Sen. Warren’s Attack on Mary Jo White ‘Unfair,’ Former SEC Inspector General Says

The frontal attack by Sen. Elizabeth Warren last week on Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White’s two-year tenure was “unfair,” former SEC inspector general H. David Kotz told CFO this morning.Sen. Elizabeth Warren Responding to Warren’s June 2 letter to White, in which the Massac...

By David Katz • June 8, 2015

Former Facebook CFO Launches Lyra Health

Facebook’s former chief financial officer David Ebersman Thursday announced the launch of Lyra Health, which will aim to match people suffering mental health issues with the right health professionals and treatments, and will use analytics to measure outcomes “to ensure that people get the best c...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 4, 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

IMF Advises Fed Not To Raise Rates Until 2016

The International Monetary Fund on Thursday again cut its U.S. growth forecast, and recommended that the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee delay raising interest rates until the first half of 2016.The contraction in first-quarter gross domestic product “will unavoidably pull down 2015 growt...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 4, 2015

Groupon CFO Jason Child Moving to Jawbone

Groupon CFO Jason Child is leaving the online discounts company to take over as finance chief at fitness-tracker maker Jawbone.During his four years at Groupon, TechCrunch reports, Child led the company through “all kinds of financial and executive changes, including its rollercoaster IPO and sub...

By Matthew Heller • June 4, 2015

Excel Tip: Double Trouble

User Question: How do I remove duplicates from a dataset?Solution: For many tasks in Excel, you need to remove duplicates from a dataset. Suppose you want to find the unique list of customers in this range (Figure 1, below).CAUTION: Remove Duplicates is a destructive function. It is best to make ...

By Bill Jelen • June 4, 2015

Obamacare’s Worst Idea: Support for Wellness Programs

No Affordable Care Act (ACA) provision enjoys more bipartisan support than the one that encourages employers to pay or fine employees based on their health and health behaviors. And both the House and the Senate are likely to pass the recently introduced “Preserve Employee Wellness Act” — and the...

By Al Lewis • June 3, 2015

Are Wellness Programs Cost Effective?

You know there’s a hot debate around an issue when people on both sides of the matter insist that there’s really no debate at all.Such is the case with corporate wellness programs, in general, and whether they can be expected to deliver a positive financial outcome for the company, in particular....

By David McCann • June 3, 2015

Wellness Programs Work if Properly Designed

Employee “wellness” (or well-being) has become quite the buzzword in workplaces. Smoking cessation courses, company fitbit competitions, yoga rooms — even “mindfulness” programs, which promote activities such as meditation, are being implemented in corporate settings.Michael Booth While you can’t...

By Michael Booth • June 3, 2015

Muslim Job Seeker Wins Supreme Court Bias Case

Freedom of religion trumped an employer’s dress code as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Abercrombie & Fitch discriminated against a Muslim job applicant by refusing to hire her because she wore a head scarf.The court’s decision in favor of Samantha Elauf, who wore the scarf to a job intervi...

By Matthew Heller • June 2, 2015

Pulling the Plug on Voicemail

JPMorgan Chase is eliminating landline voicemail for some of its employees to cut expenses and boost the bottom line, according to Wall Street Journal article.Gordon Smith, chief executive of J.P. Morgan’s consumer and community banking unit, reportedly said at a financial conference that the $10...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 2, 2015

Sen. Elizabeth Warren Blasts SEC Chair’s Tenure

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, on Tuesday sent a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, blasting her leadership at the SEC for the past two years as “extremely disappointing.” Warren said the commission has failed to “consistently and aggressively enforc...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 2, 2015

Reinsurance: Compacts of God

Insurance only works if reinsurance works, those in the business say. An insurer that would face crippling losses if, say, a hurricane struck an island where it had covered lots of property against extreme weather, would typically insure itself against such an event with a reinsurer. But the $425...

By Economist Staff • June 1, 2015

Snapchat Raises $537M in Latest Funding Round

As it prepares for a possible initial public offering, the social media app Snapchat disclosed Friday it has snapped up $537 million in new venture capital funding since February.According to a regulatory filing, the funding round has a target of $650 million. Snapchat has raised around $1.2 bill...

By Matthew Heller • May 29, 2015

Fed Official Questions Post-Crisis Monetary Policy

A top U.S. Federal Reserve official has questioned whether the monetary policy that the Fed has used since the 2007-09 financial crisis to stimulate the economy has been effective.The Fed’s monetary tools have included forward guidance and the bond-buying program known as “quantitative easing.” M...

By Matthew Heller • May 29, 2015

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending May 29

NBCUniversal has promoted Anand Kini to lead the finance function. Kini, formerly executive vice president of strategy and business insights, has been interim CFO since February, following the resignation of Vasant Prabhu, who left the company after nine months to become finance chief at Visa.Jam...

By Joan Urdang • May 29, 2015

Ex-Compliance Chief Accused of Duping Investors

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday it had charged the former director of compliance at a Long Island, N.Y., brokerage firm with taking part in a phony stock offering scheme that defrauded investors of hundreds of thousands of dollars.According to the SEC, William Quigley, f...

By Matthew Heller • May 28, 2015

Executives Too Busy to Take Vacations

Work is getting in the way of much-needed vacations, according to the latest executive survey by recruitment and HR consulting firm Korn Ferry.Two-thirds (67%) of the more than 400 U.S. executives surveyed online earlier this month said they had postponed or canceled vacation plans in the past ye...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 28, 2015

Excel Tip: Texting, Kind Of

User Question: Excel is great with numbers, but how is it for dealing with text?Excel has some tricks for dealing with text. Suppose you have typed some text at the bottom of a worksheet and you want to wrap the text to fit a rectangular range from columns B through I (Figure 1).Select a rectangu...

By Bill Jelen • May 27, 2015

CFOs Get Into the Spirit of Tweeting

So far, the best-known piece of information about CFOs’ use of social media may be the story about one of them tweeting a hint about forthcoming earnings and winding up getting fired for it.Even disregarding the fact that the finance chief violated the letter of SEC regulations, it was an unusual...

By David McCann • May 27, 2015

EMC Expands Into Cloud With $1.2B Deal

Facing slowing sales growth in its data storage equipment business, EMC has agreed to acquire cloud software and services provider Virtustream for about $1.2 billion.EMC CEO Jim Tucci said Virtustream would complement the storage equipment business as well as cloud services and software already o...

By Matthew Heller • May 26, 2015

Signs of a Second-Quarter Rebound?

A spate of economic reports show encouraging signs of growth.Nondefense new orders for capital goods, excluding aircraft, rose 0.3% in April, to $81.2 billion, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday, the second month of increases after the agency revised March’s rise to 1.5% from 0.6%.Tuesday’s ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 26, 2015

Energy Subsidies: Waste Not, Harm Not

Blunders in economic policymaking abound, but among the worst are energy subsidies. They stoke waste, squeeze other spending, enrich middlemen, and help the comfortably-off more than the poor, who use little energy.Include the cost of pollution and the bill is even higher. A new IMF working paper...

By Economist Staff • May 26, 2015

Expedia Sells China Stakes

Expedia Friday said that it had sold its stake in eLong to several Chinese firms, with industry observers noting that the money-losing venture for Expedia could actually be a boon to some of the buyers.The Bellevue, Wash.-based online travel company said that it had sold its 62.4% majority stake ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 22, 2015

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending May 22

Dallas Clement Dallas Clement has been promoted to finance chief at Cox Enterprises, effective July 1. He takes over for Doug Franklin, who will retire on Aug. 1 after 38 years at the media company. Clement has been CFO of business unit Cox Automotive.John Stephens has resigned from the top finan...

By Joan Urdang • May 22, 2015

Bonuses ‘Bountiful’ for Treasurers and Others Last Year

Salaries for treasury and finance professionals rose last year and bonuses were “bountiful,” according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ 2015 Compensation Survey released Wednesday.The survey of more than 3,300 treasury and finance professionals found that respondents received a 4.1...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 21, 2015