This episode features an interview with Ann Dennison, EVP and CFO of Nasdaq, the global electronic marketplace for securities. Ann has more than 20 years of experience in corporate finance and financial reporting and analysis. At Nasdaq, she’s responsible for accounting, FP&A, budgeting, planning and procurement. Prior to joining Nasdaq in 2015, Ann was a managing director and head of financial reporting at Goldman Sachs. On this episode, Ann discusses market resiliency, cutting-edge topics like ESG and the digital asset space, and the transformation of the CFO from a numbers person to a strategic advisor.
This episode features an interview with Ann Dennison, EVP and CFO of Nasdaq, the global electronic marketplace for securities.
Ann has more than 20 years of experience in corporate finance and financial reporting and analysis. At Nasdaq, she’s responsible for accounting, FP&A, budgeting, planning and procurement. Prior to joining Nasdaq in 2015, Ann was a managing director and head of financial reporting at Goldman Sachs.
On this episode, Ann discusses market resiliency, cutting-edge topics like ESG and the digital asset space, and the transformation of the CFO from a numbers person to a strategic advisor.
Quotes
“There’s a lot of power in sitting on a ton of data at the corporate level in finance. So how can we harness that power to help provide information to the businesses to make the best possible decisions?”
Time Stamps:
[0:22] Intro
[1:31] Interview begins
[1:56] Career path to CFO
[7:36] Cash liquidity challenges amid the pandemic
[11:40] IPO listings grow despite pandemic
[14:00] Post pandemic hybrid work
[17:43] How to be strategically impactful as CFO
[20:02] Managing risk and weighing investments
[22:27] Tech tools to lean on as CFO
[23:51] Harnessing the power of data
[31:16] The CFO of the future
[34:05] Emerging hot topics in finance
Sponsor
The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com
Ann Dennison: The sort of evolution of the CFO from just like the numbers person to a strategic advisor has been an important one and has been very impactful to companies as they think about optimizing how they spend their capital and the pairing of those two things is really powerful.”
Narr: Hello and welcome to The Invisible Vault.
This episode features an interview between Ann Dennison, EVP and CFO of Nasdaq, and Bob Stark, Head of Global Market Strategy at Kyriba.
Ann has more than 20 years of experience in corporate finance and financial reporting and analysis. At Nasdaq, she’s responsible for accounting, FP&A, budgeting, planning and procurement. Prior to joining Nasdaq in 2015, Ann was a managing director and head of financial reporting at Goldman Sachs.
On this episode, Ann discusses market resiliency, cutting-edge topics like ESG and the digital asset space, and the transformation of the CFO from a numbers person to a strategic advisor.
But before we get into it, here’s a brief word from our sponsor…
So please enjoy this interview between Ann Dennison, EVP and CFO of Nasdaq, and your host, Bob Stark.
Bob Stark: Welcome to The Invisible Vault. I'm Bob Stark, Global Head of Market Strategy at Kyriba. And today we are going to have a great podcast. Ann, welcome to our podcast. It's great to have you. How's your day going?
Ann Dennison: Good, Bob. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Bob Stark: I think we're gonna have a little bit of fun with these questions, but I want to start with the very beginning. You're the CFO of NASDAQ. How did you get into finance in the first place?
Ann Dennison: I started out like a traditional accounting route, so I went to the big six at the time. Now it's big four and spent a couple of years there. I spent most of my career, Bob, at Goldman, about 19 years there. And I sort of hit a pivotal point in my career where I needed to make a decision, whether I was going to stay there and stay on the track that I was on, or really try something different and push myself out of my comfort zone. And I had a really, really distinct thing that I wanted to try and NASDAQ wasn't that, but I ended up meeting this entrepreneurial team at NASDAQ as I interviewed which I thought I was doing for practice. But it turns out, you know, it was probably my best career move that I could have made. For a number of reasons, but one, because it really just pushed me to learn, think differently, use the skills that I developed over my accounting career at Goldman to really do things differently and think out of the box.
Bob Stark: That's a nice story, actually. I almost want to say it's a non traditional path to becoming a CFO, but I like the way you phrase it. You were looking for that new challenge. And there's always this push and pull and finance of have I done enough in this particular area? Have I spent too much time or not enough time in treasury or accounting, et cetera, but I think that's an interesting addition.
Ann Dennison: I should say I didn't come straight into the CFO role coming into NASDAQ. So I joined NASDAQ in October of 2015 in the controller spot. And so I was lucky enough to have, a sponsor and mentor in the CFO that I worked for the past five years to really help me learn and grow and get ready for the CFO position. So I am newly appointed. I'm looking at the date. I was appointed March 1st of this year. And so I'm brand new CFO, but not brand new to NASDAQ.
Bob Stark: I think that's a great pathway to do it. You've got five years to learn.
Ann Dennison: Yeah, exactly. And work with an amazing leadership team. So it's been a really great journey and I feel like I've grown a ton in five years.
Bob Stark: Yeah. And I'm sure you've grown a ton since March 1st as well, if I dare say.
Ann Dennison: Yeah. Yeah. It's a fire hose, but I'm learning. I have a lot more to learn, let's just say.
Bob Stark: Well, So tell me a little bit about what a CFO at NASDAQ, like, what is that like? And how is it different compared to what you saw in the previous five years?
Ann Dennison: So, I don't know how different it actually is. I mean, obviously there's more responsibility that comes with the CFO role and a seat at the executive leadership table and a chance to work more closely with our CEO, Dana Friedman at NASDAQ, who is an inspiration to me. So, there's differences there. The broadening of responsibility is really around, the different functions in finance that were not part of my old role. But I will say my old role prepared me well, I was a big portion of the finance team, and I got the opportunity to work as part of running the finance, planning and analysis team in my old role, working closely with the CFO, our CEO and the board around our strategic initiatives over the past five years. So I feel really well positioned as I stepped into the CFO role, I should say. But I've got things to learn on functions that I hadn't touched before. And one of the things in the CFO role that's really important is telling your story to investors. And as an accountant by trade I'll say, and hopefully this doesn't prove true in the podcast, but as a accountant by trade I was giving you the answer just as you asked the question, before coming into the CFO role. Now I need to be able to tell a story and that's a skillset and a muscle that I'm working on building. And I'm looking forward to the journey.
Bob Stark: Yeah, it's actually an interesting progression. As you say, it's building a story versus knowing the story, but really being focused on delivering the answer previously. I like the way you phrase that. One further question, before we get into our next segment. It's really just a curiosity because most of the CFOs I talked to, not all of them are part of recognized names, such as NASDAQ. But as a CFO of an organization that's well known and regarded, does that change significantly compared to maybe if you were part of a lesser known organization? Like, does that add pressure being part of a name brand like this?
Ann Dennison: Well, I certainly feel pressure. When I think about the pressure that I feel, the pressure that I feel is to succeed and, to help NASDAQ continue to accelerate its strategic journey and, to provide the right partnership to leadership team and obviously to Edina. I don't have a reference point for working in a small brand company, since I spent most of my career working for bigger brands. I'm just imagining that the pressure to succeed and to make a difference is brand agnostic, but those are just my thoughts.
Bob Stark: Yeah, I think those are good thoughts. And I think your experiences is well-taken, simply because you've worked for very impressive names all the way along. So congratulations on that. So let's talk about our first segment. We call it Cash Crossroads on The Invisible Vault podcast. And the reason why we talk about that is because get into some specific areas of the CFO is remit, such as cash, liquidity, et cetera. So if we think back, and this obviously touches on your role as a controller, before you progressed to CFO, what did you find that was challenging from a cash liquidity standpoint at the onset of the pandemic, looking back to March of last year?
Ann Dennison: Yeah, sure. That's a great question. We're seeing sort of some of the post pandemic world, we're seeing some of the impact of this. So at the start of the pandemic, there was just a ton of uncertainty, right? So from a cash and liquidity perspective when you've got a lot of uncertainty in front of you, you want to be a little bit more conservative on what you're doing with your capital. And so I think what we saw, and I'm making a generalization here more broadly across many companies was, the preservation of cash. Making sure they had access to cash and then preserving it. So maybe not doing as many buybacks on their stock or maybe not increasing their dividend as they otherwise would have during that sort of time period, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. I'm talking about companies that weren't suffering on the service side, that weren't suffering from cashflow problems because of the pandemic. And so now I think what we're seeing is on the post pandemic side, expansion on the stock buybacks, maybe a little bit more aggressiveness on increasing dividend, because looking back to last year, maybe you could have done more, but there was so much uncertainty that you were a little bit more conservative in those decisions. So I think, the pandemic at least from a liquidity perspective, look very different than, some previous crises that we've been through specifically the financial crisis. But that uncertainty at the beginning made people act conservatively.
Bob Stark: Yeah, we definitely saw a lot of that. It seemed different. The same, but different than what we observed in 2008, because it just seemed like it was so much more impactful across other aspects of commerce than just specific to financial markets. And create a lot of uncertainty. As you say, there's certain industries that were affected more than others. One thing that has been very interesting, and this is specific to obviously the business that NASDAQ is in, is that the markets have been fairly resilient. Maybe with the short-term exception back in March of last year, but otherwise they've done very well. In fact, there's been heightened valuations and a lot of expectation for a lot of different types of organizations, tech sector, certainly being one of them to go IPO. Have you seen this increase in interest in going public from any organizations as a catalyst for your business? And does it flow through to the CFO? I realize there's a lot of parts to that question.
Ann Dennison: No, absolutely. It's been a really interesting and exciting year from a market's perspective. And so when I think about market resiliency, what we do is provide a platform, on the cash equity side and cash options in the U.S. for trading. And so when there's a lot of activity, if our markets are not resilient, then It could create broader issues for the entire ecosystem. And so, we think a lot about resiliency and making sure that we can handle that and the level of activity that we saw, during the very volatile time in March of 2020 created an incredible amount of stress on the system, but we're really proud of how resilient our systems were and we've been adding capacity on the backend to make sure that, as the retail trading continues to remain in the market, that we can continue to handle the activity in the market and provide, the services that our clients are looking for. So we saw that from a market's perspective and lots of volatility. An interesting thing just to note, usually we see market volatility is this sort of really pretty well correlated with the activity that we have in our trading business. What we're seeing now is, with all the retail in the market that, the volatility levels have fallen back from those high levels we saw early on in the pandemic, but the market activity is still very high. And so it'll be interesting to see as we move on how much of that is structural and, we've seen some of it come down in the cash equities market, but the options market is still pretty busy. And so it'll be interesting to see how much retail participation stays in the market as we move forward in the post pandemic world. I think on the IPO side, I mean, the IPO's, it's been really just an incredible journey. And a very busy one for we call it our listings team, and that's a global team. We have a U.S. listings and a Nordic listings team. And I'm going to get the stats exactly wrong, but you know, we had more IPOs in the first quarter of this year than we forecast for a normal year, all in, right? So really a ton of activity with a lot of companies wanting to come to the market and wanting access to those really positive market conditions currently. And it's not just the SPACs everybody's talking. We've seen quite a lot of SPACs but we've had a lot of operating companies come to the market and really coming to NASDAQ looking, for access to the market in the deepest equity market, liquidity pool in the U.S. So pretty cool. I just would love to talk about the fact that like, pre pandemic, nothing was done remote on the IPO side, but when you think about what's happened since last March where we've had, an enormous number of IPO's and companies coming to market in different ways, a lot of those, especially early on, couldn't be done in the traditional way where we bring everyone to the market site, they're on the tower, they ring the bell and, there's a whole wonderful process around that. So what we've had to do in this world is really find ways to do that in a digital way. And so now we have the ability to do remote bell ceremonies, remote road shows with the bankers and the companies, which, we'll see there's a lot of efficiency in doing those things and there's still a level of excitement. So it'll be interesting thing to see as we move forward, what the new world looks like and what the hybrid balance between those two things is.
Bob Stark: That actually raises a really interesting question about what processes or what ways of doing things stay the same post pandemic where you realize, oh, wait a second, this was very efficient. We might want to keep doing this. So maybe not the remote bell ringing because I'm sure there's a lot of interest for those that are going public for the first time to be part of that. They feel like that's something that's a great part of the journey. But I'm sure there's other aspects both within your operational team, as well as other aspects of NASDAQ that you think post pandemic, this is the way we should do things now.
Ann Dennison: Yeah, And I think it's, there's still a lot of unknown in terms of what exactly things are going to look like as we get back to more normal. I think on the IPO side, one real efficiency we saw, and I mentioned is the shifting of the roadshow to remote. I don't know if that's going to, stick exactly, but I think it'll give, some optionality. we move forward into the new normal. And I think there'll be a lot of options to consider and things to think about to, provide services to our clients. So we're excited about that. I think everybody's talking about this now and we're talking about it every day, which is what does the future of work look like? So we proved pretty well that we could operate in a remote environment. And there were certain people across the company, but it was a very small set that needed to come in. But most of the company didn't need to be in person. And I think if we asked ourselves that question, sort of January of last year, can we go fully remote and not, create any operational impacts, I think the answer to that would have been a full stop, no. Now we know the answer is yes. And so as we think about, how to provide the employees the flexibility that they want, because we're hearing that, preserve our culture and really set ourselves up for success, there's a lot of questions that we're asking ourselves and figuring out what does that really mean? And what do we use our offices for in the future?
Bob Stark: Yeah, it's a great challenge. And I've seen a lot of different statistics suggesting that many CFO's usually in the range of two thirds are suggesting that there's, not what they necessarily want, but what they expect is at least some element of hybrid work. And so, yeah. Trying to figure out what does that actually look like? What does it mean? What kind of controls do I have in the office and out of the office, given that I might be doing both in a given work week?
Ann Dennison: Yeah, I agree. And I think this will morph over time. I think one, there's some friction for, for folks to come back in because, and I share that, I've been back in the office. I've been going back in a couple of days a week, two to three days a week, for a couple of months now. Mainly because we've got this great new office that I love to be in, and it's now an easier commute for me. I can walk from Grand Central Station here in New York, but there's a friction to doing it, because we're creatures of habit. We've been sitting in our chairs in our basements or home offices or wherever for a long time. And it's just easier not to do it. What we're trying to do is encourage people in a positive way, not a force, right now to come back in and just see it, just feel it like be with your colleagues and, and then make a decision whether you really want to stay home. So we're asking for a little bit of that. And I do expect it to look different and I think we'll just continue to adapt and change and understand what the workforce really wants and how to mesh that with what we need from a company perspective to be successful.
Bob Stark: You're thinking the right way for sure. Let me zero in on one thing you said a little bit earlier. It sounds like you were saying business is pretty good. There's a lot of interest in public organizations. It blew out your forecasts. I'm kind of reading into what your answer was there. What do you have to do differently when business is so good above projection? Like how does that flow through to the finance teams?
Ann Dennison: We spend an awful lot of time budgeting and looking out in our strategic plan for the next three to five years. And we operate in an environment or in businesses that, some are easier to predict and some are harder to predict, because there are a lot of beta forces, market driven forces. And so we spend a lot of time looking at where we're performing versus our budget. But most importantly, when I think about my job as a CFO and how can I be strategically impactful, what comes top of mind is capital allocation. And so, when your business is doing well, we want to invest for future growth. And so figuring out how to put whatever capital that we had in excess of what we were expecting to use in the most powerful way to drive value for shareholders is the ultimate objective. I mean, there's lots of steps in between. But I think there are many companies that faced you know, the opposite problem. And I like to think back because it's always a good reminder and I think it's something we're really focused on. Using the right tools to sort of make sure that we can manage this. When we started the pandemic, nobody knew what the market's going to look like. Nobody knew, you know, The IPO, stopped. There were nothing happening. And so we didn't have a clear view at that time as to what, things were going to look like in the future. And so, one of the things that we spent an awful lot of time doing is, here's our forecast, but what are the different scenarios that could happen? And then how are we going to manage through that? If it's on the downside cases, obviously it could be looking at tightening and making sure that, positioned from a liquidity perspective and then the upside, those are a little bit easier to figure out. I love to figure out how to spend money. I mean, I'll talk about them just on my personal side, I don't mean for NASDAQ, but I also love to think about the possibilities at NASDAQ for what our investment can do to help us grow and accelerate our strategic vision.
Bob Stark: I like how you phrase that because you're right. There's some basic forecasting and scenarios and being able to pivot and understand what this looks like versus that looks like that are consistent with whether you're a growing organization and whether you're one that potentially faces some challenges. It's the same mechanics that you have to be able to do well. So that was very well said. It actually is a nice segue into our next segment, around The Playbook which is where we talk a little bit more about strategy and you've actually given us some great insight into strategy and how you think. Let me ask you this from a risk standpoint. What's your view on risk management? I know it can be defined many different ways. What are your thoughts on what risk management means in your role as a CFO?
Ann Dennison: So risk is something important that we need to manage. And so maybe that's like the, the one sentence answer. I also have this perspective that, perfection is kind of the enemy here. You're never going to eliminate risk completely across the organization. And, and you want to make the right level of investment to cover the risks appropriately and whether those are operational or business risks. I mean, we spend an awful lot of time making sure that we understand our top risks and thinking about how we mitigate them. And so, I like to think about it, specifically from a finance perspective. What are our areas of focus? What are our particular vulnerabilities? And really making sure that we're focused on them so that we don't get surprised by something that was just off the radar screen. Then if I put my CFO hat on for the company, a muscle that we're trying to make a big or build is looking at everything through a risk reward profile. ROIC and then risk reward. So, we can make investments, that can, make big returns, but how much risk is associated with those investments? And how do we, frame them the right way to stack them up against one another? Because we do have constraints around how much capital we can invest. And so I think risk's pretty complicated, but simply you're taking it every day and you need to manage it.
Bob Stark: And I think the fact that you speak about acting decisively, And the implication I heard through that is you can paralyze yourself through too much analysis. At some point you have to manage these risks. And that's a big lesson for a lot of organizations. I think there's many out there that could learn from the way you phrase that.
Ann Dennison: We talk a lot about perfection being the enemy, because you can paralyze yourself, but incremental improvement all the time is, what I strive for within the finance organization. And I think, more broadly, across the corporation. We're not trying to get it to perfection from day one, but make it better every day.
Bob Stark: Well, that almost makes me have to ask the question about technology, just because that's an area where perfection is also a challenge to get everything perfect. What sort of technologies do you find are especially useful or what you rely on the most as a CFO?
Ann Dennison: I think there's just so many different technologies to help us understand our story, manage our risks and tell our story. I think if I was, gonna pick a few to highlight, I'd say, on the strategic planning side, so the tools that we use to forecast both in the short term and from a long range perspective are some of the tools that we spend a lot of time focused on. That includes the P and L and our cash flow, because it's important to understand, what the landscape looks , um, over the long-terms so we can balance the decisions that we need to make. I think there are some day to day tools, that we use from ERP our payments tools, where we understand, the cash conversion cycle we use financial reporting tools, that help us tell the story, but also sort of packaging things in a way that it's easy to look at.
Bob Stark: Thank you for that answer. And I think that's an amazing insight on the technology side. It's always fascinating, as you say, even if it is, it could be a podcast in itself. I appreciate the short version of that. I think it's great for everyone. Let's talk about data. now you can use technology for data in a variety of ways, and maybe that's part of your answer, but what does being data driven mean to you?
Ann Dennison: Sure. I think data has been a buzzword for a while now and yeah, I do, with every part of my being believe we need to make data-driven decisions all the time. It's really easy to sort of talk qualitatively about things and make decisions and miss some important things, especially, you know, with the finance lens on. And so, I tried, you know, sort of coming into the organization to really find, where I can make a difference. And I, when I think about finance, sitting on a ton of data at the corporate level, there's really a lot of power in that. And so how can we harness that power? To help provide information to the business businesses, I should say to make, you know, the best possible decisions, whether it's organic investment or inorganic investment. But maybe I could share, one of the the things we've been very focused on. And I don't think this is probably a different story for many organizations, which is, many organizations grow through acquisition and you have all this data sitting in different places coming in through different entry points and sometimes, if you can't harness that data, It's very hard to, to optimize your, your ability to cross sell your products, that sort of thing. And so, one of the things that we did over the past few years is develop a way to do that. It's really hard to put everything into one system. We recognize that was nearly impossible. But we've been working really closely with the technology team and we developed a solution to be able to take all of our customer data across all four of our business segments and hundreds and hundreds of products and be able to put that into a language that came together so we could look at one customer across the entire organization. And there's still more to do, but the sales teams are starting to use that and their cross sell process and really starting to leverage that in, in decision-making and it's a journey. But I feel really good about, the steps we've taken so far to really drive some real value for the business.
Bob Stark: Yeah, would be fair to say that you would call that a data program? Or what's the terminology used internally?
Ann Dennison: We've been talking about names and naming ourselves for a while. So I created this this organization within finance called the finance advisory office. And they're responsible for the cross-functional and cross-company initiatives. And so within that, we've got recently named the data management organization, which is handling this. That may change. It started off being named C3 PO customer third-party organization and our company and our, our CEO is a big Star Wars fan. And so we named it that, and everybody calls it that, but we're going to name it something different as it expands and turns into something bigger than just customer data.
Okay.
Bob Stark: Well, as a Star Wars fan, I love that name. And the fact that you actually made it meaningful in terms of breaking out into long form, I'm very impressed. I'm sad to see that may not be the permanent name.
Ann Dennison: Well, everybody will always call it that in some way. We'll try to keep it, but.
Bob Stark: That sounds fun. Do you find that artificial intelligence machine learning, which obviously is meant to harness data, does that play a role yet? Or are you hopeful that AI will be able to help the finance team?
Ann Dennison: Yeah, for sure. Across the organization, we're using artificial intelligence and machine learning in many of the products that we sell. And so we're really excited about and recognize that that's a real enabler for us as we offer our, technology products across the globe and, you know, especially in our anti-fin crime business, where, being able to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive more power to those solutions is really important. So, I think there's the commercial aspect and that's broad and the opportunities are vast. But also, we've used it, I talked about, C3 PO, which is what we call the original customer data initiative and we used machine learning as part of that initiative. Part of it, you can think about it as I won't name names, but, we have one company that we're working with across many different parts of the organization and maybe there's, and I'm not exaggerating, a thousand versions of that company sitting in names the way that it addresses whatever. And so we were able to use, components of AI and machine learning. I'm not sure, if those are just completely interchangeable, but we sort of set some parameters that then, we could turn over to sort of workflow tools and using machine learning. We wouldn't have to go manually in and put all those thousand names together to figure out what that one customer was. And so that's just one example. I think we're using it, as we roll out and digitize and use RPA and workflow tools we're using, that in our optimization initiatives as well on the, corporate side.
Bob Stark: It's great use cases that you mentioned. I think most people are always trying to figure out new ways to harness these sort of extreme levels of automation that are offered by RPA and machine learning, et cetera. So that's great that you have that. Last question in this segment. In terms of automation, because you've used that word a couple of times. What is automation for you? Like, is it an enabler? A means to an end? Or is it an objective in itself?
Ann Dennison: I think sometimes people think that technology is a solution to your problem. And so when you ask the question in the way that you did using the word automation if I step back, I think of automation as the combination of, good processes that align with good, powerful technology. Um, and so I've learned the hard way a couple of times around technology not being in and of itself the solution, and sometimes spending more time on how you do things as an organization will be more powerful. And so I'm lucky enough to have learned, those types of things on smaller implementations, where we had some flexibility to make some changes and make it right and not learning it on, you know, big implementations that could have been career ending. So, but automation, it can take a variety of forms, but I see it as the combination of those two things, tech and process together.
Bob Stark: Yeah, that's a great marriage between those. If you think of it that way, you're going to actually see some great productivity improvements and free up time to do those value added activities.
Ann Dennison: That's exactly That's exactly how we think about it. I talked about that finance advisory office earlier, we funded that office through efficiencies that we were finding. And so as we found efficiencies, we would move head count, into that office and really what we're seeing is a shift in the talent pool and also what our people are doing. So away from processing into thinking about how to build scale and efficiency and how to use the data in the most powerful way. So it's pretty cool.
Bob Stark: Yeah, it is very cool. And it's actually, as I go into the next section, Report from the Future, as we call it, this probably will be the easiest section because everything you've talked about so far has been very, I don't want to say next generation, but certainly forward-looking is the way I describe it. So Report from the Future. This may be, it may be an easy question. It may be one that you actually have a lot of thoughts on. Obviously the role of the CFO has changed. I mean, CFO's a strategic business partner to the organization as you've opined on several times already in this conversation. What do you think the future for CFOs looks like?
Ann Dennison: Yeah, I think the sort of evolution of the CFO from just like the numbers person to a strategic advisor has been an important one and has been very impactful to companies. as they think about optimizing how they spend their capital and the pairing of those two things is really powerful. I mean, I, I'm a new CFO, but coming in as I think about what I need to do is really, to continue to innovate and we've made great things happen, but those might not be the solutions of tomorrow. So we need to think about, what's happening in the world around us, both within our business and to the extent you're in a regulated business, so what's happening in regulations. And I need to think about, how to move along with that and best support that journey. And so I kind of think, the CFO needs to, continue to be a strategic advisor, but really be, open to possibility and really forward thinking on, how to drive success.
Bob Stark: Yeah, I like that term forward-thinking. I think it describes everything that you're doing at NASDAQ. So maybe my next question is a relatively simple one. For the next set of CFOs, for those that feel like that's the next step in their career journey. And they're trying to organize their work experience to be ready for that kind of role, what do you suggest for them? What are certain building blocks that you think are absolutely necessary in order to be a successful CFO?
Ann Dennison: So, yeah, if I reflect back on, on my journey and the last five years at NASDAQ and why I was selected I think, a few really important things stand out. One is, understanding your business. Obviously when you get to the point where you're you know, could be considered for the role or you're thinking about taking that path, you've probably got the technical stuff underneath you. But when, when selecting a CFO, I imagine, every company wants to find one that's going to help drive the strategic direction of the business. And that has to be, in my view done from a place of knowledge and a place of collaboration. So I would suggest there's probably, 10 things that should be on the list, but one, having a deep understanding of the businesses, that you're working with and on, and then building those relationships, with the leaders in those businesses so that, it kind of creates an easy path for you and you can be really powerful when you step into the seat.
Bob Stark: That's a wonderful answer. And I think people can.. they will be well-served to follow that advice. Last question in this section. So fast forward 12 months, when we have you on in part two of our podcast conversation. What do you think might have been the biggest topic that we would discuss 12 months from now?
Ann Dennison: Biggest topic. So I can say what I hope we're not talking about COVID-19 anymore or pandemic. So hopefully that will be off the table. What is everybody talking about these days? In my view, two things. One is ESG and two is the digital asset space. And I think 12 months from now, we'll be talking about those two things. We'll be talking about, from a CFO and a technology perspective, the commercial opportunities in the digital asset space and how cryptocurrency or maybe less so on the cryptocurrency side, maybe more about the distributed ledgers and how that sort of changing the world of finance. I think we'll be talking about that and we'll definitely be talking about ESG.
Bob Stark: I like those predictions. And I hope that in 12 months I look forward to that because they're fun conversations. All right. Now our final section is what we call
quick hits. So number one, you touched on this a moment ago, digital currencies. What do you think is the future of digital currencies for treasury and finance.
Ann Dennison: I'm not sure on the digital currency side. So I think I saw this morning, JP Morgan released some sort of survey that they did to investors where, I think roughly half and half say cryptocurrencies are kind of, here to stay and the other are not, big believers. So, I don't have a wallet. I kind of wish I did. When I thought about doing it, about at least 10 years ago, I had some thoughts of buying Bitcoin and I, I didn't pull the trigger. So, that's a big disappointment. So if you stepped back now and you, and you look at, cryptocurrencies and what they're being used for, institutionally people aren't using them to transact. but you're starting to see big moves, right? You're starting to see the MasterCards, the PayPal's of the year coming out with the ability to use cryptocurrency. So, this is a really long answer to a short question, but, I think they're here to stay. It'll be really fun to watch the evolution of how they're used.
Bob Stark: Yeah, it'll be very interesting. One factor, I think just to add to your points, because I very much agree with you. I mean, I have a digital wallet. I have some cryptocurrencies and yet my views are exactly the same as yours. Is that there's still a lot that needs to happen for mainstream use of cryptocurrencies. And I think the burning question is will centrally backed like your CVDCs, will they actually fill that void or will privately issued, the Bitcoins, maybe not that one per se, but the Ethereums or other ones like that, will they actually develop the infrastructure? The hedging market, have a bit more liquidity there? Have some sort of utility for the currency so it's more transactable, actually have a network that's more scalable? There's a lot of things that we would say see in the fiat currency markets that we don't see in the digital currency markets.
Ann Dennison: 100% agree be an exciting ride.
Bob Stark: It'll be interesting. Yeah. Next one, there's been some talk. Most of it playful. Some of it's serious, around this concept of a Chief Liquidity Officer. Do you think there is ever going to be a Chief Liquidity Officer?
Ann Dennison: You know, it's funny. I've seen a couple articles on that. So I don't have a lot of knowledge and let me just preface it with that. I think, if I was just sort of step back, I'd say it depends on the type of company. Certain companies have more complex liquidity issues to manage through and other companies just have a more simple structure. And so I don't know if it's going to be widespread, but I think probably if you looked into some of those complex companies now, particularly the big banks, multiple people that are responsible for liquidity and maintaining liquidity, and maybe they don't have the specific title. but they're probably doing the job.
Bob Stark: Yeah. I agree with you. Whatever the title may be, I haven't seen this one yet, but there's possibilities. The job is critical.
Ann Dennison: Agreed.
Bob Stark: Good point. We talked briefly about artificial intelligence. Do you think artificial intelligence will replace people and maybe I'll even preface that, or maybe that more specific. Will artificial intelligence replace people in finance?
Ann Dennison: In finance? Well, one thing that you know, is a fantasy of mine, I should say. and this is not related to finance. I don't have a personal home assistant, but I heard like that's a artificial intelligence journey along the way. So I hope one day they replaced my non-existent personal assistant and I actually have one that'd be really cool at home. So, I can pick up the slack of things I'm not doing. On the finance side, look, I think that the finance role is already changing. And I chuckle when I have to sort of sign off on access to systems because I have robot number one, robot number two, that are part of my employee pool, non-existent employees, but they didn't replace people. They just changed the nature of the job. I mean, I think over time, you know the power of finance will increase. And the nature of people's jobs will change and we'll have robots doing a lot of things that, were process-oriented and were done manually before. I don't close my eyes and see the future where there's, there's no people. Maybe there's less people. But I think it's a little bit farther down the road.
Bob Stark: Yeah. The fact that it changes the role and makes you more value-added and helps you get to those projects that maybe you never had time to get to because you were doing things as opposed to analyzing data.
Ann Dennison: Exactly. And the world is always changing. So we're always going to need, good finance people to just get that AI and machine learning set up to do the new things.
Bob Stark: No, that's a great answer. A lot of people will like that you said that answer.
All right. Last question. Within your industry, do you find CFOs are peers or competitors?
Ann Dennison: Oh, definitely peers. I want to meet as many CFOs as I can and talk to them about what they're experiencing. I've been, sort of drinking out of the fire hose, kind of new in the role, and haven't had a chance to do a lot of networking. but to the extent I have, I met a couple of really great CFOs, from different industries and, even in just a half hour conversation you just take away so much. And so definitely peers unless we're like, competing in a race or in a video game or something. I'm just kidding. I don't do either of those things.
Bob Stark: It's a whole different set of rules. I like that. That's fantastic. Thank you. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time today, and this is wonderful conversation. I feel like there's a part two and a part three to come, but for today, thank you so much.
Ann Dennison: Thanks, Bob. It was great, thanks for inviting me. Feel honored and loved having the chat.
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