The War on Drug Costs

This year, General Motors Corp. will spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.4 billion on prescription drugs for its employees and retirees. And senior managers at the world’s largest private purchaser of health care are none too happy about it.GM’s executives aren’t alone. Scores of employers ...

By Joseph McCafferty • Nov. 5, 2001

Malpractice and Best Practice

For Jim Hauseman, it was one premium hike too many.In April, InSport International, a privately held distributor of athletic clothing, received a renewal offer for the company’s health-maintenance-organization (HMO) coverage. Hauseman, CFO at InSport, says that the provider, Regence BlueCross Blu...

By David Katz • Nov. 5, 2001

Medical, Dental, Prescription Drugs: Ain’t Retirement Grand?

What a difference a few months make.Until recently, most employers were doing everything they could to keep skilled employees on the payroll. With a tight labor market, and with prized workers jumping from job to job, it made a lot more sense to try to hold onto valuable employees than replace th...

By David Katz • Nov. 5, 2001

Sue Daniels, American Red Cross

Sue Daniels is grappling with a challenge many finance managers don’t particularly have to worry about at the moment: an unprecedented spike in cash coming in. As CFO at the Southeastern Michigan chapter of the American Red Cross (the fifth-largest chapter in the country), Daniels’s biggest conce...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 2, 2001

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

When Robert Brace stepped down as finance chief of BT, the $44 billion (E46.5 billion) U.K. telecommunications giant, last October, he wasn’t out of work for long. Within weeks, the 51-year-old was named CFO at Duke Energy, a $49.3 billion U.S. power utility based in Charlotte, North Carolina.Not...

By Ian Rowley • Nov. 2, 2001

What Tech Downturn? Veritas CFO Wins Over New Investors

“Hello, this is Ken.”Ken Lonchar, that is, CFO of Mountain View, California-based Veritas Software Corp. Unlike many senior executives at much smaller companies, Lonchar actually answers his direct line. “I prefer to pick up my own phone,” he says. “I don’t like to route people through voice-mail...

By Stephen Barr • Nov. 2, 2001

Charles E. Brown, Office Depot

Barely two weeks after Bruce Nelson took over as CEO of Office Depot Inc. in July 2000, the company’s longtime CFO Barry Goldstein retired. Nelson and several headhunters immediately commenced a search to fill the vacant position. From the very beginning of the recruitment process, however, Nelso...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 1, 2001

Insurers Rethinking Risk in Riskier World

Risk managers pride themselves on their ability to model almost any potential loss to their companies. They can map out, for instance, the potential toll of an earthquake, a jury award, or a rash of carpal-tunnel injuries. They then figure out how to protect against the risk and mitigate the dama...

By David Katz • Nov. 1, 2001

Coping with Workplace Grief

Like most Americans, Plantronics Inc. CFO Barbara Scherer watched the events of September 11 on her television set, feeling helpless as the horrific scenes unfolded. And, like many finance executives, she was suddenly thrust into a new type of leadership role, one requiring emotional as well as s...

By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2001

Net Worked

Frank Dunn knows bootstrapping. The 47-year-old CFO of Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel Networks came to the company straight out of business school in 1976. After serving in virtually every division of the telecommunications equipment manufacturer, he was scheduled to take over as CEO on November ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 1, 2001

Say Goodbye to the Expat Deal

A major U.S. or European company decides to plunge into Asia. It rents offices, sends out its best people, hires a relocation company to settle them into new homes, starts marketing its services, and sends the whole board over to admire the results. Trouble is, within a few years the business mak...

By Steven Crane • Nov. 1, 2001

Ooh, Spooky, Very Spooky: CFOs Take on New Jobs

Will Franklin is moving up the ranks at Ptek Holdings, an Atlanta-based communications and data services provider. Franklin was promoted to the CFO post after serving as finance chief for the company’s conferencing unit. He replaces Pat Jones, who was not only Ptek’s CFO but also chief legal offi...

By Jennifer Caplan • Oct. 31, 2001

Employers Face Rate Health-Plan Hikes of 13 Percent to 16 Percent: Consultants

Depending on the type of plan they have, U.S. employers will face average increases of 13 to 16 percent in their health-plan costs for 2002, consultants at Hewitt Associates say.That will mark the fourth year in a row of major health care hikes and the highest boost since the early 1990s, accordi...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 30, 2001

Hunter Thomson Bags CFO from Reuters

David Turner is the new CFO at Thomson Corp’s financial division, a provider of financial information. Prior to joining Thomson Financial, Turner spent 10 years at Reuters. While at the newswire company, he held the CFO post in a number of business units, including Reuterspace. Prior to joining R...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 30, 2001

Houston, We Have a Problem: More on the Enron Shakeup

As CFO.com reported last week, Andrew Fastow, CFO of Enron Corp., has been replaced by Jeff McMahon, head of the energy producer’s industrial markets group and former corporate treasurer of its parent company. McMahon joined Enron in 1994 and spent three years in the London office as CFO of the c...

By Jennifer Caplan • Oct. 29, 2001

How General Mills Built a Finance Team of Champions

James Lawrence came to General Mills in 1998 with an impressive pedigree. Fresh from the CFO job at Northwest Airlines, he’d once been president of PepsiCola’s Asia, Middle East, and Africa operations, and he co-founded LEK, a corporate-strategy consultancy. For educational credentials, there wer...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 29, 2001

Back to Business School

To take a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) at Harvard Business School, the first exclusively graduate business school and still, on most measures, the world leader, is not cheap. Tuition fees are $30,000 or so for each of the two years; other bills and living costs add another $25...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 26, 2001

Richard Kurkowski, Spencer Stuart

When Richard Kurkowski doles out career advice, CFOs listen. Kurkowski is not only a veteran finance executive, he’s currently CFO of Spencer Stuart Inc., one of the largest privately held executive search firms in the world. Kurkowski joined the recruitment specialist in 1981, and he’s seen the ...

By Jennifer Caplan • Oct. 26, 2001

Parts is Parts? CFO at Lear Corp. Steps Down

Donald Stebbins, CFO of Lear Corp., is leaving to become EVP of the company’s operations in North and South America. Lear’s vice chairman, James Vandenberghe, will take over Stebbins’s financial responsibilities.A management shuffle is not overly surprising, given the company’s recent performance...

By Jennifer Caplan • Oct. 25, 2001

Lessons from the Top Cop of Risk

When David Viniar saw the rain of paper outside his window, he recalls, his first thought was that it looked like a ticker tape parade. Then someone ran into his office to tell him the awful truth: A plane had just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. Minutes later, a second plane s...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 25, 2001

Goodbye, Mr. Chips: AMD Finance Chief Jumps to BroadVision

Fran Barton has been named CFO at business-software vendor BroadVision Inc. Barton replaces Randall Bolten, who resigned in July after the Redwood City, California-based company reported a larger-than-expected loss in the second quarter. Around the time of Bolten’s departure, management at BroadV...

By Jennifer Caplan • Oct. 24, 2001

When Parachutes Billow

Eye-popping severance packages, like those given to former Lucent executives Richard McGinn and Deborah Hopkins, Mattel CEO Jill Barad, and former Webvan CEO George T. Shaheen, can seem staggering in light of the companies’ troubles. But the terms should shock no one who was paying attention, say...

By Kris Frieswick • Oct. 23, 2001

Mint Condition? Veteran CFO Hired at Collectors Universe

Managers at Collectors Universe Inc. named Michael Lewis CFO. Lewis had been serving as interim finance chief since Gary Patten resigned earlier this month.Before joining the Newport Beach, Calif.-based provider of services to the high-end collectibles market, Lewis was CFO of Young Presidents Or...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 22, 2001

Sticky Wicket: Aurora Foods CFO Faces Prison Time

M. Laurie Cummings, former CFO at Aurora Foods inc., and her boss, former CEO Ian R. Wilson, both pleaded guilty last month to securities fraud and other charges for manipulating Aurora’s financial statements.According to mary Jo White, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Cumming...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 22, 2001

Less Business Wanted? It Worked for AmeriCredit

The financial turmoil in the fall of 1998 alarmed more than a few corporate finance executives. But for Daniel Berce, CFO of subprime auto lender AmeriCredit, it was a full-blown, career-defining crisis.Like all specialty finance companies, AmeriCredit relies on the capital markets to fund its le...

By Andrew Osterland • Oct. 22, 2001