Excel Tip: Bars, Scales, and Sets

User Problem: My manager’s eyes glaze over when he sees a table of numbers. Is there anything I can do to help him spot trends in the data?Solution: Use one of the three data visualization tools on the Conditional Formatting menu: data bars, color scales, and icon sets. Adding a data bar to a ran...

By Bill Jelen • July 27, 2015

Activist Forces Strategic Overhaul at Qualcomm

Struggling wireless chip maker Qualcomm on Tuesday said it would cut roughly 15% of its workforce, about 4,700 employees, as part of “a strategic realignment plan designed to improve execution, enhance financial performance, and drive profitable growth.”Qualcomm will trim $1.4 billion from its $7...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 23, 2015

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Top 5 stories from CFO.com

From CPA licensure changes to undergoing a digital transformation, these are the most popular stories CFOs are reading. 

By CFO.com staff

Intuit Manages a Big Accounting Change

Intuit undertook major product changes in 2014, resulting in an accounting shift to “ratable” revenue recognition for the company’s desktop products.Looking back, it was a bold move, and that’s how we framed it: To further accelerate Intuit’s shift to cloud-based services, we’d make changes to ou...

By Neil Williams • July 23, 2015

Bankruptcy Bill Would Replace Bank Bailouts

U.S. Senator John Cornyn, Texas Republican, on Tuesday re-introduced the Taxpayer Protection and Responsible Resolution Act to replace taxpayer-funded bailouts for large financial institutions. The bill provides for a new bankruptcy chapter just for banks, replacing some of the provisions for fai...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 23, 2015

Homes Sales and Prices Surge In June

Existing home sales increased in June to their highest pace in more than eight years, while the cumulative effect of rising demand and limited supply helped push the national median sales price to an all-time high, according to the National Association of Realtors.Existing home sales in June rose...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 22, 2015

Facebook Loses Challenge to Search Warrants

A New York appeals court has rebuffed Facebook in a battle over digital privacy, ruling that the social network cannot challenge search warrants seeking information about hundreds of its users.The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in 2013 issued 381 substantially identical digital search warra...

By Matthew Heller • July 22, 2015

Solar Firm Turns on a Dime After Investment Infusion

If you’re a manufacturer, you’d probably agree that the potential specter of new competitors that can build products like yours, and sell them at a much lower price than you can, is a risk factor worthy of nightmares.For Conergy, the Germany-based global solar energy company, it was all too real ...

By David McCann • July 21, 2015

Toshiba Inflated Profits With Bosses’ Knowledge

An internal investigation into Japan’s biggest corporate scandal in years has concluded that Toshiba inflated profits by 151.8 billion yen ($1.22 billion) over several years and that top management including CEO Hisao Tanaka knew about it.The profit overstatements are roughly triple Toshiba’s est...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 20, 2015

SEC Charges Attorney With Insider Trading Tied to Merger

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Pennsylvania attorney Herbert K. Sudfeld with insider trading ahead of the 2011 deal announcement between Harleysville Group and Nationwide Mutual Insurance.Sudfeld at that time was real estate partner at a law firm that advised Harleysville on t...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 20, 2015

GE’s Core Industrial Profits Up

After subtracting for costs to exit many of its financial services businesses, General Electric’s core industrial profits rose for the second quarter, leading the Fairfield, Conn. company to raise its outlook for 2015.Overall GE lost $1.36 billion, or 13 cents per share, due mainly to charges rel...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 17, 2015

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending July 17

Domino’s Pizza has promoted treasurer Jeffrey Lawrence to the top finance spot. He takes over for Michael Lawton, who is retiring. Lawrence joined the company in 2000.Jeffrey Lawrence Off-road-vehicle designer and manufacturer Polaris Industries has named Michael Speetzen CFO and executive vice p...

By Joan Urdang • July 17, 2015

Treasury Launches Study of Peer-to-Peer Lending

The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday it had opened a study of online marketplace lending, saying it will seek the public’s help in understanding how the fast-growing industry operates.In less than a decade, online lending has grown to an estimated $12 billion in new loan originations i...

By Matthew Heller • July 16, 2015

EU Investigating Qualcomm for Violating Antitrust Rules

The European Commission on Thursday opened two antitrust investigations into “possible abusive behavior” by U.S. chip maker Qualcomm — specifically, whether Qualcomm breached European Union antitrust rules that prohibit the abuse of a dominant market position. Qualcomm is accused of offering fina...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 16, 2015

Use ‘Test and Learn’ to Avoid Losing a Big Business Bet

From HBO’s successful launch of its new stand-alone streaming service to Microsoft’s $7.6 billion write-off of its Nokia acquisition, we’ve seen some “all in” bets — big business decisions that either provide huge payoffs or significantly handicap or even destroy companies — win or lose so far in...

By Rafi Musher • July 16, 2015

Tight Labor, Lax Security

Finance executives in the United States, Asia, and Europe are optimistic about their regional economies, but not so their counterparts in Latin America, according to the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook survey for the second quarter of 2015. The survey also reveals potential r...

By David W. Owens • July 16, 2015

Dodd-Frank’s Next Act: Executive Pay

Nearly five years after the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was signed into law, the Securities and Exchange Commission has entered the final stretch of the rulemaking required of it under the act. The agency is drafting new disclosure provisions regarding execut...

By Ed Zwirn • July 15, 2015

June Retail Sales Drop Hints at Slowdown

Retail sales slipped 0.3% last month, an unexpected drop that is raising concerns the economy is slowing again after rebounding from a sluggish first quarter.The June numbers, reported Tuesday by the U.S. Commerce Department, were the weakest since February. The department also revised May’s reta...

By Matthew Heller • July 14, 2015

Clinton Calls For a Tax Code That Spurs Profit-Sharing

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Monday called for changing the tax code to incentivize businesses to share their profits with employees, as part of her comprehensive economic plan, according to The Hill.“Hard-working Americans deserve to benefit from the record corporate earn...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 14, 2015

How to Respond to a Data Breach

It’s been a bad year (or several) for information security. Incidents seem to be getting bigger and more frequent.According to the 2015 Verizon Data Breach Investigations report (which should be required reading for all business executives) there were more than 7 million vulnerability exploits in...

By John Parkinson • July 14, 2015

CFOs Downbeat on Their Companies’ Prospects: Deloitte

Chief financial officers are more upbeat about the outlook for the North American economy than about their own companies’ prospects, according to Deloitte’s second-quarter CFO Signals survey.More than half (59%) of the 101 CFOs from large North American companies responding to the survey describe...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 13, 2015

Greece, Creditors Reach Conditional Deal

After a 17-hour marathon meeting of euro zone leaders, Greece and its international creditors struck a conditional deal for the country to receive a possible 86 billion euros ($95 billion) over three years if the Greek Parliament agrees and abides by new reforms.“Given the need to rebuild trust w...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 13, 2015

Fed Breaches Hacked Info of Millions

The U.S. federal government’s Office of Personnel Management said that the two breaches of its systems last year actually impacted more people than the office had initially calculated. In addition, hackers obtained access to the personal information of not only federal employees, but also their f...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 13, 2015

Oil Prices to Fall Through 2016 Until Supply Rebalances

Oil prices will continue to fall through 2016, as global demand slows and output surges from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which are aggressively defending their market share.OPEC crude supply rose to 31.7 million barrels a day in June, a three-year high, led by record high o...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 10, 2015

PBGC Files Liens Against Times Publishing

The Times Publishing Co. was slapped with liens by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. for $30.5 million in missed pension fund contributions and related interest and penalties, according to a Pensions & Investments story on Tuesday.The defined benefit plan had $105.4 million in assets as of D...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • July 9, 2015

CFOs Outpace CEOs in Pay Gains — Sort Of

In one sense, CFOs did better than their bosses on the pay front in 2014, enjoying a 5.2% median hike in “actual total direct compensation” compared with a 3.2% gain for CEOs, according to Compensation Advisory Partners.In the consulting firm’s annual pay evaluation, it was the fourth year in the...

By David McCann • July 9, 2015