Group Treasurer Interview Questions: What a Board Tests

Group treasurer interview questions test one thing above the rest: whether the candidate can see the cash position of every entity in the group before the chief financial officer has to ask. In a Gulf group that is harder than it sounds. Some entities earn in currencies pegged to the dollar and others do not. Lenders may be linked to sovereign shareholders. Family guarantees may sit behind part of the borrowing. The audit and risk committee wants to know who will spot a liquidity problem first, and what that person will do the same day. JOH Partners has closed more than 1,000 senior mandates since 2014, including finance-line appointments for Gulf groups and holding companies.

This guide is for senior treasury and finance leaders preparing to meet a group board or its audit and risk committee. It sits alongside the rest of the JOH interview guides and sets the role against three neighbours, because a panel will often interview for them together. The group financial controller interview covers the close, consolidation and the quality of the accounts. The CFO interview covers financial strategy and the relationship with the board. The finance director interview covers the group finance director role. This guide covers the person who owns cash, funding and exposure.

What do group treasurer interview questions test at board level?

Calm, and a short answer. When something goes wrong in a group, the treasurer is often the first person who knows. A bank line is not renewed. A customer pays sixty days late. A covenant test is closer than expected. The committee is trying to work out whether this candidate would raise it in the first hour, in plain words, to the right person.

The questions can look routine. How do you manage liquidity across a group with many entities? How do you decide how much to hedge? How do you approach refinancing? Any experienced candidate can answer them in the abstract. What separates candidates is what comes next. Which numbers do you look at every morning? Who sees them? What did you do the last time one of them moved the wrong way?

The best answers are small and specific. "I look at a one-page position by 8am, with cash by entity, headroom on each facility and the next four weeks of known payments. I once found that one subsidiary had a bank account the group had not mapped. We closed it within the month." That is worth more than ten minutes on the theory of cash pooling.

How do you show you can see the cash in every entity?

This is the question that decides the interview. Boards that have been surprised by a liquidity problem are usually boards where cash sat in places the centre could not see. Accounts held by a subsidiary with local bank relationships. Cash that could not be moved because of local rules or a minority partner. Funding raised by one entity on the strength of a guarantee from another.

Be ready to say how you would build the view. How many bank accounts does the group have, and who opens them? Which entities can move cash to the centre, and which cannot? Where is cash trapped, and what would it cost to release it? Where does the group depend on a single bank? None of this needs clever systems at the start. It needs a list, kept current, with someone's name against each line.

Then show that you understand the human side. A treasurer who gets to the number needs the finance teams in each entity to tell the truth about it, and they will only do that if they trust the centre not to punish them for bad news. Give an example of how you built that trust, and of what you did when someone hid a problem.

A treasurer's job is to know where the money is before anyone asks. If the CFO has to ask, the treasurer is already behind.

What changes when some entities are pegged to the dollar and others are not?

Several Gulf currencies, including the UAE dirham, the Saudi riyal and the Qatari riyal, are pegged to the US dollar. The Bahraini dinar and the Omani rial are as well. The Kuwaiti dinar is managed against an undisclosed basket. For a group that operates only in those markets, currency risk can look small, and directors sometimes assume that it is.

It rarely is. Groups with entities in Egypt, Türkiye, India, Pakistan or Europe earn and spend in currencies that move. Suppliers may invoice in a third currency. Debt may be in dollars while revenue is in pounds or euros. A peg is a policy that holds until a government decides otherwise, and a treasurer who treats it as a law of nature will look naive to a committee that has watched a currency break elsewhere.

The strongest candidates draw two lists. One is exposures the peg covers. The other is exposures it does not. They say what they would hedge, what they would leave open on purpose, and what the committee would need to approve. They also say what would make them change their mind. Directors do not expect you to forecast a currency. They expect you to show that you know which of the group's numbers depend on someone else's decision. JOH's research on the control layer in Gulf groups explains why those functions often report to the centre on paper without having the access to do the job.

How do you talk about lenders, covenants and family guarantees?

Directly. In many Gulf groups, borrowing is shaped by relationships as much as by terms. A lender linked to a sovereign shareholder may be flexible in ways a commercial bank is not. A family may have given a personal guarantee that the board knows about and the finance team does not discuss. A covenant may be met comfortably today and tight in a year.

Expect questions on all three. How close to a covenant is too close? When do you tell the lender about a problem? When do you tell the owner? What would you do if the owner asked you to hold off telling the bank?

There is no script, and a rehearsed answer sounds like one. The panel is listening for the order of your instincts. Do you think first of the lender's trust, the owner's wishes, or the facts? The answer that works best is usually the same in every case: say what you know to whoever must hear it, before they hear it from somewhere else, and keep the message the same whoever the listener is. Treasurers who tell the bank one story and the owner another do not last.

For a Gulf group the structure of the group matters too. In a group holding with many operating companies, a guarantee given by one can become the problem of all. JOH's anonymised case study of group functional leadership at a Tadawul-listed Saudi industrial holding company, with eight operating companies, shows why boards in that position think hard about who sits at the centre of the finance line.

What will they ask about a liquidity scare?

A typical test is a Monday-morning problem. A large facility is due for renewal in six weeks, and the bank has just asked for more information than usual. A large customer in one entity has delayed payment. Another entity needs funding for a project that the owner has already promised. What do you do on Monday morning?

A good answer has an order. First, confirm the real position: cash, headroom, the next four to eight weeks of payments. Second, speak to the chief financial officer the same day, with the numbers, and say what you recommend. Third, decide what to say to the bank, and by when. Fourth, tell the committee chair, even if it is early, because the committee would rather hear a worry than a surprise. Candidates sometimes describe the financing options first. That is the second conversation.

Mention what you would not do. You would not move cash between entities without checking the legal and tax effect. You would not give the bank comfort you could not back. You would not leave the project funding question to the last day. Directors like a candidate who can describe what they would hold back as clearly as what they would do.

Where does the treasurer end and the controller and CFO begin?

Say it before the panel asks. The group financial controller owns the accounts, the close and the consolidation, and is the person who finds out whether the numbers hold when an entity is sold or listed. JOH's perspective on why a group financial controller is tested when an entity is sold or listed explains that role from the board's side. The CFO owns financial strategy and the conversation with the board, the owner and the market. The treasurer owns cash, funding and exposure.

The difficulty is that they all use the same numbers. If a bank covenant depends on a figure the controller produces, who owns the risk of it being wrong? If the CFO signs a guarantee the treasurer did not see, who answers to the committee? A candidate who has a view on these questions, and who has agreed the answers with a controller and a CFO in a previous role, is giving the committee something concrete.

Most finance teams can tell you how much debt the group has. Fewer can tell you, today, how much cash is free to use and in which country it sits.

What should you ask the audit committee?

Ask when the committee last reviewed liquidity headroom across the whole group, as opposed to entity by entity. Ask who can see every bank account today. Ask what the treasurer may do in an emergency without the chief financial officer's sign-off, and who decided that.

The answers tell you how much authority the role carries. A committee that answers precisely has usually thought about the treasury function and will back you when it matters. A committee that answers vaguely may be the one that most needs the role, and it is also the one where you will have to build your own authority. Better to know before you accept.

How should you prepare?

Prepare three examples. One is a time you found cash or exposure the group had not seen. One is a time you told a lender or an owner something they did not want to hear. One is a decision you took in an emergency, and what you would change about it now. Rehearse each one for a director who is a lawyer by training, and drop any treasury term you would have to explain.

On the JOH podcast, David Daly on business turnarounds in the UAE, finance transformation, tax compliance and radical honesty is worth an hour for what a finance leader owes a board when the numbers are bad.

Candidates who prepare well for the technical questions often prepare less well for the ones about themselves. AssessYou is the candidate platform from JOH Partners, built on the diagnostics the firm uses on retained search mandates, and a candid session on it before a first-round conversation shows you how your answers read to someone else. For the finance questions, the finance interview question bank on AssessYou sets out what each question is really asking across strategy, risk, cost and capital allocation, so you can check your own answers against it.

After the interview, the conversation turns to terms. Negotiating an executive job offer covers what changes once base pay, bonus and any retention arrangement are on the table.

Read the free question banks first, at assess-you.com/interview-questions. Then, for practice on your own CV with candid feedback on every answer, sign up to AssessYou.