White House Makes Cyber Defense Plea

In an apparent plea to businesses to overcome any distrust they may have of government surveillance practices, a White House official has urged the private sector to work in “lock-step” with the government to strengthen cyber defenses.Lisa Monaco, the White House’s top aide for counterterrorism a...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 11, 2015

#CFOMustRead: Selling Sales

Join our CFO readers who participate in #CFOMustRead by sending us their most interesting reads of the week from around the web. Send us the link as well as a brief take on why you think other CFOs will find the story valuable. We publish the best submissions every Wednesday at noon.You can send ...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 11, 2015

Explore the Trendline➔

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

Industrial Robots ‘Nearing Point of Takeoff’

Investment in industrial robots will increase to about 10% a year over the next decade, bringing down manufacturing labor costs and boosting productivity, a new report predicts.Robots have been used in manufacturing for decades but Boston Consulting Group notes in the report that they currently p...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 10, 2015

Regulation Still Top-of-Mind Risk

Regulatory changes and heightened regulatory scrutiny continue to be the number one risk on the minds of company executives and directors in 2015, followed by economic conditions and cyber threats, according to a new survey.Regulatory risks topped the annual risk rankings of global consulting fir...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 10, 2015

SEC Rule Targets Officers That Hedge Company Shares

Corporations small and large will have to explicitly disclose whether they allow board directors, officers, or other employees to hedge their holdings of company stock under a regulatory proposal approved Monday.The proposal requires a company to reveal whether these shareholders are permitted “t...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 9, 2015

Shareholder Value and CSR: Friends or Foes?

There is little question that corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability are of growing interest to businesses and investors. In 2011, just under 20% of S&P 500 companies published a sustainability or CSR report. By 2013, just two years later, that number had grown to 72%.Howeve...

By Richard T. Bliss • Feb. 9, 2015

Outlook 2015

This story originally appeared in the January 2015 digital edition of CFO magazine.At CFO we know how hard it is to make predictions, especially about the future. That’s why we enlisted the help of five experts in preparing our annual CFO Outlook feature.Leading off in The Economy, Patrick O’Keef...

By Edward Teach • Feb. 9, 2015

Jobs, Wages Moved Higher in January, Government Says

January was a strong month for both job gains and wage increases, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.Employers last month added 257,000 jobs in retail trade, construction, health care, financial activities and manufacturing, the bureau said Friday. After incorporating revisions for ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Feb. 6, 2015

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Feb. 6

Vasant Prabhu Just eight months into his job as CFO of NBCUniversal, Vasant Prabhu is hopping to Visa, effective Feb. 9. He’ll take over the top finance spot at the card-payment giant from Byron Pollitt, who is retiring. Prabhu, who is among the many CFOs to hold an engineering degree, had been f...

By Joan Urdang • Feb. 6, 2015

White House Urges Scrutiny of Big Data Practices

The White House has urged ongoing scrutiny of commercial uses of “big data,” citing concerns that, among other things, companies will use the information they collect to more effectively charge different prices to different customers.The White House Council of Economic Advisers reviewed what is k...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 6, 2015

How to Get On a Public Company Board

Based on conversations I’ve had over the past several years, there are a lot of CFOs who want to serve on public company boards. Many see it as part of their long-term, post-employment career plan. After doing their bit for king and country, they will retire to a life of golf, grandkids and fully...

By John Touey • Feb. 5, 2015

FCC Chair Takes Bold Step Toward ‘Net Neutrality’

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has proposed reclassifying the Internet as a utility, a dramatic regulatory move that he said would ensure “net neutrality.”In an op-ed posted Wednesday on Wired.com, Wheeler said that after more than a decade of debate, “the time to set...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 4, 2015

#CFOMustRead: Investor Relations Lessons

Straight from CFOs’ mouths. That’s what we like about this week’s #CFOMustRead story from the web. The story is a paper from Deloitte, “CFO Insights: Effective IR: Lessons from the trenches.”The paper is essentially paragraph-long sound bites from 11 CFOs and investor relations executives, so it’...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 4, 2015

S&P Settles Suits Over MBS Ratings

Standard & Poor’s has agreed to pay about $1.38 billion to settle allegations that it contributed to the 2007-08 financial crisis by issuing inflated ratings for mortgage-backed securities in order to win more business.The settlement resolves a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against S&...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 4, 2015

Work Flex Programs Boost Employee Morale

U.S. companies are seeing benefits from workplace flexibility programs, but potential employee abuse remains a concern for many of them, a new survey of HR and other professionals has found.Those who responded to the poll by WorkplaceTrends.com, a research and advisory firm, cited employee satisf...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 3, 2015

Outsourcing Market Drivers for 2015

Two-thousand fifteen marks the “rise of the outcome-based solution” and other emerging trends, according to business transformation and outsourcing advisory firm Pace Harmon.“Today’s leading organizations must ensure that all business transformation and outsourcing programs are tangibly working t...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Feb. 3, 2015

Private Companies: We’re Hiring, Selectively

Employers are hiring this year, but selectively, since it’s still tough to find quality workers, according to PwC U.S.’s latest Private Company Trendsetter Barometer released Tuesday.Executives at more than 200 closely held companies surveyed by PwC expect their full-time equivalent employees to ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Feb. 3, 2015

Apple: iThrone

Never before has so much money been made by a single firm in such a short period of time. On January 27, Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, announced that it had made $18 billion in its latest fiscal quarter, which ran almost to the end of December 2014. That beats the previous record of $15.9 billion ...

By Economist Staff • Feb. 3, 2015

The CFO’s View of Reporting: More, More and More

Amid an increasingly complex financial reporting environment, most CFOs of large companies expect their reports will expand beyond compliance requirements to include areas such as forecasting, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility, according to a new survey.The more strategic and fo...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 3, 2015

Consumer Spending Hits Speed Bump

Consumer spending fell in December as car sales slowed, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.Personal consumption expenditures decreased $40 billion, or 0.3%, the agency said Monday. This is after an increase of $58.8 billion, or 0.5%, in November, based on r...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Feb. 2, 2015

Dish Network Accused of End-Run Around SMB Rules

An FCC Commissioner says the $3 billion in taxpayer-funded discounts that Dish Network received for a spectrum auction “makes a mockery” of the FCC’s designed entity (DE) program for small businesses.In a statement released Monday, Commissioner Ajit Pai objected to Friday’s disclosure by the Fede...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Feb. 2, 2015

On the Road Again

Lower oil prices may not only be a boon for consumer spending, but also for business travel, which is expected to reach record levels for U.S. firms, according to the Global Business Travel Association.Corporate travel expenditures, once totaled, are expected to reach a record $292.2 billion in 2...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Jan. 30, 2015

Consumer Spending Robust, But GDP Disappoints

U.S. consumer spending grew in the fourth quarter of 2014 at the fastest rate in almost nine years but gross domestic product growth slowed to 2.6% amid a falloff in business investment, government outlays, and export growth, the Commerce Department reported Friday.Economists surveyed by The Wall...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 30, 2015

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Jan. 30

Peter Bensen Peter Bensen, head of finance at McDonald’s, has been promoted to chief administrative officer, a newly created position. Corporate controller Kevin Ozan will replace him as finance chief, effective March 1.Avon Products has appointed James Scully to lead the finance function, effect...

By Joan Urdang • Jan. 30, 2015

A Pathetic Way to Communicate

Most conference calls are too boring, plagued with technology problems, and lacking in physical context to hold anyone’s full attention. But with the right adjustments, organizations can make such calls more relevant and productive, Rob Bellmar, Intercall’s executive vice president of conferencin...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Jan. 29, 2015