Risks to Outlook ‘Tilted to the Downside’: World Bank

The World Bank trimmed its global economic growth forecast to 3% in 2015 and 3.3% in 2016, down from earlier projections of 3.4% and 3.5%, respectively.While the global economy should continue to expand over the next several years, several “divergent trends” could limit growth, according to the W...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Jan. 14, 2015

What Makes for an Exceptional Company?

Just how confident are you that your company is performing well financially? Unfortunately, you may be experiencing delusions of grandeur.A massive statistical analysis of financial results for every publicly held company in the United States, released on Tuesday by Deloitte, arrives at some surp...

By David McCann • Jan. 14, 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

Family Firms Face ‘Sticky Baton’ Syndrome

Many family-owned business leaders stay long past their prime and even refuse to plan for a successor—often making the transition much more difficult for the next generation, according to the U.S. family business survey released Tuesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.PwC surveyed 154 owners, leade...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Jan. 14, 2015

Insecurity in Fashion

There was a lot of attention on various kinds of wearable technology at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.Smart watches, fitness and exercise monitors, phone apps, cameras and head-mounted information displays were all being touted as an adjunct to the “connected human.” Ti...

By John Parkinson • Jan. 14, 2015

Small-Business Owners Highly Confident

A measure of small business confidence rose last month to its highest level since October 2006, sending a “strong signal” that U.S. small businesses could finally be shaking off the Great Recession, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.The federation’s Small Business Optim...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 14, 2015

Think You Pay Employees Well? They Don’t

It’s not always what employers say to an employee about pay, it’s how they talk about it that can make the difference in performance, according to the 2014 CEB employee survey, posted Tuesday.According to the survey, 77% of employees believe pay decisions are based on poor information, 54% of hig...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Jan. 13, 2015

GOP Returns to Obamacare Warpath in Congress

The new Republican Congressional majority has wasted no time attacking the Affordable Care Act, with the House passing a bill that changes the law’s definition of full-time work from 30 hours to 40 hours a week.The change would mean fewer workers must be offered health insurance by their employer...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 13, 2015

Symantec Acquires Cyber Security Experts From Boeing

Symantec said Monday it had agreed to acquire staff and technology licenses from Boeing’s Narus Inc. unit in a move to increase its presence in the corporate cyber security market.Narus, which Boeing acquired four years ago, specializes in Internet-filtering software for intelligence agencies but...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 12, 2015

Obama Unveils Cyber Privacy Bill

In the wake of several high-profile hacks, President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled privacy legislation that would require U.S. companies to notify consumers within 30 days of discovering a cyber-security breach when sensitive information has been disclosed.The 30-day standard included in the Pe...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 12, 2015

Silicon Valley Economists: Meet the Market Shapers

Mocking economists is easy sport. They try to predict the future yet missed the 2008 crash, and make bizarre assumptions that cannot hold true. Other offences on the checklist include their narrow academic outlook and lack of exposure to the “real world” of business. The onslaught is common, and ...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 12, 2015

Tax Prep Time for Medium-Size Firms Down to 264 Hours

The times it takes for medium-sized companies to do their taxes dropped another four hours last year as electronic filing and payment systems continue to make compliance easier, the World Bank Group and PwC say in a new study of 189 national economies worldwideOn average, a medium-sized company h...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 9, 2015

Terrorism Insurance: a Crisis that Might Have Been

When the Senate voted yesterday to reauthorize the House version of the federal terrorism reinsurance program for another six years, the story of TRIA, as the program is known, became the tale of a crisis that might have been.After the Senate surprisingly failed to reauthorize the Terrorism Risk ...

By David Katz • Jan. 9, 2015

House Approves Disputed Change in Gauging Fiscal Impact of Bills

The House of Representatives has voted to adopt a controversial method of assessing the budgetary impact of legislation that critics say will bias the Congressional Budget Office toward making conservative proposals misleadingly cheap.The CBO has traditionally measured legislation by calculating ...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 9, 2015

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Jan. 9

Jeff Fleeher Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has named Jeff Fleeher worldwide CFO, a newly created post. Previously, he was CFO for strategy content distribution at NBCUniversal.Law firm Goodwin Procter has chosen Michael Barton as its finance chief. Most recently head of finance at managem...

By Joan Urdang • Jan. 9, 2015

Health Premium Growth Slows, Worker Burden Increases

The growth in employer-provided health insurance premiums has slowed significantly since passage of the Affordable Care Act but a new study suggests that trend has not benefited U.S. workers, whose out-of-pocket costs for deductibles and premium contributions are grabbing an increasing share of i...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 8, 2015

Employers Cut Fewest Jobs in 17 Years in 2014

U.S.-based employers last year cut the fewest amount of jobs since 1997, according to a report released Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the global outplacement consulting firm.Job cuts declined for a second consecutive month in December 2014, as U.S.-based employers announced plans ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Jan. 8, 2015

Small Businesses, Franchises Fuel December Hiring

Small businesses have contributed to an uptick in private sector hiring, lifting economists’ hopes for a return to “full employment” by 2016.U.S. private sector small business employment increased by 106,000 jobs from November to December, according to a report released Wednesday by payroll proce...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Jan. 7, 2015

Purchasing Data Show Slowing Expansion Globally

A measure of global economic growth fell to a 14-month low in December amid a slowing of expansion in both the the manufacturing and service sectors.The JPMorgan Global All-Industry Output Index — compiled by JPMorgan and Markit from Purchasing Manager Index data — posted a 52.3 in December, down...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 7, 2015

Bitstamp Loses Up to $5.2M in Bitcoin Hack

In the latest cyber attack on a major bitcoin exchange, hackers have stolen up to $5.2 million from United Kingdom-based Bitstamp, forcing it to suspend operations.Bitstamp, the second largest bitcoin exchange for U.S. dollars, said on its web site that some of its operational “wallets” were comp...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 6, 2015

Surviving (and Thriving From) a Breakup

Is it time to split up?Each week brings with it news of the latest multi-business public company looking to ignite shareholder returns by separating. Sometimes compelled by external pressure from activist investment funds, spin-offs are taking place across a range of industries. HP Inc. and Hewle...

By Jim Wininger and Andy Pasternak • Jan. 6, 2015

Employee Stole Data of 350,000 Clients: Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley disclosed Monday it had suffered a cyber-security breach, saying an employee stole account information for up to 350,000 wealth-management clients and posted some of the data on a web site.The employee has been fired and there is no evidence of any economic loss to any client, Morg...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 5, 2015

Health Spending Checkup

This month the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its annual report on health care spending in the United States, for the year 2013. The CMS has been tracking national health expenditures since 1960. Test your knowledge of health spending by taking our quiz:1. How fast di...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Jan. 5, 2015

Costs Slow as Health Care Consumerism Grows

Employers have worried since the 2010 implementation of the Affordable Care Act that their costs would increase as a result, but recent data doesn’t support that narrative. In fact, growth in health-benefits costs has slowed considerably, although that’s partly because employers have taken the in...

By Mercer, Tracy Watts, and Beth Umland • Dec. 31, 2014

Tackling Disclosure Overload

From the point of view of CFOs and other senior finance executives at public companies, the issue of what and how much to reveal in the financial statements has become a game of chicken. Regulators, moving toward a wholesale cleanup of the massive factual and analytical disclosures that have accu...

By David Katz • Dec. 29, 2014

Broadcom Embraces Maturity, with EPS Trumping Growth

As a company and its industry mature, things change naturally. Often, growth becomes less important than profitability. Different metrics may emerge into the spotlight. Companies gain a clearer sense of which businesses fit and which don’t. They grow more likely to return capital to shareholders....

By David McCann • Dec. 23, 2014