Insights from the other side of the fence: how banks really operate

In this episode, Thomas Gavaghan sits down with Russell Haley, a finance veteran who’s worked from paper ledgers to AI-era automation and led treasury across Europe and Asia at firms like Lehman, Cantor Fitzgerald, and BGC Group.

Russell shares how a non-traditional path—starting at 18 without a university degree—became an apprenticeship-driven career, and why structured programs with recognized credentials unlock talent. He offers hard-won lessons from corporate failures and liquidity crises: meet margin calls first, argue later; don’t rely on lines being honored in stress; build liquidity buffers that actually work.

Russell also demystifies the “other side of the fence,” explaining how regulatory capital, liquidity rules, and operational complexity shape bank pricing and behavior. On reporting, he shows how to reconcile management views to statutory accounts and champions a “trust but verify” mindset in an automated, AI-enabled world—designing systems from first principles and challenging numbers that don’t make logical sense.

Russell Haley, CFO & Treasurer

Russell Haley has nearly 40 years working in Front, Middle and Back-Office Functions across the Broker/Dealer, Investment Bank and Investment Mgmt/Hedge Fund sectors. He left the Cantor/BGC Group in May '25 after 13 years, where he was Treasurer for both companies and CFO for Cantor in the EMEA region. He will shortly start a new CFO role in December. He is an Associate of Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT).