Proxies Show More Big CFO Paydays

Viacom chief financial officer Richard Bressler earned more than $6.8 million last year, according to the company’s latest proxy.Bressler received a salary of $1.25 million and a bonus of $5.5 million, the same bonus he received the prior two years. He also received $96,560 in “other” compensatio...

By Stephen Taub • April 20, 2005

Former AIG Finance Exec Put on Leave

American International Group Inc. has shown the door to another former finance executive as an investigation of insurance giant’s accounting continues.Michael J. Castelli, who was appointed chief administrative officer and a senior vice president in January, was put on leave, according to The New...

By Stephen Taub • April 19, 2005

The Economics of Sharing

By now, most people who use computers have heard of the “open source” movement, even if they are not sure what it is. It is a way of making software (and increasingly, other things as well), which relies on the individual contributions of thousands of programmers. The resulting programs are owned...

By Economist Staff • April 19, 2005

Health-Care Costs Rose 7.5 Percent

Average per-employee health-care costs rose just 7.5 percent in 2004, according to an annual survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. That increase, the lowest in five years, is much lower than the 10.1 percent jump in 2003.According to the survey of 3,020 employers, the average total cost of ...

By Stephen Taub • April 19, 2005

How to Pick Winning Finance Execs

How do you spot a rising finance star?The short answer, according to a range of seasoned talent developers in the field, is that they’re like mini-CFOs: they’re smart, they seek experiences beyond the technical finance duties, they show leadership potential, they can strategize, and they can put ...

By Lisa Yoon • April 15, 2005

CFOs on the Move

• Office Depot Inc. appointed chief financial officer Charles E. Brown to the position of president, international. In his new role, Brown will have overall responsibility for all operations outside North America, including existing company-owned operations in Europe and Japan and joint venture o...

By Lisa Yoon • April 15, 2005

Retirement Plans and Worker Education

Finance executives are not optimistic that their employees will have enough money when they retire, according to a new survey conducted by Hewitt Associates.Just 30 percent of financial executives are confident that their workers will retire with sufficient assets, according to a new survey of 20...

By Stephen Taub • April 14, 2005

Abercrombie CFO Abruptly Resigns

Abercrombie & Fitch announced that Susan J. Riley has resigned as chief financial officer of the New Albany, Ohio-based apparel company for family reasons and will return to her home in New York. President and chief operating officer Robert Singer will assume Riley’s responsibilities on an in...

By Stephen Taub • April 14, 2005

Stephen Cutler to Leave SEC

It’s the end of an era for the Securities and Exchange Commission.Stephen Cutler, director of the Division of Enforcement, announced Thursday that he intends to leave the commission next month to return to the private sector. Before joining the SEC as deputy director in January1999, he was a part...

By Stephen Taub • April 14, 2005

A Human Inventory

In the late 1990s, consultants and academics began talking incessantly about the ascent of the “knowledge economy.” This invisible system, they posited, encompassed the collective set of ideas and innovations generated by a global workforce. As the competition for customers grew more intense—fuel...

By Joseph McCafferty • April 12, 2005

401(k) Participation Holds at 73 Percent

More than one-quarter of employees at companies with a 401(k) plan have chosen not to participate, according to a new survey by Deloitte Consulting.Specifically, plan participation by employees at 426 responding plan sponsors in 2004 was at 73 percent, holding steady for the third year straight. ...

By Stephen Taub • April 8, 2005

Microsoft’s Connors Quietly Departs

John Connors no longer works for Microsoft Corp.In January, the software giant announced that Connors — who has been with Microsoft for 16 years, the last 5 as its chief financial officer — would be leaving to become a partner at the Bellevue, Washington-based venture capital firm Ignition Partne...

By Stephen Taub • April 8, 2005

CFOs on the Move

• Cap Rock Energy Corp. of Midland, Texas, announced that senior vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer Lee D. Atkins is no longer with the company. Atkins had served in those roles since 2001. The company gave no reason for the departure, saying only that his “employment with th...

By Lisa Yoon • April 8, 2005

Maryland Raises the Health-Care Ante

Maryland state legislators are close to passing a law that would require companies with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits or put the money directly into the state’s Medicaid program, according to the Washington Post.Since the world’s larges...

By Stephen Taub • April 7, 2005

Option Play: CFOs Strike It Big

In the past couple of days, at least two companies disclosed that their top financial executives netted tens of millions of dollars last year from exercising stock options and selling the underlying shares.Boston Scientific Corp., which develops and manufactures medical devices, announced that La...

By Stephen Taub • April 6, 2005

CFO Resignations Soared in 2004

How many times have we heard this: the CFO is no longer just a bean counter. The CFO is a business partner and strategist.Yet just when the job was getting fun, many finance chiefs seem to feel the party’s already over and it’s time to call it a day, thanks to ever-increasing earnings pressure an...

By Lisa Yoon • April 5, 2005

Sears Plans Headquarters Layoffs

Sears Holding Corp., the company that resulted from the union of Sears, Roebuck and Kmart Holding, is planning “mass layoffs,” according to the Associated Press.Actually, the layoffs, while painful, won’t be all that sizeable. “Mass layoffs” is an official term in Illinois, which defines a mass l...

By Stephen Taub • April 4, 2005

Wilder Scores $55 Million at TXU

Back in February 2004, C. John Wilder left Entergy Corp., where he served as executive vice president and CFO. Wilder’s destination: TXU Corp, where Wilder would take over as president and CEO. It turns out Wilder’s switch was a very prudent move. In his first year at TXU (ten months, actually), ...

By Stephen Taub • April 4, 2005

CFOs Edge Cautiously into Startup Posts

In a way, being chief financial officer of a young technology startup during the late-1990s, early-2000s boom was like dating someone much too young. Often, the company was overly focused on image and at on hiring “charismatic” executives, who could play fast and loose with cash and lose track of...

By Lisa Yoon • April 1, 2005

Gaining Currency?

Want to be like Warren Buffett? Don’t pitch softball in Omaha; bet against the dollar in the global currency markets. The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who says he is hard pressed to find something better to do with the money, has almost half of Berkshire’s cash hoard of $43 billion in 12 other...

By Marie Leone • April 1, 2005

Devil in the Details

After mortgage lender Fannie Mae found itself embroiled in an accounting scandal last year, former CEO Franklin Raines walked out the door with a $1 million­plus annual pension payment. Retiring CFO Timothy Howard was right behind him with a tidy package of his own: $400,000 plus medical benefit...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 1, 2005

Take This Job

The fate of David Welch, the first CFO to file for Sarbanes-Oxley whistle-blower protection, is one step closer to being decided. In February, administrative law judge Stephen Purcell upheld his 2004 decision that Welch, the former finance chief of Cardinal Bankshares Corp., should be reinstated ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • April 1, 2005

CFOs on the Move

• Tyco International Ltd. announced that David J. Fitzpatrick resigned on March 24 as executive vice president and chief financial officer. The conglomerate noted in a regulatory filing that FitzPatrick’s “voluntary” termination was effective March 7, but that he would remain with the company unt...

By Lisa Yoon • April 1, 2005

Make It Automatic

Rule No. 1: Inertia dominates human actions. Rule No. 2: People fear loss more than they value gain.As two tenets of behavioral finance, these principles are still largely confined to being studied in the world’s business schools. But the twin theories already serve as the underpinning of a 401(k...

By Roy Harris • April 1, 2005

Executives Delaying Sunset Years

While advocates for retirees and seniors rail at the suggestion that Congress ought to raise the eligibility age for Social Security, here’s a group that seems willing to keep working well into their golden years.According to a recently released survey of nearly 2,000 global executives, nearly 44...

By John Goff • March 31, 2005