Minna Helppi leads Metso’s Treasury to 2030’s with Robotics and Digitalization

This blog series is dedicated to Cash - from startup’s to corporate treasuries.

We had very fascinating Friday afternoon chat with Minna Helppi, SVP Group Treasurer, in Metso’s HQ in Sanomatalo, in the heart of Helsinki.

Metso’s treasury team has just welcomed Hulda, a treasury robot, who has user rights for Twin, excel, emails, and other necessary programs. “She’s hard-working girl 24/7: she only can do one thing at time, but she does it fast and right. And she’s already working, when our China desk needs information at 2 am.” explains Minna.

But let’s go back to 1989. Finance fell in love with Minna in Kansallis-Osake-Pankki’s recruitment cruise in 1989. During her career as a banker, she arranged export and project financing to emerging markets, such as Honduras and Bangladesh. After 15 years in the bank she changed to the other side of the table when she moved to Andritz as Vice President Project Financing working with pulp mill projects.

In 2008, she started at Uponor as VP Group Treasury and Risk Management. She was in the process of renewing the syndicated revolving credit facility of 300 million, when Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15th. “In that morning, I suddenly found myself to talking to chaotic banks. Uponor was financially stable, but due to the financial crisis, the banks suddenly were not sure on their participation in the funding, and had morning prices and afternoon prices” Minna described. “Bank syndication was mission impossible, so the revolver credit facility was split and after six months’ negotiations, it was closed with bilateral agreements. That experience taught me that anything is possible, and the contract wording plays a big role when times are tough.”

But there was more to come. In 2012, Metso called and Minna started as a new SVP Group Treasurer. After six months, Minna became a member of Metso demerger team with the aim of spinning off one of the segments, and establishing Valmet as a listed company. There was less than a year to prepare everything for the new company’s treasury operations, while securing Metso’s funding arrangements. It included negotiating new financing facilities to the company to be established, obtaining consent and waivers from banks and bond holders, recruiting personnel, setting up cash pools, treasury systems and reporting. In the middle of the hectic work, treasury team was well beyond their comfort zone. However, everyone was committed to getting it all done within the tight timeframe, and stayed steadily on the learning curve.

Metso demerger in 2013 and the divestment of process automation systems business a year after in 2014, are now done. Centralizing cash, improving visibility and harmonizing processes are now on Minna’s agenda. It has been time to focus on working capital improvement and ROCE.

Metso is implementing global supply chain finance program to improve working capital.

However, negative interest rate environment has questioned the general financial doctrines. “Cashflow is flying in, but now banks are charging for the funds sitting as deposits.

Yield in other low risk investments is also negative. At the same time, Metso is in the heart of its supplier ecosystem. So, we decided to implement dynamic discounting model, which is digital cash discount auction for our suppliers.” Minna explains “The model has been just piloted and the results are very promising. The most exciting part is the direct impact of our profitability and ROCE.”

Dynamic discounting model is something what companies can create to obtain optimal cash discounts from their suppliers. From the supplier point of view, this is valuable opportunity to improve cashflow.

Metso’s Treasury is to moving closer to business. “Supply Chain Financing and Dynamic discounting model are just examples of many areas, where treasury can create value add to business and whole ecosystem, customer financing being one of our strategic areas. At the same time, there are many routine and non-value adding tasks in treasury, which can be robotized with Hulda.” says Minna. Using robotics is still at a very early stage, but the results are promising. Letting Hulda do the more routine tasks, the team members have more time on more value adding tasks, such as analyzes.

Minna Helppi, a Red Cross volunteer, emphasizes the importance of leadership. “Leadership skills are weighted when times are hard. It’s all about trust and empowerment. With good leadership, only the sky is the limit what you can achieve with your team.”

I fully agree.

The author is the Founder of BackedByCFO, CFO As A Service from seed to IPO, the greatest passion to help CEO’s with cashflow and metrics.