How an Auditor-Turned-Treasurer Creates Value From the Ground Up

# People and Talent

# Risk Management

# Cash and Working Capital

Lam Research treasurer Adam King discusses the company’s global expansion, AI and the lessons from audit that continue to shape his approach to treasury.

Lam Research treasurer Adam King discusses the company’s global expansion, AI and the lessons from audit that continue to shape his approach to treasury. Treasury leaders often talk about becoming a strategic partner to the business. Adam King, treasurer at Lam Research, believes the path there is more straightforward than many may realize: focus first on operations, efficiency and controls.

In the latest episode of the Strategic Finance Lab podcast, available now on Apple and Spotify, Mr. King explains how his experience in controllership and internal audit shaped that philosophy and why day-to-day excellence builds the credibility needed to influence broader business decisions.

"If we can build efficiencies internally, the team has more time to go off, sit down with business partners and get ahead of things,” he says in the podcast. “By doing that and getting in front of things, it's going to alleviate a ton of work for our team.”

Adam King, Lam Research

Seeing around the corners. In a conversation with NeuGroup’s Justin Jones, Mr. King explores how Lam's treasury team supports the company's global expansion by getting involved early in new projects, helping business partners anticipate banking, KYC, tax and cash management requirements before they become bottlenecks. In one example, Mr. King shares how that rapid growth created an unexpected credit-limit challenge—and how his team got ahead of it.

The episode also examines how Lam is approaching AI in treasury, from developing specialized agents for insurance and letters of credit to encouraging treasury professionals and systems experts to collaborate in redesigning long-standing processes.

Throughout the discussion, Mr. King returns to a simple idea: treasury earns a strategic seat at the table not by pursuing strategy for its own sake, but by consistently helping the business execute more effectively.