Just as the CFO’s role has evolved over the past several years, so has treasury’s. Much like CFOs, treasurers are now becoming more proactive and future-focused. And that means they can be stronger partners to the CFO than before.

“Historically, the treasury function was viewed as an operator supporting the business from a liquidity and funding perspective,” Prashant Patri, principal, risk and financial advisory at Deloitte, told CFO Brew. “And those priorities continue to exist. But over the last decade or so, the role has been progressively becoming more strategic.”

In fact, 91% of respondents to Deloitte’s 2022 Global CorporateTreasury Survey said that being a value-added partner to the CFO was a critical or important part of their mandate. CFOs, Deloitte suggested in a recent article, may want to examine how they work with treasury and identify areas where treasury can bring them more value—especially in today’s turbulent economic climate.

Treasury can inform CFOs of key risks, particularly during trying macroeconomic times, Patri said. The treasury function can alert CFOs to counterparty risks, like those with banking partners, he said, and help them manage such risks. It can also keep abreast of changes in volatile foreign currency markets and work with banks to “hedge that risk appropriately.”

For more on how CFOs and treasurers can help each other, click here.—CV

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From supply-chain disruptions to a workforce that feels perpetually in flux, you’d be hard-pressed to find a CFO whose workflow hasn’t been radically altered by the pandemic.

But for CFOs in healthcare, like Kelly MacDonald, the finance chief at Dynavax Technologies, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing vaccines for infectious diseases, the disruptions of the last few years, while challenging, have also clarified her purpose.

While many people learned firsthand the astounding power of vaccines during the pandemic, Dynavax already knew what it had on its hands: The Northern California-based company’s scientific developments had been incorporated into five Covid-19 vaccines used around the world, with millions of doses administered. And the biotech company already had an impressive track record: In 2017, the FDA granted approval for its hepatitis B vaccine.

MacDonald, who joined as CFO in 2021, was impressed with the company’s credentials, but she was just as inspired by smaller-scale positives the company had enacted during the pandemic.

“The way that Dynavax treated its employees in such a time of disruption and crisis[…] was really, really exceptional,” MacDonald told Healthcare Brew. And that’s ultimately why she wanted to work there. “One of the things I was looking for, and was really inspired by, was the company’s people-first mentality. That’s something I can’t turn off.”

Click here to learn more about how investing in people made her a better CFO.—NP

Sean Sobers has served as the CFO for ThredUp, a digital consignment company, since 2019. Before that, he held senior finance positions at a variety of tech-oriented companies, including during the dot-com boom. Here, he shares some industry insights with CFO Brew.

Who’s a CFO you admire or model yourself after?

The first is Mark Garrett, former CFO of Adobe, plus several other technology companies. Mark was one of my first bosses who was a CFO. Not only is he incredibly accomplished with great experience over many years, but I admired that he was always calm in the face of adversity.

I remember calling Mark at home one Sunday morning. He picked up the phone and said, “Well it’s Sunday morning and my controller is calling me. Sean, you have my attention.”I was calling about an unexpected change that would reduce our earnings. I spent quite a bit of time worrying about the issue, what it meant for quarterly results, and how Mark was going to react.

As Mark digested the information (and also realized the high levels of anxiety I was having), he said, “Remember, we are not brain surgeons and no one will die because of this.” It was a humorous comment, but it also put the issue into perspective for me. Mark helped me develop a sense of calmness whenever I am dealing with a challenging situation.

To learn more about how Sean copes with the pressures of the job, click here.—NP

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: $300–$500 million. That’s how much Warner Bros revised its earnings forecast down for the year, citing the impact of the ongoing writers and actors strikes. The company now says it is on track to earn somewhere between $10.5–11 billion for the year. (CNBC)

Quote: “So, in that sense, any plausible-sounding answer, whether it’s accurate or factual or made up or not, is a reasonable answer, and that’s what it produces. There is no knowledge of truth there.”—Brown University professor Suresh Venkatasubramanian, co-author of the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, on generative AI’s tendency to just “make things up.” (CNN Business)

Read: The number of striking workers across the country is rising as support for unions grows. (the New York Times)

How is AI being integrated into banks, Banksy, and baseball? Subscribe to Tech Brew to learn more. P.S. It’s free and over 470K people read it.

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