Dawn of the Jumbo Deductible

It’s payback time for employees. Or at least, that’s what executives at managed-care companies appear to be thinking.Caught between double-digit increases in the cost of medical care — and employer carping over premium hikes — commercial health insurers have started to push some of the costs back...

By David Katz • Nov. 30, 2001

Help Not Wanted: CFOs Will Do Less Hiring Next Year

Chief financial officers expect to slow down the hiring of accounting and finance professionals in the first quarter of 2002. This, according to the quarterly Robert Half International Financial Hiring Index, a national poll of 1,400 CFOs at businesses with 20 or more employees.Seven percent of C...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 29, 2001

Zions Elders Hire Solid Citizen as New CFO

Salt Lake City-based regional bank Zions Bancorp hired Doyle Arnold as new EVP and CFO. Arnold replaces Dale Gibbons, who resigned in June.Gibbons probably didn’t endear himself to Zions’s management when he was arrested on June 11 on charges of drug use and endangerment of a minor. Gibbons, who ...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 29, 2001

Fashion Statement: DK Announces CFO O-U-T

Executives at apparel specialist Donna Karan International Inc. announced that chief financial and operating officer Joseph Parsons resigned after nine years with the New York-based company.In a statement, the company offered no reason for Parson’s departure. Two possibilities: Donna Karan has re...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 28, 2001

Health-Benefits Costs Will Surge 15 Percent, Consultant Predicts

Health-benefit cost hikes will be steeper than originally expected for many corporate benefit plans in 2002.Consultant Watson Wyatt now expects corporate health-care-benefit costs to increase by more than 15 percent next year. The consultancy’s recent health-care cost survey of 200 employers empl...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 28, 2001

Good Bye, Good Luck, and Get a Good Lawyer

Amazon.com Inc.’s former international division CFO, Christopher Zyda, got a lawsuit as a going-away present when he recently took a job as eBay’s vice president for financial planning, analysis, and investor relations. Arguing that the new job violated his 1998 noncompete agreement, Amazon reque...

By Kris Frieswick • Nov. 27, 2001

Angry Employees Sue Enron

Two of Enron Corp.’s employees are mad as hell, and they’re vowing not to take it anymore. The meltdown in the reeling energy company’s share price has led the two workers to sue their employer, claiming Enron’s acts endangered their retirement funds.The lawsuit, filed under the Employee Retireme...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 26, 2001

Net Worked at Nortel

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 took over as CEO on November 1.The circumstanc...

By Alix Stuart • Nov. 26, 2001

Toast of the Town

“I’m an impatient man,” says Nick Rose, the group finance director of Diageo. “And so is the CEO, Paul Walsh.”Rose isn’t kidding. The two Diageo executives haven’t been in their current roles for long — Rose was appointed in June 1999, and Walsh in September 2000. But already they’ve left their m...

By Justin Wood • Nov. 22, 2001

Off Easel Street: NextMonet Finance Chief Jumps to Restoration Hardware

Kevin Shahan is the new finance chief at Restoration Hardware Inc., a specialty home furnishings and hardware retailer. Company management did not specify the reasons for replacing current CFO, Raymond Hemming.Shahan joins Restoration Hardware from NextMonet Inc., an Internet and catalog retailer...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 21, 2001

The Document People? Accounting Woes at Xerox Continue

The saga continues at Xerox Corp.Late last week managers at the copier giant, which is currently under federal investigation for alleged accounting irregularities, abruptly moved controller Gregory Tayler to the treasury post. Tayler is one of several Xerox executives named in shareholder lawsuit...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 20, 2001

Acts of God and Monsters No Longer Covered

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. used an act-of-war clause to pull out of a $500 million bond deal. Conference organizers used similar clauses to cancel hotel contracts. And in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the insurance industry — whose standardized forms consistently include act-of-war policy ex...

By Tim Reason • Nov. 19, 2001

Jerry Patava, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts

Jerry Patava is an unusual guy. Unlike many of his counterparts in the finance profession, Patava, the finance chief of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, did not take the familiar career path from C.P.A. to CFO. After earning an M.B.A. in finance from York University, Patava became a financial analyst...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 16, 2001

Shocking: Utility’s General Counsel Named CFO

Management at Digital Insight Corp. announced that CFO Kevin McDonnell resigned due to personal reasons. McDonnell’s resignation is effective April 2002. The Calabasas, California-based company has launched a search for a replacement. Meanwhile, VP of finance Michael Dunn will take over finance r...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 15, 2001

For Two Novice CFOs, a Long March in China

If good timing is crucial to success, Mark Begert and Derek Sulger have the luck of angels.Two years ago, the Americans left their bright, airy offices at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs in London to move to a dusty building at the foot of a noisy overpass in Shanghai. They traded their suits and...

By Abe De Ramos • Nov. 14, 2001

Attention Shoppers: Kmart CFO Has Left the Building

Apparently, Kmart Corp. is a very family oriented company.After less than six months on the job, Jeffrey N. Boyer has resigned as CFO of the discount retailer. Boyer made headlines in May, when he left the CFO post at Sears Roebuck and Co. for greener pastures — or in this case, bluer lights. Boy...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 13, 2001

From Here to Maternity: Mothers Work Looking for CFO

Managers at maternity-apparel retailer Mothers Work Inc. announced that CFO Michael Devine is leaving to join Coach Inc. Devine will be taking the CFO post at the New York-based accessories company effective immediately.Devine is leaving the nest to join a company that itself cut ties with parent...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 12, 2001

Check, Please: Avado CFO Leaves

Managers at Avado Brands Inc., a Madison, Georgia-based restaurant chain owner, announced that CFO and treasurer Erich Booth resigned “to pursue other interests.” Company CEO Tom DuPree will take over financial responsibilities until a permanent replacement is found.Avado Brands owns and operates...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 7, 2001

Upgrade Now? More on the Moves at AOL Time Warner

As CFO.com reported on Friday, managers at AOL Time Warner Inc. transferred CFO Mike Kelly to the chief operating officer position at AOL, the media giant’s largest revenue producer. Wayne Pace, CFO of AOL’s Turner Broadcasting Systems unit, replaces Kelly. Pace will report directly to company CE...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 6, 2001

Benchmarking Your Doctor Bills

When employers and consultants gripe about the steep rise in health-benefit costs these days, car metaphors seem to crop up an awful lot. The rate of premium increases, they say, is “accelerating.” Benefit costs, many note, are “out of alignment” with other corporate expenses. No doubt, when the ...

By David Katz • Nov. 5, 2001

Somebody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee: Management, Product Shake-ups Continue

Cary McMillan, CFO at consumer goods company Sara Lee Corp., has been chosen as the new CEO of the company’s worldwide branded-apparel business. L.M. de Kool, a Netherlands-based senior vice president at Sara Lee, will take over as the new finance chief at the parent company.Paul Lustig, the CEO ...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 5, 2001

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