How FP&A Software Can Succeed

Perspectives from CFO ResearchCFOs understand the importance of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) solutions that allow their finance teams to develop budgets and forecasts quickly and accurately. They need confidence in their numbers and the decisions they drive. But selecting the right ...

By Gerry Marletta • Oct. 22, 2018

SEC Probing Honeywell Accounting for Liabilities

Honeywell has disclosed that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into its accounting after it understated asbestos-related liabilities by nearly $1.1 billion.The conglomerate said it had revised its accounting for the liabilities in the third quarter of this ye...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 22, 2018

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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

CFOs on the Move: HBO, Hyatt, BuzzFeed Tap New Finance Chiefs

Home Box Office (HBO) has named Jessica Holscott to lead the finance function. She takes over from Joe Tarulli, who will retire at the end of the year. Holscott previously was head of investor relations at Time Warner.Hyatt Hotels has promoted Joan Bottarini to the top finance spot, effective Nov...

By Joan Urdang • Oct. 19, 2018

IBM ‘Still Has a Revenue Growth Problem’

IBM reported earnings of $3.42 per share on revenue of $18.76 billion for the third quarter, sending its shares down as much as 7.5% Wednesday afternoon.The company saw year-over-year revenue declines in its technology services, cloud platforms, cognitive solutions, and systems businesses. Its ov...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 17, 2018

Ex-BDO CPAs Suspended Over AmTrust Audit

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has suspended three former BDO USA accountants for misrepresenting that an audit of a client’s annual report had been properly completed after the audit team fell behind schedule.One of the accountants, Lev Nagdimov, was BDO’s senior manager on the audi...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 15, 2018

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Oct. 12

Discount retailer Stein Mart said that Gregory Kleffner, who heads finance, plans to retire in the spring. The company has hired an executive search firm to find external candidates to succeed him.Dominion Energy said that finance chief Mark McGettrick will retire from the firm on Jan. 1. Effecti...

By Joan Urdang • Oct. 12, 2018

Tariff Turmoil Spurs Need for Rigorous Vendor Screening

The escalating trade war between the United States and China, in which President Trump last month introduced tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese imports, has spawned a boom in “creative” workarounds.Among the tactics currently being deployed are so-called transshipments of Chinese pr...

By Brian Peccarelli • Oct. 12, 2018

Estée Lauder Aims to Dismiss CEO of Deciem

Estée Lauder announced it was seeking to have Brandon Truaxe removed as co-CEO of the skin-care company Deciem, following months of erratic online behavior and personnel decisions by the company founder.In a statement this week, Estée Lauder said it was “deeply concerned” about material Truaxe po...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 12, 2018

Square CFO Friar Moves to Nextdoor’s Top Job

Sarah Friar, the longtime CFO of payments company Square, is making a major tech industry move, joining social network Nextdoor as its chief executive officer.During her six years at Square, Friar guided Square through an initial public offering — an experience she may repeat at Nextdoor, where s...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 11, 2018

Treasury Announces New Rules For Foreign Investments

The U.S. Department of the Treasury issued new temporary regulations on foreign investments in U.S. companies that will give the government more power to block foreign transactions on national security grounds.Under the new rules, foreign investors will have to alert a Treasury-led interagency co...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 11, 2018

Worksite Medical Clinics Proliferate, Save Costs

Large employers are increasingly likely to provide on-site or near-site medical clinics for employees, and for good reasons. Among them: they’re cost-effective.Mercer recently reported that in 2017, 33% of U.S. employers with at least 5,000 workers offered at least one such clinic for general med...

By David McCann • Oct. 11, 2018

Rolls-Royce: Restructuring a British Institution

This article has been corrected as of October 11 at 12:00 p.m. The original version erroneously stated that Rolls-Royce had sold off two of its divisions.LONDON — Once a company gets to a certain size or age, it can be easy for the employees to forget that the point of the business, ultimately, i...

By Efe Otokiti • Oct. 10, 2018

Four Key Skills for a New Era in Finance

LONDON — “Change is here, and there is no way to get around the fourth industrial revolution in finance,” Kathryn Sherratt, a CFO, opined at the CFO Rising Europe Summit in September.The fourth industrial revolution is defined as an era in which there is a fusion of technologies that blurs the li...

By Caitlin Stanway-Williams • Oct. 10, 2018

Ready for the New Lease Accounting Standard?

The new standard for lease accounting (Accounting Standards Codification 842) is intended to provide investors and other stakeholders with a more complete and transparent view of a US company’s financial position with respect to leasing activities.Its main objective is to address concerns about c...

By Deloitte & Touche, Sean Torr, Jeanne McGovern, and Deloitte & Touche • Oct. 9, 2018

IMF Trims Global Growth Forecast

The International Monetary Fund has cut its growth forecast for the global economy in 2018 and 2019, citing rising international trade tensions and higher oil prices.The fund forecast that the U.S. economy would grow at 2.9% in 2018, but it said that rate would slow to 2.5% in 2019. “U.S. growth ...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 9, 2018

Starbucks Names Hyatt’s Pat Grismer as CFO

Starbucks has hired Patrick Grismer, a finance executive with extensive restaurant industry experience, as its new CFO, replacing Scott Maw.Grismer will join the coffee giant from Hyatt Hotels, where he has served as CFO since March 2016. He was also previously finance chief at Yum Brands, the pa...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 8, 2018

U.S. Unemployment Hits Lowest Level Since 1969

The U.S. unemployment rate fell by 0.2% to 3.7% in September as the number of unemployed fell 270,000 to 6.0 million, according to the Labor Department.It was the lowest unemployment rate since 1969.“We’ve been dancing around hitting this unemployment record for several months. It was inevitable,...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 5, 2018

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Oct. 5

Jeffrey Davis has been named to lead the finance function at Qurate Retail Group, effective Oct. 15. Davis, who will also become CFO of QVC, comes to the company from J.C. Penney, where he also was finance chief. Previous posts include finance chief of Darden Restaurants as well as CFO of Walmart...

By Joan Urdang • Oct. 5, 2018

U.S. Shopping Malls Limp Into the Holiday Quarter

The first indoor shopping mall in the United States opened in Edina, Minn., in 1956. Sixty-two years later, the concept is hanging on for dear life.Despite strong consumer confidence and some increases in wages, as well as the forecast of healthy U.S. holiday sales, the mall vacancy rate increase...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 4, 2018

Highest Priority for Finance Today: FP&A

Financial planning and analysis has emerged in recent years as a cornerstone of an effective finance function. Still, whatever advancements in FP&A quality have been achieved, they’re apparently not enough to satisfy CFOs.Among 10 key finance processes and activities, finance officials survey...

By David McCann • Oct. 4, 2018

Accountants Protecting Their Turf

Do appraisers of business assets have to be accountants? To most CFOs, the answer would be no. However, a vocal group of accountants is pushing to limit a recognized professional designation for appraisers to those already licensed as certified public accountants. This is the type of formalistic ...

By Robert Pozen • Oct. 4, 2018

The Difference Between Good CFOs and Great CFOs

When CFOs of large North American companies were asked by Deloitte about the legacy they wanted to leave, they said, in overwhelming numbers, that they wanted to have had a strong influence on their company’s ability to perform well in the future and to have left things better than they found the...

By Sandy Cockrell III and Charles Holley • Oct. 3, 2018

Why and How to Transition to a Subscription Business

Most finance chiefs are probably already aware that subscription business models are the darlings of Wall Street.According to Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index, subscription-based businesses are growing revenue nine times faster than the S&P 500. Some of the largest recent IPOs have been for...

By Daniel McCarthy and Robbie Kellman Baxter • Oct. 2, 2018

Auditing the Auditor

Most mid-size to large organizations rely on internal and external audits as a key preventative measure against fraud. The problem is, many CFOs assume that a routine financial audit will reveal financial anomalies that could be fraud. Unfortunately, quite the opposite is true.Audits almost never...

By Tiffany Couch and Acuity Forensics • Oct. 2, 2018

Slump in MBA Applications Hits Elite Schools

The decline in applications to MBA programs in the U.S. appears to have spread to elite schools, with Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford all experiencing slumps this year.Overall, U.S. business schools received 140,860 applications for programs including the traditional two-year MBA, down 7% from the...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 2, 2018