CFOs On the Move: Week Ending February 19

Melinda Whittington La-Z-Boy is promoting its CFO, Melinda Whittington, to president and CEO. Whittington, who joined the furniture company in 2018, was previously finance chief for Allscripts Healthcare Solutions. Before that, she was senior vice president, corporate controller, and chief accoun...

By Lauren Muskett • Feb. 19, 2021

McDonald’s Sets Goals to Expand Diversity Among Senior Leadership

McDonald’s has set a goal of expanding representation of women and people of color in its leadership ranks over the next four years.In a corporate blog post titled, “Allyship Through Accountability,” the restaurant chain stated the mission to “increase representation of historically underrepresen...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 18, 2021

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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

A Financed Emissions Standard for Banks

President Biden wasted no time after his inauguration in creating the “largest team ever assembled inside the White House to tackle global warming” and announcing an aggressive “all of government” approach to climate change. Biden is expected to order government agencies to calculate the costs of...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 16, 2021

Biden’s Trade Policy Stresses Investment in U.S. Jobs

The Biden administration may be less than a month old, but its early words and actions have provided clear signs of where trade policy is headed and what that means for businesses. Washington politics and policy are lining up to create a trade environment that will incentivize companies to bui...

By Lou Longo • Feb. 12, 2021

Your Company Survived 2020; It’s Time to Tell the Story

Year-end reporting has always been a critical time for companies to step back and assess their achievements and shortfalls, evaluate how those results compared to the prior year and set the stage for the future. Since every crisis ends with lessons learned, innovation and reinvention, proactive c...

By Moira Conlon • Feb. 11, 2021

Bumble Courts Wall St. With Increased IPO

Bumble has boosted the size of its IPO from 34.5 million shares to 45 million shares in a bet on investor enthusiasm for its “women-first” dating app and plans to broaden its products.The shares would be priced at between $37 and $39 per share, meaning Bumble is now aiming to raise $1.8 billion a...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 10, 2021

Robinhood Faces Lawsuits Ahead of 2021 IPO

Trading app Robinhood is facing legal hurdles ahead as it prepares for what could be one of the largest IPOs of 2021.What Happened: This week, the family of Robinhood user Alex Kearns, who committed suicide after racking up large losses on Robinhood, sued the company, stating that its “reckless c...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 10, 2021

Tesla Invests $1.5B In Bitcoin

After publicly backing digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has walked the talk, lending more credibility to cryptocurrency investing.Tesla said it has invested an aggregate $1.5 billion of cash in bitcoin, in line with a change in the investment policy adopted by ...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 8, 2021

Loan System Bugs Holding Up PPP Loans: AICPA

The second round of the Paycheck Protection Program seems to have finally gained some traction, at least according to the data. The Small Business Administration said this week that from January 11 to January 31, more than 890,000 loans worth $72.7 billion had been approved. That’s about one-four...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 5, 2021

CFOs On the Move: Week Ending February 5

Robert Davis Merck’s chief financial officer, Robert Davis, will take over as the pharma company’s CEO. Davis joined the company as CFO in 2014. Before Merck, he worked for Baxter International, where he was corporate vice president and president of medical products. He held several other positio...

By Lauren Muskett • Feb. 5, 2021

Moving Beyond ‘Survive-at-All-Costs’ Mode

If 2020 taught us one thing, it’s that agility is not as hard as everyone thought it was. When pressed, many major companies with complex supply chains, global geographic footprints, and entrenched systems and processes were able to pivot, retool, and reinvent themselves in a matter of week...

By Rohit Kapoor • Feb. 3, 2021

Former WageWorks CFO, CEO Settle Accounting Case

Two top former executives of employee benefits administrator WageWorks have settled charges that they misled company accountants and auditors, resulting in the improper recognition of $3.6 million in revenue from a client.According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, former CEO Joseph...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 3, 2021

Banks Paused Tightening in Q4

Fewer U.S. banks reported tightening standards on business loans in the fourth quarter, with only a handful reporting easing standards.The Federal Reserve’s quarterly survey of senior loan officers found that half as many banks on net reported tightening standards on commercial and industrial loa...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 2, 2021

Metric of the Month: Avoiding Payroll Bottlenecks

Payroll is a critical business process that requires coordination and teamwork to run effectively. Even if much of the process is digitized, automated, and outsourced, manual touchpoints can still exist. Employees may have to enter and submit their hours, managers approve them, and payroll staff ...

By Perry D. Wiggins • Feb. 1, 2021

Qualtrics Stock Jumps 52% in Market Debut

After the latest big tech IPO, SAP-spinoff Qualtrics had a strong market debut amid continued investor enthusiasm for the enterprise software business.Shares in Qualtrics, which makes the XM software platform for businesses to track customer interactions, brands and employees, closed on Thursday ...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 29, 2021

Startup CFOs: Consider Adding Debt to the Funding Stack

Private equity and venture capital have a lot in common. Both involve acquiring or investing in promising companies, creating value, and then exiting on predetermined timelines. A key difference between those investing strategies is that while venture deals have historically been funded with equi...

By Gordon Henderson • Jan. 28, 2021

Will Restaurants Recover in 2021?

The U.S. restaurant industry ended 2020 with 2.5 million fewer jobs and more than 110,000 eating and drinking establishments were either temporarily closed or shut down for good, the National Restaurant Association says in a report.Job Losses: The majority of restaurants and bars that closed in 2...

By Lauren Muskett • Jan. 27, 2021

Could GameStop Short Squeeze Affect the Overall Stock Market?

Short squeezes in GameStop and others like the clothing retailer Express has seen a frenzy of late due to internet message boards, but is it possible that such volatility may end very badly for the wider market? Analysts and experts are presenting a mixed picture.Blast from the Past: BTIG head of...

By Lauren Muskett • Jan. 26, 2021

Epicor Software Names New CFO

On Tuesday, Epicor Software announced that it appointed a new finance chief in the wake of its purchase by private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice last year.Samuel Monti, former CFO of Khoros, will be joining Epicor’s executive team as chief financial officer. Monti has more than 25 years...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 26, 2021

AMC Raises $917 Million to Keep Theaters Open

Shares of AMC Entertainment soared on Monday after the theater chain said it had raised enough new capital to see it through the coronavirus pandemic, assuming moviegoing rebounds in the second half of 2021.AMC, the nation’s largest theater chain, had warned last month that it needed to raise at ...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 26, 2021

Anheuser-Busch Pulls Budweiser Super Bowl Ads

Super Bowl ad heavyweight Budweiser will not be paying for a commercial slot to advertise its brand during this year’s game and would instead invest in COVID-19 vaccine awareness. It is the first time in 37 years the beer giant will not be appearing in an in-game ad.Anheuser-Busch is still planni...

By Lauren Muskett • Jan. 26, 2021

Taboola Going Public in SPAC Deal

Israeli open web company Taboola is going public via a SPAC deal.The SPAC Deal: Taboola, which provides recommendations for the open web, is valued at $2.6 billion in a SPAC deal with ION Acquisition.The $285 million private investment in public equity on the SPAC deal is led by investors that in...

By Lauren Muskett • Jan. 25, 2021

Data and AI Belong At the Heart of ESG Initiatives

Amid a tumultuous economic landscape and rapidly changing consumer expectations, companies have a new north star: sustainable transformation. For years, the C-level has focused on digital transformation to accelerate business and address consumer demands. So, some enterprise digital capabilities ...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 25, 2021

CFOs On the Move: Week Ending January 22

Kelly MacDonald Dynavax appointed Kelly MacDonald finance chief. MacDonald joins the biopharmaceutical company from Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, where she was most recently chief accounting officer and vice president of finance. While at Ironwood, she also held other managerial roles, providing fina...

By Lauren Muskett • Jan. 22, 2021

Sequoia Holdings to Offer Cryptocurrency Payments to Employees

Software development and engineering firm Sequoia Holdings said it would allow employees to be paid in part in cryptocurrencies. In a statement, the company said it was beginning a program that would allow employees to defer portions of their salaries into bitcoin, bitcoin cash, or Ethereum.Sequo...

By Lauren Muskett • Jan. 21, 2021