securities. I would say that the role is primarily operational in nature. From the job description, I will handle bank accounts, manage a cash flow model, financial reporting, audit support, record wires, etc.

So the job is not really about capital management and certainly not a trading support function.

Sounds interesting. I imagine you would have more interesting responsibilities seeing as how it is a smaller company. I would just make sure you like the people in the dept. - I've dealt with a lot of 'treasury analysts' and a lot of them are not very ambitious / punch the clock and get out.

Anglein:

Bankn - I get what you are saying and you make some very valid points. But I am sure that if I perform well, there will be room to grow within the company or otherwise down the road. I appreciate the heads up, though.

Back to the interview, with respect to the type of questions that I can expect, given the nature of the position / company, what should I focus on to nail the job offer? What Cries said stands in this case ("I would expect a ton of fit and behavioral... I would also expect one or two technicals related to capital structure, capital markets, WACC")?

I would agree with at least 90% fit/behavioral. If there are technicals, I would imagine they would be centered on the investment products they probably use. Like I stated above, think Treasuries, ABS, SWAPs, bonds, and possibly fund of funds. Those are the main investment instruments of a treasury department. So do a quick overview of the way interest rates affect Treasuries/bonds, learn a little about types of ABS (risks/rewards), and do a little research on how SWAPs work and what they are used for. If you have time, you might also want to review fund performance ratios and black scholes.

Just for example, for my internship interview in treasury, I was asked "Tell me how the interest rate affects the price of a bond."

Realistically, because their portfolio of 150m is quite small, I would not expect them to have many products in place. I wouldn't worry too much about technicals, just know the fundamentals above.

Well that is your first mistake, even applying to work there!

i should probably note that this is NOT with a financial institution.

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These positions can vary widely, but I would be prepared for general corp fin questions that are easily googleable as well as "why this firm" "why this instead of banking" (as they assume there is overlap in recruiting), "why this industry" (oil, etc)

Probably helpful to know financial statements stuff (balance sheet/cash flow statements) just in case they decide to throw financial terms on you

Just a quick update, speaking with the HR rep on Wednesday. Still welcoming any potential advice.

Hi, I am currently working in treasury for a UK regional bank. It really depends what type of treasury as the definition is very broad. If you are talking about treasury as in cash management, handling payment systems, or treasury sales (selling the treasury services mentioned above), then i'd say the opportunities into PE/HF/IB are limited.

But if the role is offered in the trading side then u could be dealing with front office treasury traders to manage the treasury asset portfolio. This is where you can really experience the buy-side type of activities where u can take some responsibility for a trading book. I am currently working in treasury risk and also hoping that this will lead me to IB/PE/HF in future.

As i am also fairly new to the role, please correct me if i am wrong.

Just wanted to update this thread in case anyone looks at it. Spoke with HR last week, discussed the position, she of course gave a very general description. Sounds like treasury analysts are segregated by group, which makes sense. Also, typically they actually do like to promote to other divisions from within, and they actually do recommend that after 2 or 3 years, you make the jump to IBD. That would be great, and an ideal career path in order to break in for me at least. As always, looking for any other advice anyone might have, and of course if anyone has experience with Baird I'd love to hear about it.

Hi all in all i think its an excellent opportunity to get your foot in the door if you dont have anything else. I also noticed that Barclays treats treasury as almost on par to sales & trading. So i'd think your exit opportunity would be very similar to traders in that case. But of course treasury is very broad, u can get to work on things like analysing capital structure and helping with funding obligations as you mentioned which i think gives u a very broad set of skills should u wish to get into IBD.

Whilst working in treasury risk, I am also thinking about applying to a tier1 tier2 bank IBD grad program. So we are kinda on the same boat now. I'd like to see how you get on...! if you have any questions about treasury, u can pm me.

i interned in treasury at BNY Mellon a while back. I worked on overnight placements, which was basically banks either depositing or borrowing money over night so they would be aligned with fed requirements. Basically, the floor I was on it, it functioned very similar to trading, but with "balancing the books" type of activities instead of making profit the ultimate purpose.

I think this depends on the type of firm. I have a classmate who is a treasury analyst at an F500 and he says that depending on the team, they do stuff like hedging, maintaining relations with major creditors and rating agencies, managing working capital, etc. I would imagine that the actual day-to-day activities are somewhat different at a financial institution as per what @"OpsDude" said. As far as I can tell though, it all has to do with managing cash and liquidity in some way.

Could be repo, sec lending at an insurer. fixed income and wires/cash management at a govt agency or large bank with multiple accounts, could also be some fx on cash deposits.

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So how did you do in the interview?

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For what it's worth, I'm interning in the treasury department of a F1000 company this summer. I obviously don't have the experience to give you many details, but I'll give it a shot. The treasury team is part of everything that the company does that is money related (which is almost everything). One of the things my team is doing is FX hedging, so we are determining what % of our FX expenses we want to hedge, and then making a plan for when we make these trades and when we want them to vest. We are also managing the share repurchase program and determining what to do with extra cash. After that, it's a bunch of little things, like implementing new pay systems in eCommerce, bringing in cash cards for our retail employees so we can save money on sending checks, being part of meetings where we are fixing bugs in our point of sale credit card transactions that sometimes double-debit or double-credit. We also have to send out releases for our retail locations to be able to pick up cash from a local bank to be able have cash in their registers.

That's a very general overview of the treasury department of a retail company. Working at a bank is different, I'm sure, but in general it's going to be anything related to the inflow and outflow of cash. Sometimes it can be really interesting. We are renegotiating our credit agreement which will save us millions, so it's been interesting working on that. On the other hand, the daily grind, like sending out our daily liquidity report to management, is straight boring and mundane. That's what little info I can give you as a summer intern. Let me know if you have any questions

thank you for the input dan_yo23. how was the salary for full time employees and what is the career path like?

I'm still interning here, so I'm not yet privy to salary information. What I can see from our proxy statement, though, is that our execs get paid similar to most F500 companies. Also, the other people on the treasury team have top MBA's and experience at well-known companies, so I doubt that they are getting paid less than industry average. As far as exit ops, I know one guy moved to the supply FP&A team after working as a treasury analyst here for a few years. He was promoted from analyst to manager. I had lunch with him the other day and he talked about how treasury gives such a wide range of experience and exposure since treasury deals with all cash flows, which means you'll deal with almost all parts of a business. You can make connections everywhere within your own company, and are in on all kinds of discussions with banks and other companies. The networking opportunities are pretty broad, even in my short experience here. I have worked with eCommerce, International Finance, AP, Internal reporting, Internal Audit, FP&A, I have met with bankers a couple of times, I've met treasury professionals from nearby companies.. And I've only been here for a month. Again, this is all coming from my current summer internship in the treasury/IR department of a F1000 company, so not exactly the same as a regional bank like you are talking about. My gut feel, which again is coming from my very limited knowledge, about working in treasury is that it's a good stepping stone job if you aren't quite sure where you want to be. It gives you experience with many many parts of the business and lets you network with a lot of people. I am not yet sure if I want to shoot for Corp Dev or FP&A, so I see treasury as a good experience while I am figuring things out, and I would very seriously consider a FT here if it is offered. Long term, though, I don't want to become a "treasury guy" because I feel like the higher you go, the less analysis you do and the more you just answer for the treasury department and release funds and such.

what is the interview like? what type of experince are they looking for? I have alot of A/R, Reconciliation and budgeting experience

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I worked in Treasury for a couple of years so perhaps could give you a bit of insight to what this role entails.

Reading from the spec, it appears to be quite a technical role focusing on building and maintaining financial models that underpins Treasury operations. This could require you to talk to various parties to collect business assumptions for the foreseeable future and build these assumptions to produce a realistic forecast. In order to build a realistic forecast, you need to have a good grasp of how the business plan will impact funding & liquidity and more importantly how interest rate/liquidity/capital concerns will impact how Treasury plans to meet funding needs whilst maintaining good liquidity.

ok so i got past the HR interview and now I'm being schedule to talk to 'a few leaders' in treasury. can anyone look at my OP and give me tips on what the interview will bee like? Compensation? hours? etc

thanks

any help?

chronk:

As always, best way to impress them is to be able to identify most topical issues in the field. Easiest place to start is the biggest event happening in the financial world. But most important thing is you need to identify how it impacts us. Our primary goal is to manage the cost of debt, so anything that affects this can be an interesting topic.
Good questions to ask would be:
- How Treasury currently fund the business
- Funding mix = secured & unsecured
- Whats their liquidity target
These are all examples of questions to ask to define the characteristics of the Treasury function. These are all big topics so can easily turn into an interesting conversation.
For Treasury, interest rate risk assess the sensitivity of interest rate rise to cost of debt. This essentially looks at the marginal cost of debt should interest rate rise. To do this, you need to know the characteristics of debt instruments you have got and how its cost will increase with a rise in the benchmark. This should give you an estimate of how steep the cost will increase if interest rate rises and based on that, you can determine the optimal funding mix when the prospect of interest rate rise is low/high.
Comps are obviously not as high as IB/HF roles but they are certainly not bad. We get paid higher than other functions due to the technicality of the role involved, so theres a bit of premium factor to work in here.
Re: laptop - this really depends on your company culture. We only give laptop to perm staffs. Grads on rotation dnt get one.
This should be a Excel heavy role so do emphasize your excel skills and maybe brush up your macros/VBA, etc.

Thank you so much for the help.

I will be separately meeting with 2 Senior treasury analyst, the Capital planning manager, and the risk/rate manager. any tips on what to ask each one? and what I should be focused on for each?

Regarding the interest risk rate part. the question I currently have prepared is: this role demands alot of work with interest rate risks, how sensitive would you say it is at this point and do you currently have any plans to make it less sensitive? I'm thinking of asking the rate/risk manager this question.

other questions I have planned so far:

Senior Treasury analyst A: I have some experience with VBA using excel, will I be able to use it when working on a cash flow model?

Senior Treasury analyst B: Will the cash flow models have any link to the balance sheet forecasting?

Capital Planning manager: since this role requires a lot of work with cash flows and the balance sheet, what is the liquidity target for the company and is this broken down by monthly liquidity target or is it a much broader time frame?

Any tips would be be really appreciated. also, What would be a basic VBA code that would be relevant to a cash flow model?

thanks in advance

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interview is tomorrow guys, please help

wow i didn't know a senior chimp could be disrespected like this

last call

hey sorry i havent been checking on this as work got too busy. You are asking the right question to the right person, (apart from the senior analysts as i dnt know what they do). But at the end of the day, for someone at junior level, its more of a personality fit than your technical ability. On the condition that you have the right background and you prove you are willing to learn, they are happy to teach you the stuff.

Once again apology for late reply. I hope it has gone well.

I'm interested in this as well.

Here you go:

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/all-about-treasury-corporate-trea…

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/corporate-treasury-vp-taking-ques…