In this week’s show, I am joined by Christopher Corner, the former Deputy Group Treasurer at Thomas Cook.

Thomas Cook Group plc was a British global travel group, formed in June 2007 by the merger of Thomas Cook AG (itself the successor to Thomas Cook & Son) and MyTravel Group. The group operated in two separate segments: a tour operator and an airline. It also operated travel agencies in Europe. Thomas Cook was listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (The Thomas Cook Group).

On 23rd September 2019, the Thomas Cook Group and all UK entities went into compulsory liquidation and ceased trading. Approximately 21,000 worldwide employees were left without jobs (including 9,000 UK staff) and 600,000 customers (150,000 from the UK) were left abroad, triggering the UK's largest peacetime repatriation.

After the collapse, segments of the company were purchased by others, including the travel stores in the UK, Thomas Cook Scandinavia, and the Thomas Cook brand.

Christopher started his career as a graduate trainee at Lloyds in corporate finance before moving into a treasury role at Johnson Matthey plc, taking an assistant treasurer role at GE Insurance Solutions before being offered the Group Treasurer role at The Capita Group. He was also responsible for establishing full treasury functionality for BBC Worldwide, before taking on the Deputy Treasurer role centralising all treasury across the BBC.

I’m delighted to have Christopher on the Treasury Career Corner podcast where we talk about how he has weathered big treasury challenges in the companies he has worked for and how that has shaped his career.

On the podcast we discussed…

• Christopher’s early interest in treasury
• How his career has been shaped by restructuring, acquisitions and insolvency
• Managing debt at Thomas Cook and dealing with the cumulative impact of terrorism, strikes, the 2018 heatwave and Brexit
• Christopher’s reflection on managing liquidity and dealing with nervous stakeholders in the last 12 months
• The importance of studying to help you move between roles
• The role of treasurers as risk managers for the business

Would you like to get in touch with Christopher? If so, you can connect with him via LinkedIn.

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