Executives Still Getting Good Severance Pay

According to a new survey by Right Management Consultants, severance pay for top executives remans fairly generous. On average, executives receive four or five weeks per year of service.Half of the companies in the Global Severance Practices Survey, a worldwide survey of nearly 1,500 companies in...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 29, 2003

Study: Playing Well With Others Pays

According to a new study from Eckerd College’s Management Development Institute, the way a manager resolves conflict has a lot to do with that manager’s perceived effectiveness as a leader. That, in turn, can alter the manager’s chances of getting promoted.The study looked at 90 male and 82 femal...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 28, 2003

If I Only Had a Brain

“Back where I come from, we have universities — seats of great learning — where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have. But, they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma!”The Wizard of Oz, just before awarding the...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 27, 2003

CFOs Need to Improve Risk Skills, Says Survey

The rising demand from investors and regulators for more financial detail is putting a real strain on companies, which must supply that info. In turn, this internal demand is testing the expertise of CFOs and chief risk officers. Indeed, a recent study by Korn/Ferry International and strategy con...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 23, 2003

The High Cost of Pension Losses

Forty percent of 80 mid-sized and large companies surveyed by Deloitte & Touche LLP said their pension expenses will rise by more than 50 percent in 2003.Another 20 percent expect increases of 26 percent to 50 percent. Around 16 percent of the respondents see expenses growing between 11 perce...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 23, 2003

You Shouldn’t Take the Job

Larry Reinhold wasn’t looking for trouble — he was just signing on for his first job as a CFO.In January 2001, however, after only three weeks at Critical Path, he discovered questionable revenue recognition practices at the San Francisco-based Internet messaging company. At Reinhold’s urging, Cr...

By Craig Schneider • Jan. 23, 2003

Who Knew? Early to Rise Works

Finance department job-seekers, take note: When scheduling an interview with a prospective employer aim for a morning slot, suggests a new survey by Accountemp.According to the survey, 69 percent of 1,400 CFOs polled said the most productive time for meeting with job candidates is between 9 and 1...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 22, 2003

IRS Probes Non-Profit Executive Pay

Just when it seems like executive pay policies have taken all the heat they can handle, the Internal Revenue Service aims to fan the fire by stepping up its scrutiny of non-profit executive pay plans.The IRS recently released a Technical Advice Memoranda (TAM) regarding Section 4958 taxes on exce...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 21, 2003

Demand For Finance Execs Way Down

Yesterday, CFO.com reported that hiring prospects for 2003 are grim, brother (see “It’s Cold Out There, Baby”).Now, comes news that the employment chill that set in last year wasn’t just limited to mid-level and entry-level workers. According to ExecuNet’s Executive Talent Demand Index (ETDI), wh...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 16, 2003

Revising the Comp List

2002 turned out to be a year full of bad news for business. It also turned out to be a recipe for big changes for executive compensation.Enron was just the beginning. Throw in a few more record-breaking restatements and bankruptcies. Add the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which, among other things, prohibit...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 15, 2003

Job-Seekers: It’s Cold Out There, Baby

What’s the forecast for job searches in the coming year? “Cautiously optimistic,” in consultant-speak; lousy, in English.The consultancy in question here is human-resources advisors DBM, which recently released its annual Workforce Predictions Survey for 2003. Apparently, when they say “cautious ...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 14, 2003

The Perils of Promotion

A company has a CFO position opening up, and the vice president of finance is widely seen as the favorite for the job. The VP, in fact, is so convinced of his lock status that he actually starts living as if he’d already been promoted — buying a Z-4 and ordering season tickets for Red Sox games.T...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 13, 2003

Ethics: The Great Divide

“[W]e have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language,” Oscar Wilde wrote in The Canterville Ghost.Of course, that was in 1887, way before Enron, WorldCom, and “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap were around. These days, Americans and Brits differ in more than just the way th...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 9, 2003

Survey: Honesty Still Highly Ranked Policy

What do employees want most from the company’s top bosses? Not necessarily what you might think — or at least, that’s the upshot of a new survey by organizational-consulting firm Right Management Consultants.The survey asked 570 full-time, white-collar employees: “What is the most important trait...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 8, 2003

Courting Compensation Disaster?

Quite a few shareholders might soon be placing votes on executive compensation — with the help of their lawyers.In a roundtable discussion called “What’s Wrong With Executive Compensation?” recounted in this month’s Harvard Business Review, Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey sa...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 7, 2003

Where Are They Now?

Like the old soldiers in the barracks song quoted by General Douglas MacArthur in his farewell speech, most old ideas in corporate finance never seem to die. But unlike old warriors, many notions have a way of hanging around way past their prime.Indeed, very little of what made news on the financ...

By David Katz • Jan. 5, 2003

Mo’ Pension Plan Blues

The three-year bear market continues to mar the pension plans of some of the oldest, largest companies.For example, earlier this week IBM. said it contributed $3.95 billion to its U.S. pension plan, enabling it to return to fully funded status, as measured by its accumulated benefit obligation (A...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 3, 2003

Ford’s New Year’s Resolution: Find Permanent CFO

Ford Motor Co. is starting off 2003 with an usual New Year’s resolution: to find a new finance chief.According to the Financial Times, the automaker is in the early stages of looking for a replacement for Allan Gilmour, whom Ford coaxed out of retirement seven months ago to take the CFO job.In th...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 2, 2003

On Board at Tyco

Jerome B. York, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Micro Warehouse and former longtime CFO of IBM Corp. and Chrysler Corp., is bucking the recent trend of senior executives backing politely away from outside board obligations.York, who already sits on the boards of Apple Computer...

By Tim Reason and Kris Frieswick • Jan. 1, 2003

In Search of Skeletons

How nervous is Corporate America these days? Ask Gordon Grand, who leads the financial officers practice at New York-based executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. For the first time in his career, he says, he’s fielding lots of requests to arrange in-depth background checks of CFO ca...

By Tim Reason • Jan. 1, 2003

After Andersen: Surviving the Demise

Only a year ago, Arthur Andersen LLP still looked like it had a chance. Despite threats by the Department of Justice and rumors that major audit clients like Delta Air Lines and News Corp. were jumping ship, the venerable 89-year-old firm seemed as unlikely to sink as the Titanic. “We will surviv...

By Alix Stuart • Jan. 1, 2003

Incentive Confrontation

One day in November 2001, Corey White showed up for work wearing a sweater. That wasn’t unusual, as autumn had turned cooler in Atlanta — home to Idea Integration Corp., the E-business consulting unit of MPS Group Inc. and White’s employer. But the senior manager wore the sweater for a different ...

By Tim Reason • Jan. 1, 2003

Really Board

Jerome B. York, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Micro Warehouse and former longtime CFO of IBM Corp. and Chrysler Corp., is bucking the recent trend of senior executives backing politely away from outside board obligations. York, who already sits on the boards of Apple Compute...

By Kris Frieswick • Jan. 1, 2003

Funding Fun House

The news that many corporate pension plans are in trouble, at least on paper, comes as no surprise. After three years of declining stock markets, many large plans cannot help but find themselves underfunded. That such shortfalls have appeared for the first time since the early 1990s and to a degr...

By Joseph McCafferty • Jan. 1, 2003

Executive Loans Being Eyed

In the runaway movie hit, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the family patriarch uses a squirt of Windex as a cure-all for all that ills his brood.But it’s going to take more that spit and polish to clean up the suspect appearance of executive loans.According to a new study “My Big Fat Corporate Loan,”...

By Lisa Yoon • Dec. 30, 2002