Human Capital: Page 145

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    PBGC to Airlines: Pay Up

    The head of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. has sternly warned two major airlines that despite filing for bankruptcy protection, they’re still on the hook for pension payments.“Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines are required to make minimum pension contributions under ERISA and the Interna...

    By Stephen Taub • Sept. 15, 2005
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    Who’s Minding the Shop?

    During a normal workday, public-relations manager Lindsay Peroff generally visits the Website of a Vancouver-based radio station and listens to music online. Christopher Bennett, a PR colleague at junk-removal company 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, follows soccer on the Web, often listening to digital broadcas...

    By Esther Shein • Sept. 14, 2005
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    More Health-Care Costs: Pass It Down

    Companies are bracing for another double-digit increase in health care costs in 2006. And in keeping with a recent trend, they’re planning to pass along part of the costs to the rank and file.In fact, a survey of more than 1,800 companies by Mercer Human Resource Consulting found that the compani...

    By Stephen Taub • Sept. 13, 2005
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    Freddie Mac to Help Recover Compensation

    Freddie Mac has agreed to help federal regulators investigate the mortgage company’s two former top executives as part of a settlement stemming from the company’s accounting scandal.Under a consent agreement, Freddie Mac agreed to provide documents to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Over...

    By Stephen Taub • Sept. 13, 2005
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    CFOs on the Move

    • Bank of America Corp. announced that Alvaro G. de Molina, chief executive officer for Banc of America Securities,has been named chief financial officer of the corporation, effective immediately. De Molina, who began his finance career with Price Waterhouse in 1979 and has worked for J.P. Morgan...

    By Lisa Yoon • Sept. 9, 2005
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    Uptick for Finance Hiring

    The job market for accounting and finance positions should improve a bit in the fourth quarter, according to a new report by Robert Half International.The staffing-services firm, which surveyed 1,400 chief financial officers at companies with more than 20 employees, found that 7 percent of CFOs p...

    By Stephen Taub • Sept. 8, 2005
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    Pension Upheaval

    It is 2005 and the pension system is in crisis — again. Just as in the mid-1990s, Congress and columnists are warning of the imminent demise of the defined-benefit retirement plan. And again, thanks are due to the failure of a few companies — mostly in the airline industry — to meet their obligat...

    By Russ Banham • Sept. 8, 2005
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    Chief Accountant to Leave SEC

    Donald Nicolaisen, the chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has announced that he will leave the SEC next month to return to the private sector.Nicolaisen was appointed to the post in September 2003 by former chairman William Donaldson; his departure creates another importa...

    By Stephen Taub • Sept. 7, 2005
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    Ex-CFO of Ben & Jerry’s to Plead Guilty

    Stuart “Mickey” Wiles, a former chief financial officer of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of wire fraud for embezzling more than $300,000 from the company, according to press reports. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Vermont stated that Wiles “used his autho...

    By Stephen Taub • Sept. 6, 2005
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    Allstate Settles Overtime Dispute

    Labor Day means a little more this year to some employees of Allstate Corp. The insurer announced that it will pay as much as $120 million to settle claims that it refused to pay its California white-collar workers for working extra hours during nights and weekends.The class-action lawsuit allege...

    By Craig Schneider • Sept. 2, 2005
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    CFOs on the Move

    • Office Depot Inc. named board member Patricia A. McKay executive vice president and chief financial officer; she resigned from the board in conjunction with her appointment. McKay replaces Charles E. Brown, who was promoted to president of the company’s international operations in April.McKay j...

    By Lisa Yoon • Sept. 2, 2005
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    Can You Spot the Finance Expert?

    See our chart on “Grading the Experts”When the Securities and Exchange Commission began requiring companies to disclose whether or not they have financial experts on their audit committees, Costco Wholesale Corp. board members did not sweat the process, recalls CFO and board member Richard Galant...

    By Alix Stuart • Sept. 1, 2005
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    Getting Involved

    There are plenty of CFOs these days who are mad as hell about some law, regulation, or accounting rule. And there are a few who have decided they aren’t going to take it any more.One such executive is Alex Davern, CFO of $500 million National Instruments Corp., an Austin, Texas-based maker of tes...

    By Lori Calabro • Sept. 1, 2005
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    Yahoo’s Susan Decker

    Since Joining the Internet giant at the bottom of the dot-com bust in 2000, Susan Decker, 42, has taken Silicon Valley by storm. She is widely credited with leading Yahoo’s charge into the search arena, which today accounts for half the company’s revenues. A former financial analyst, she has earn...

    By A CFO Interview • Sept. 1, 2005
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    Short Shift

    At some companies, the CFO position is becoming a temp job. In recent years, while struggling to turn around their businesses, Delta Air Lines and advertising giant Interpublic Group have each churned through multiple finance chiefs. In July, Interpublic hired Frank Mergenthaler, its fourth CFO i...

    By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 1, 2005
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    CFOs on the Move

    • Gateway Inc. named John P. Goldsberry chief financial officer. Goldsberry joined the Irvine, California-based computer company as a result of Gateway’s 2004 acquisition of eMachines, where he was CFO. After the acquisition, he became head of strategy and business development; in February he was...

    By Lisa Yoon • Aug. 26, 2005
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    Marsh CFO to Step Down

    Sandra Wijnberg plans to resign as senior vice president and chief financial officer of Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., in March 2006.The world’s largest insurance broker announced that it has begun an active search for her successor, but Wijnberg will remain until Marsh reports its 2005 results....

    By Stephen Taub • Aug. 23, 2005
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    CFOs on the Move

    • A month after departing to join a venture firm, Fredric G. Reynolds is returning to CBS Corp. to become executive vice president and chief financial officer after CBS splits off from Viacom Inc. Until that transaction is completed, Reynolds will work on the creation of the new company and overs...

    By Lisa Yoon • Aug. 19, 2005
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    Pension Risk Overstated, Says a Study

    The pension crisis is not as dire as many observers fear, a new analysis by Watson Wyatt has found.The consultancy found that pension plan liabilities at about half of the Fortune 1000 companies with defined benefit plans pose little risk to the financial stability of the company’s core business;...

    By Stephen Taub • Aug. 18, 2005
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    HP Brings Home Money, but Not Jobs

    Hewlett-Packard Co. is the latest business to take advantage of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.HP announced that in the third and fourth quarters, it will repatriate $14.5 billion in cash from foreign earnings. As a result, it added, the company took a $988 million adjustment on an after-...

    By Stephen Taub • Aug. 17, 2005
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    Reynolds Returns to Viacom

    Fredric G. Reynolds has changed his mind.After resigning late last month to join Evercore Partners, a financial advisory firm, Reynolds will return to Viacom to become CFO and executive vice president and of the new CBS Corp. after Viacom is split into two publicly traded companies. Further, he...

    By David Katz • Aug. 16, 2005
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    The 21st-Century Organization

    About half a century ago, Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” to describe a new class of employee whose basic means of production was no longer capital, land, or labor but, rather, the productive use of knowledge. Today, these knowledge workers, who might better be called professiona...

    By The McKinsey Quarterly • Aug. 16, 2005
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    Companies Lukewarm on FSA Carryovers

    Flexible spending accounts (FSAs) allow participants to pay their medical bills and dependent-care expenses with pretax dollars — but at the end of each year, participants forfeit any unspent money in their accounts. Critics have complained that the risk of forfeiting money has discouraged many ...

    By Stephen Taub • Aug. 15, 2005
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    Surprise CFO Resignation at Cree

    Semiconductor manufacturer Cree Inc. announced that Cynthia B. Merrell has resigned as chief financial officer and treasurer.In a statement, she cited “changes in the public corporate environment in recent years” as well as her desire to spend more time with her family. Merrell, who has held her ...

    By Stephen Taub • Aug. 12, 2005
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    Cox: More Disclosure on Executive Pay

    Christopher Cox, the newly confirmed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is calling on companies to improve their disclosure of executive pay packages, according to Bloomberg’s account of an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service’s Nightly Business Report.“I think you can ...

    By Stephen Taub • Aug. 12, 2005