Pressed by Investors, CFOs Awake to Sustainability

The notion of using resource conservation, plant safety, labor, or other environmental and social issues in a company’s valuation and financial reporting has always been a tough sell for CFOs. Tim Koller Tim Koller, SustainabilityJust utter the word “sustainability,” and a finance chief’s eyes ar...

By David Katz • March 30, 2017

Use of TSR as Incentive Pay Metric Flattens Out

In response to regulations that took effect following the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, as well as pressure from proxy advisers and investors, it became common practice for executive compensation to be based on company performance.Relative total shareholder return (rTSR) — a measure of TSR compa...

By David McCann • March 30, 2017

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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

Finance Departments Still Facing Budget Cuts

CFO optimism may be at its highest level in decades in the United States, but CFOs are still taking a scalpel to their finance organizations in a bid to run more efficiently.According to Hackett Group‘s Key Issues Study for 2017, despite executives’ projections of revenue growth of 4.1% in 2017, ...

By Vincent Ryan • March 29, 2017

Investors Beware, Emerging Growth Company Stats Suggest

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on Tuesday issued a report including statistics that amount to a clear message of “buyer beware” to potential investors in emerging growth companies, as they’re defined under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012.For example, about 50% of 1,...

By David Katz • March 29, 2017

Senators Urge Making PCAOB Hearings Public

Congress isn’t noted for bipartisanship these days but there’s one thing senators from both parties agree on — Public Company Accounting Oversight Board disciplinary proceedings should be public.Senators Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) have teamed up to reintroduce the PCAOB Enforce...

By Matthew Heller • March 24, 2017

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending March 24

Avery Dennison has appointed Gregory Lovins as interim CFO, replacing Anne Bramman, who is leaving the firm. He has been treasurer, a job he will keep, since August; before that, he was vice president of global finance for the materials group (now label and graphic materials).Jawad Ahsan Jawad Ah...

By Joan Urdang • March 24, 2017

PwC Settles $3B Suit Over MF Global Collapse

Two weeks into a trial in New York, PricewaterhouseCoopers has settled a $3 billion malpractice lawsuit alleging its accounting blunders caused the collapse of futures brokerage MF Global.The settlement concludes the last major piece of litigation that the administrator winding down MF Global, he...

By Matthew Heller • March 23, 2017

Bullish on Sales, Retail CFOs Face Border Showdown

After two straight years of softening predictions, retail CFOs forecast 4.9% sales growth for the industry in 2017, according to the results of a survey released Monday of 100 of the finance chiefs in the industry.Sparked by their bullish projections of online revenue and a lucrative 2016 holiday...

By David Katz • March 23, 2017

CFOs: Be the Heart of Data Integration

The explosive growth of business data has impacted organizations of all sizes and across all functions. But a big and as-yet-untapped opportunity to harness the power of this data may sit with the office of the CFO.Tom Bogan Data integrationRecognizing the benefit that access to data can bring, C...

By Tom Bogan • March 21, 2017

TrumpCare Could Cause Cost Shift To Employers, Experts Warn

In health insurance, the individual market is the individual market, the group market is the group market, and ne’er the twain shall meet.But not for long, maybe.Market reality has long been that premiums for groups (or what they pay annually on a per-member basis, if they are self insured) are v...

By David McCann • March 17, 2017

Square-Off: Should U.S. Trade Agreements Be Renegotiated?

Running on a campaign to “Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump pledged to tear up trade deals that he claimed hurt American companies and cost jobs for American workers.Since his election as president, his administration has swiftly pursued that agenda, stepping away from the Trans-Pacific Par...

By David Katz • March 17, 2017

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending March 17

Dominic Dragisich has been named to the top finance spot at Choice Hotels International. He previously headed finance at XO Communications.Dominic Dragisich Sabra Dipping has appointed Paula Fitzgerald finance chief. She formerly worked at PepsiCo, which jointly owns Sabra with The Strauss Group....

By Joan Urdang • March 17, 2017

GoPro Shares Jump on News of More Job Cuts

GoPro shares jumped nearly 16% on Thursday after the wearable action-camera maker announced another round of job cuts and projected first-quarter revenue on the high end of its guidance.In the third reduction to its workforce since the beginning of 2016, GoPro plans to eliminate approximately 270...

By Matthew Heller • March 16, 2017

Former EY Auditor Charged With Insider Trading

A former auditor at Ernst & Young has been charged with illegally trading in shares of KLA-Tencor in advance of a takeover bid for the semiconductor equipment company by a client.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Nima Hedayati, who worked for EY in Silicon Valley as a junior au...

By Matthew Heller • March 16, 2017

Former iPayment Execs Charged With $11M Fraud

Two former executives at iPayment have been accused of masterminding a scheme through which they allegedly embezzled more than $11 million from the credit card processing company through phony expense reimbursements, inflated invoices, and other improper accounting practices.The U.S. Securities a...

By Matthew Heller • March 15, 2017

CFOs to Trump: Stop Tweeting, Keep H1-Bs

The latest Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey has found that CFOs in the U.S are concerned about how President Trump’s off-the-cuff Twitter posts and public comments affect business. Results also show that CFOs are feeling more confident about economic growth than they have in mor...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 15, 2017

Neiman Marcus Said to Be in Talks Over Sale

In another sign of the pressures facing department store chains, Neiman Marcus swung to a second-quarter loss and said it is weighing a possible sale.The New York Times and other publications reported that Canadian retail giant Hudson’s Bay Company was already in talks with Neiman about acquiring...

By Matthew Heller • March 14, 2017

Think Like a Start-up, Be a Better CFO

CFOs across companies of all sizes, industries, and maturity levels continue to stretch beyond traditional finance roles. Furthermore, the changes that have taken place in the workplace over the past decade — from advances in technology to an increasingly mobile workforce to prioritizing work/lif...

By Brian Faust • March 14, 2017

Yahoo Names Leaders of Post-Sale Company

Yahoo has named board director Thomas McInerney as CEO and global controller Alexi Wellman as CFO of the new company that will emerge from the sale of its core internet business to Verizon.The new Yahoo, to be named Altaba, will include its rich stakes in Chinese internet giant Alibaba and Yahoo ...

By Matthew Heller • March 13, 2017

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending March 10

Mark McCollum has resigned as head of finance at Halliburton. The company is searching for McCollum’s successor; in the meantime, general counsel Robb Voyles will take over as interim CFO.Naveen Chopra Morningstar has announced that finance chief Stéphane Biehler has resigned, effective March 10....

By Joan Urdang • March 10, 2017

Scammers Sending Fake Emails from SEC

In a blog post on Tuesday, cybersecurity vendor FireEye’s threat research team said it had identified a spear phishing campaign that targets corporate finance teams involved in preparing Securities and Exchange Commission filings.Spear phishing is “the fraudulent practice of sending emails ostens...

By Vincent Ryan • March 9, 2017

Metric of the Month: Financial Shared Services Centers

The idea behind doing financial management work inside shared services centers (SSCs) is to implement well-designed processes and sustain the efficiencies they deliver with economies of scale. Yet some SSCs are much more successful than others. And —surprise! —  the winners are not always those f...

By Mary Driscoll • March 8, 2017

Wolters Kluwer Enters Performance Management Space

In a deal that combines two providers of technology to international corporate finance teams, Wolters Kluwer has reached an agreement on Tuesday to buy Tagetik for 300 million euros ($316.3 million) in cash.The acquisition brings Wolters Kluwer, a provider of corporate tax compliance and internal...

By Vincent Ryan • March 8, 2017

GM to Cut 1,100 Jobs at SUV Plant in Michigan

General Motors is cutting 1,100 jobs at a Michigan plant where it manufactures SUVs — the fourth time it has announced layoffs since November.The cuts at the Lansing Delta Township plant will eliminate the facility’s third shift, with GM moving production of a new version of the GMC Acadia to Spr...

By Matthew Heller • March 6, 2017

Peer-to-Peer Trust Among CFOs Achieves Worthy End

CFOs are known to be skeptical — of internal funding requests, external sales pitches, budget proposals from business units and functions, come-ons from headhunters, proposed project deadlines … even the value of speaking to the media.But if there’s one thing they’re less skeptical of, it may be ...

By David McCann • March 6, 2017