Putting T-and-E on Autopilot

Is there an ”expense irony” that could save your company money? Aberdeen Group Inc. analyst Christa Degnan says that while many companies have systems in place to price and track the smallest component within their supply chains, they often have no idea how much money employees spend on travel, o...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 17, 2003

Merit Raises in 2003: Smallish

The stalled economy has meant downwardly revised earnings guidance for many companies. But it appears another kind of lowered earnings expectation is hitting executives much closer to home.According to a survey of 178 businesses conducted by human-resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates, two-...

By Lisa Yoon • March 17, 2003

Do CFOs and CIOs Need a Mediator?

Having looked at life from both sides now, Bill Glassen is acutely aware of the often profound disconnect between finance and IT. In fact, he embodies it. The former controller at Borden Milk Co. says his lack of knowledge about technology once proved costly. “I overloaded my promises to senior m...

By Russ Banham • March 17, 2003

A Hire Power

Back in the Dark Ages — before last summer — KeyBank USA hired temporary workers the old-fashioned way, which is to say inefficiently and expensively. If IT managers, for example, needed programmers or Web developers for a three-month project, they’d typically E-mail requests to a few favorite su...

By Anne Stuart • March 17, 2003

Symbolic Logic: No Executive Bonuses

Besides brooding on their company’s ongoing accounting woes, executives at beleaguered Symbol Technologies now have personal financial shortfalls to ponder. As a result of a misstep in expense entry, no executive bonuses will be paid for 2002.Symbol management acknowledged that, as part of the on...

By Stephen Taub • March 14, 2003

Smells Like Team Spirit

It seems the barrage of bad news about the stalled economy, mounting unemployment, and incredible shrinking 401(k)s hasn’t completely broken workers’ spirit — yet.In a new survey by Right Management Consultants, 83 percent of American workers say they’re at least somewhat motivated by the challen...

By Lisa Yoon • March 13, 2003

The First 90 Days

Once, while discussing his post-Velvet Revolution rise to power in the Czech Republic, former Czech president Vaclav Havel described “a sensation of the absurd, what Sisyphus might have felt if one day his boulder stopped, rested on the hilltop, and failed to roll back down.”A CFO who’s finally l...

By Lisa Yoon • March 12, 2003

Exec Comp: Location, Location, Location

For big paychecks, the big city offers big money to big executives, according to a new study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.That’s no surprise, given the higher cost of living in cities like New York and San Francisco. But Mercer’s 2003 Geographic Salary Differentials Survey suggests that, i...

By Lisa Yoon • March 11, 2003

Hiring Managers Upbeat

How high will the unemployment tide rise?On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the jobless rate jumped to 5.8 percent, as companies cut an unexpected 300,000 jobs in February. That was the biggest drop in hiring since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.In a survey completed j...

By Stephen Taub • March 10, 2003

Minority Report

According to a recent CareerBuilder poll, only 55 percent of managers expect to hire new employees this year. But despite the grim outlook for the hiring scene, companies are still striving to field diverse workforces. According to a recent New York Times job market study, two-thirds of companies...

By Lisa Yoon • March 10, 2003

Rising Medical Costs: Pass ‘Em On

Health-care costs in 2002 jumped more than many companies projected.Although health-care benefit costs have soared for several years now, nearly half (45 percent) of employers reported that their health-care costs exceeded their budgets in 2002, according The Eighth Annual Watson Wyatt/WBGH Surve...

By Stephen Taub • March 7, 2003

Survey: CEOs Getting Younger

CFOs have a demanding job, no question. But for what it’s worth, the boss’s job is no cake walk either. In fact, according to a new survey by Chief Executive Magazine and executive-search firm Spencer Stuart, CEOs today have a tougher job than ever.Several factors are making the chief executive’s...

By Lisa Yoon • March 6, 2003

Recruiters Are People, Too

Looking for a job in a weak economy can be a daunting undertaking. In addition to the usual challenges — creating a compelling resume, preparing for interviews, negotiating a salary — just finding an opening often requires inside information.While all that seems like a lot, an executive recruiter...

By Lisa Yoon • March 5, 2003

Exec Hiring to Pick Up, Says Survey

For executives and recruiters alike, hope apparently prevails that the sour job market will start to improve. Or at least, that appears to be the take away from two new surveys by ExecuNet, an executive-career resource.In one survey of 1,185 executives, 79 percent said they think the economy is g...

By Lisa Yoon • March 4, 2003

Avoiding Overtime Losses

Think all of your salaried workers are exempt from overtime pay? Think again. Aided by the Fair Labor Standards Act’s tricky and outmoded language, salaried managers and even executives are joining class-action lawsuits that insist their companies have denied them millions of dollars in overtime ...

By Joseph McCafferty and Alix Stuart • March 1, 2003

Going Native

The globalization of a company might seem like a straightforward exercise when the grand, over-arching ideas are scribbled out on flip charts and flashed up on PowerPoint presentations at corporate headquarters. But that’s deceptive. In practice, it’s never as simple as it sounds.Recently a finan...

By Blythe McGarvie • March 1, 2003

Deconstructing E-Learning

No sooner had Luis Sanchez Navarrete, director of training and knowledge management at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), launched a bold training initiative using web-based technologies, when things started to take a turn for the worse. In 2000, a E10m project dubbed Plan Conecta was greete...

By Jason Karaian • March 1, 2003

Is This Really a Community Service?

What sorts of punishments await way-ward CFOs in this new era of corporate reform? For Richard K. Halford, former CFO of Kansas City, Missouri-based Owl Securities and Investments, it was not hard time, but public soul-baring.Halford pleaded guilty last fall to violating the Foreign Corrupt Pract...

By Tim Reason and Kris Frieswick • March 1, 2003

Cost of Perks Piling Up

With salaries stagnating and health-care expenses booming, benefits are becoming an increasing portion of the total cost of employment. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported in January that employee benefits made up 39 percent of total payroll costs in 2001, up slightly from 37.5 percent the prio...

By Joseph McCafferty • March 1, 2003

Avoiding Overtime Losses

Think all of your salaried workers are exempt from overtime pay? Think again. Aided by the Fair Labor Standards Act’s tricky and outmoded language, salaried managers and even executives are joining class-action lawsuits that insist their companies have denied them millions of dollars in overtime ...

By Alix Stuart • March 1, 2003

The Holes in Black-Scholes

Does the Black-Scholes option-pricing model — the most common method for valuing stock-option grants — accurately forecast how much an option will be worth? Not even close, says a study by Sibson Consulting. “Black-Scholes is not a good predictor of actual gains,” says senior vice president Blair...

By Tim Reason • March 1, 2003

Tempting

Add the temporary-staffing industry to the roster of businesses benefiting from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. With companies barred from using their auditors to bring internal controls up to speed and reluctant to add to head count, finance-staffing firms say they’re seeing a spike in business ...

By Alix Stuart • March 1, 2003

Hello, I Must Be Going

At a time when a few down quarters can lead to a forced resignation, Paul Coghlan, 57, is an anomaly. He’s been sitting at the same Formica-topped desk as CFO of Milpitas, California-based Linear Technology Corp. for 17 years, as revenues have gone from $22 million to $1 billion and back down to ...

By Alix Stuart • March 1, 2003

Coming Clean (Sorta)

What sorts of punishments await way-ward CFOs in this new era of corporate reform? For Richard K. Halford, former CFO of Kansas City, Missouri-based Owl Securities and Investments, it was not hard time, but public soul-baring.Halford pleaded guilty last fall to violating the Foreign Corrupt Pract...

By Tim Reason • March 1, 2003

Interviews: Defending Your Life

It used to be that preparing for a job interview was like studying for an exam. Armed with hard knowledge of all the pertinent facts (company history, products, stock performance, competitors), a candidate could face the interview with reasonable confidence.Such a scenario may soon be a distant m...

By Lisa Yoon • Feb. 27, 2003