Human Capital: Page 77

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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Nov. 20

    Two executives at The Walt Disney Co. will be swapping jobs. CFO Thomas Staggs, a 20-year veteran of the company, will become chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. He is replacing 23-year company veteran James Rasulo, who will become head of finance.Tim Martin has resigned from the top finan...

    By Joan Urdang • Nov. 20, 2009
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    Fiduciary Liabilities: Are You Covered?

    If you are a fiduciary for your employer’s retirement savings plan, you already know that life isn’t getting any simpler. Lawsuits against plan fiduciaries are on the upswing, and some fiduciaries have been found personally liable for plan losses under ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Securi...

    By Randy Myers • Nov. 19, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Nov. 13

    Former banker Mitchell Scherzer is the new head of finance at Hearst Corp. Most recently, he led the media practice at merchant-banking firm The Silverfern Group.Animation studio LAIKA Inc. has named Gary Raksis CFO. Formerly, he was head of strategic planning and corporate finance at DreamWorks ...

    By Joan Urdang • Nov. 13, 2009
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    A CFO’s Strategy: Verticals Within Verticals

    If not a match made in heaven, Lawson Software and its CFO, Rob Schriesheim, are at least a solid fit. To keep its footing in a market dominated by two much larger competitors, the company must have a very strategic orientation. And the finance chief, far from an accounting geek, has spent most o...

    By • Nov. 12, 2009
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    “We’ve Got to Find the Middle Ground”

    Often, when ominous noises emanate from this country’s complex financial machinery, Robert Pozen is called on for a diagnosis. The chairman of mutual-fund company MFS Investment Management and a lecturer at Harvard Business School, Pozen has a knack for delving into the nuts and bolts of tortuous...

    By Tim Reason • Nov. 10, 2009
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    Creating Buyers: The ESOP as Exit Strategy

    These are tough times for selling a privately owned business. Valuations are low as the economy struggles to emerge from its recession, and even where buyers and sellers can agree on price, it can be difficult to secure bank financing to complete a deal. That’s pushing some business owners to cre...

    By Randy Myers • Nov. 9, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Nov. 6

    Anthony Vuolo, COO of health-information provider WebMD Health Corp., has added the title of CFO. Vuolo, who previously headed finance from 2005 until taking over the top operations post in 2007, replaces Mark Funston, who is leaving the company.Pharmacy company CVS Caremark has promoted David De...

    By Joan Urdang • Nov. 6, 2009
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    Inside the Mind of a Strategic CFO

    There are two routes to becoming a corporate CFO, says Richard Fearon, vice chairman and chief financial and planning officer for Eaton Corp., a $15.4 billion industrial manufacturer.Twenty years ago, most CFOs came through the accounting and controller route, recalls Fearon. Today, “you’d probab...

    By David Katz • Nov. 5, 2009
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    Are You “Strategic”?

    In case you haven’t heard, the strategic CFO is in vogue. Again. Not that any CFOs have confessed to being less than strategic — at least, not until after they leave their companies and can comfortably complain about how their former bosses held them back. But today, as companies gear up for post...

    By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2009
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    After the Storm

    Talk about silver linings: thanks to the recession, the core skill set of the CFO has been highlighted like never before. From working-capital management to cost control to scenario planning, the CFO’s expertise has proven to be the critical factor in corporate survival. Finance chiefs across the...

    By Kate O'Sullivan • Nov. 1, 2009
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    Losing Altitude

    All good things must come to an end, and that includes the rise in CFO pay during recent years. Following a 4% increase in 2007, total direct compensation for CFOs fell 4% in 2008, thanks to the recession. Yet there was a silver lining: base salaries continued to rise at a strong clip, an indicat...

    By Russ Banham • Nov. 1, 2009
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    Apply Yourself

    Finally, there’s good news for job-hunting finance executives: you can stop worrying that your résumé will end up at the bottom of a chin-high stack on someone’s desk.That’s because hiring managers now read résumés on their BlackBerrys, deciding within 30 seconds which ones deserve attention. Tha...

    By Josh Hyatt • Nov. 1, 2009
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    The War for Talent Is Still On

    The labor market is generally teeming with available talent, yet skilled finance and accounting employees are not necessarily any easier to find. Indeed, the accounting profession shed less than 2% of its jobs between September 2008 and September 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,...

    By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2009
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    “The Worst Is Behind Us.”

    Financially, it wasn’t a great year for Cisco Systems. Net sales for the Silicon Valley giant fell by 8.7% in fiscal 2009, to $36.1 billion, and the stock fell below $14 in March before climbing back to nearly $25 in October. But strategically, it may have been a transformative year. Underscoring...

    By Edward Teach • Nov. 1, 2009
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    Recession Impressions

    By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 1, 2009
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    When CFOs Take the Top Spot

    When Greg Ebel was promoted from CFO to CEO of Spectra Energy last year, he expected his job at the $5.2 billion (in 2008 revenues) natural-gas company to be a lot tougher. Instead, Ebel has actually found his current role to be less stressful than his previous one. “The finance chief is accounta...

    By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2009
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    Stock Gains Don’t Rescue Pension Funding

    The stock market’s 15% leap in the third quarter helped out companies on two fronts: their share prices rose, and they got a good return on their own equity investments. But one thing the bull run did not do was trigger a rise in the funded status of defined-benefit pension plans.Counterintuitive...

    By • Oct. 30, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending October 30

    Ed Fitzpatrick, a senior vice president at Motorola Inc., has been appointed chief financial officer after having served as acting CFO since February and corporate controller since January. The company credits him with driving significant cost reductions and focusing the company on working capita...

    By • Oct. 29, 2009
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    A Crash Course in Working Capital

    Black & Veatch CFO Karen Daniel got started early in finance. As a high school student, Daniel, now 51, worked for the Internal Revenue Service helping to process tax returns. Maybe that’s why she likes the idea of mentoring employees in the ways of finance, right from the start.Indeed, as pa...

    By Marie Leone • Oct. 28, 2009
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    You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

    You might not expect to spot a finance chief on Capitol Hill, jawboning senators and representatives. Yet that’s where Susan Nickey of Acciona Energy North America found herself on February 11, just two days before Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as “the s...

    By David Katz • Oct. 28, 2009
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    Doing What Needs Doing: A CFO as Sales Boss

    Amid the constant switching of hats that is a big part of life for most small-company executives, formal titles mean little next to doing whatever has to be done. At TeamQuest Corp., a $25 million vendor of information-technology-optimization software, Terry Wisner is not only CFO but chief opera...

    By • Oct. 27, 2009
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    Executive Comp Rules Will Be Narrow, Pay Czar Suggested

    At a 1:30 press briefing today, Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department “pay czar” charged with setting compensation levels at companies bailed out by the federal government, is expected to lay out the Obama administration’s new pay requirements for those companies. While the orders will report...

    By Marie Leone • Oct. 22, 2009
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    Credit Suisse Bets Others Will Take Its Cue on Pay

    With its announcement Tuesday of a revamped compensation model for executive managers and director-level employees, Credit Suisse is taking something of gamble that competing banks will move in the same direction.Key elements of the plan are revolutionary in terms of financial-services industry s...

    By • Oct. 22, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending October 23

    Color science and technology company X-Rite Inc. has named Rajesh Shah CFO and secretary. He comes to the firm from Cadence Innovation LLC, where he also held the top finance spot.Andrew Levy adds the title of president to his CFO role at Allegiant Travel Co. In his new post, he succeeds Maurice ...

    By Joan Urdang • Oct. 22, 2009
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    Retirement Roulette

    The decline of defined-benefit plans and the growth of 401(k)-style defined-contribution plans has been widely reported. In 1996, both types of plans held roughly the same total assets, give or take a few billion (see chart, below). By 2007, defined-contribution plans held $3.73 trillion—oustripp...

    By Tim Reason • Oct. 21, 2009