Human Capital: Page 83

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    Memo to CFOs: Don’t Trust HR

    Addressing a crowd of about 300 financial executives this morning, a professor of human resources soundly denounced the corporate HR profession for being mostly unable to provide analytics that are useful in making workforce decisions that build economic value.Most companies today spend too littl...

    By • March 10, 2009
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    Hiring Standstill: It Could Be Worse

    As job cut announcements continue — United Technologies said today that it expects to cut 11,600 workers — staffing firm Manpower Inc. released a new survey that concludes that the majority of U.S. companies plan to hold employee levels steady until they get a better read on consumer demand. Furt...

    By Stephen Taub • March 10, 2009
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    Unemployment Shoots Up, with a Slim Silver Lining

    The unemployment rate surged to 8.1 percent in February as 651,000 people lost their jobs, the Labor Department announced Friday morning. That figure does not include people who have given up looking for work altogether, a group that has doubled in size over the past month.The Labor Department al...

    By Stephen Taub • March 6, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending March 6

    Lehman Brothers Holdings has named William Fox CFO. Fox replaces David Coles, a managing director at the advisory company Alvarez & Marsal who has been serving as CFO since late September. Fox, who is also a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal, specializes in turnarounds. He has been s...

    By Kate Plourd • March 5, 2009
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    Economic Ills Stem On-the-job CFO Training

    We may be at the point where we no longer say that the turnover rate of CFOs is high at large companies. The pace, formerly considered brisk, has become the new normal.For the past two full years and, generally, the quarters within them, the amount of churn at Fortune 1000 companies has stayed re...

    By • March 5, 2009
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    Is Option Repricing Making a Comeback?

    As annual meeting time rolls around, more shareholders are finding companies asking them to approve proposals to reprice or exchange stock options that have slipped underwater.While repricings were popular in the years following the Internet bubble burst, shareholders more recently have had great...

    By Kate Plourd • March 5, 2009
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    Leadership in Finance: China Wind’s Leo Wang

    As the CFO of China Wind Systems, a small U.S.-based company that makes forged rolled rings – an essential part of wind turbine gearboxes – for companies in China, Leo Wang is well acquainted with two of the biggest potential growth engines in the currently growth-challenged world.On one hand, th...

    By David Katz • March 3, 2009
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    What CEOs Want

    It’s unusual to come across debt issues, dividend in­creases and share buybacks much these days. And even more unusual to see a company doing all three. But that’s what Dutch telecom group KPN has been up to in recent months.“Our consistency is a great value,” claims its CEO, Ad Scheepbouwer. Tha...

    By Jason Karaian • March 2, 2009
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    The Next Stage

    Have you mastered your job? Are you an expert in your subject matter? Do you work independently, show initiative, and take charge of projects?If so, you’re on your way to becoming an effective leader, according to Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman, who outline the “core rules” of lea...

    By Kate O'Sullivan • March 1, 2009
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    “This Is the World Series for Finance.”

    As Pepsi Bottling Group marks the 10th anniversary of its initial public offering this month, times couldn’t be tougher. Although the beverage company’s revenues have nearly doubled in the past decade, research on consumer spending during past recessions has found that carbonated beverages top th...

    By Kate Plourd • March 1, 2009
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    Layoff Train Loses Some Steam

    For the third straight week, only a small number of companies announced more than 1,000 planned job cuts, which is what qualifies as good news these days.Even the headline-grabbing announcement that JPMorgan Chase is eliminating 14,000 jobs — 12,000 stemming from the integration of Washington Mut...

    By Stephen Taub • Feb. 27, 2009
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    In Management Shuffle, Yahoo! CFO Dealt Out

    The management structure that Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz is designing to make the Internet giant “faster on its feet” won’t include CFO Blake Jorgensen.As part of a major reorganization under Bartz, who came to the company last month, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo said in a terse Securities and Excha...

    By Kate Plourd • Feb. 26, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending February 27

    Nanometrics has hired James Moniz as its CFO. Since April 2008 he had served as CFO of Photon Dynamics, Inc. He was also treasurer, CFO, and assistant secretary at Nextest Systems, and vice president and CFO of Millennia Vision. The casual dining restaurant chain DineEquity, Inc. has hired Jack T...

    By John Zhu and Kate Plourd • Feb. 26, 2009
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    Financial Woes Spur Some Short-term Hiring

    While millions of jobs are being lost in the abysmal economy, a lower-profile trend involves companies — especially smaller ones — hiring temporary workers in response to the crisis.Employers that are determined to keep fixed-staffing costs at a bare minimum may need to expand their work forces f...

    By • Feb. 25, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move (Europe): Week Ending February 20

    German engineering company Schaeffler’s CFO Thomas Hetmann will leave the company by mutual agreement once his responsibilities have been transferred to a successor. Mary Jo Gresens, CFO from 1999 to 2006, will return to the company to act as a consultant in coming months.Real estate firm DTZ has...

    By John Zhu • Feb. 20, 2009
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    Vague Comp Limits Are Paralyzing Banks

    While the economic stimulus package was signed into law on Tuesday, it left unanswered many questions about how one of its most talked-about principles — limits on compensation for executives of firms that take federal bailout funds — will be applied in practice.Financial institutions that partic...

    By • Feb. 19, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending February 20

    John Killian will replace Doreen Toben as CFO of Verizon Communications. Toben last week announced plans to retire from the company in mid-2009. Killian moves over from his role as president of Verizon Business, which he has led since it was formed in 2006. Savient Pharmaceuticals had terminate...

    By Kate Plourd • Feb. 18, 2009
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    Profiting from Happiness

    Are firms with cheery workers more likely to make investors smile? According to Alex Edmans of Wharton, a business school, choosing to invest in a portfolio comprising companies that have happy employees (as measured using Fortune‘s “100 best companies to work for,” most recently published in Jan...

    By Economist Staff • Feb. 18, 2009
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    Media Chiefs Ask CFOs Where to Wield the Axe

    Chief executive officers in the media and entertainment industry are looking to their chief financial officers to show them how to cut costs, according to a survey released today by Ernst & Young.Of 27 M&E corporate chieftains responding to the survey, 30 percent said they are demanding “...

    By David Katz • Feb. 17, 2009
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    Manners Maketh the Businessman

    When Andrew Chadwick-Jones, a management consultant with Oliver Wyman in London, went to pitch to a private-equity firm late last year, he expected the usual: about 20 minutes and a brisk attitude. He was surprised to find the private-equity people instead explaining their strategy, offering intr...

    By Economist Staff • Feb. 17, 2009
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    Over Here, Over There, Job Cuts Everywhere

    There was the usual round of sizable layoffs this week, but this time, most of the headline-grabbing cuts were made by overseas companies, led by automakers.The biggest U.S. workforce reduction was also announced by a car company: General Motors said it will shed 10,000 white-collar jobs.The Wall...

    By Stephen Taub • Feb. 13, 2009
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending February 13

    Textron CFO Ted French has left after nearly nine years at the defense company. Textron Financial Corporation now reports to the company’s COO and president Scott C. Donnelly. French was chairman and CEO of TFC as well as the parent company’s finance chief. Senior vice president and controller Ri...

    By John Zhu and Kate Plourd • Feb. 12, 2009
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    Is It the End for Big Director Pay Raises?

    With executive compensation being thoroughly vetted — and not just at companies that take federal bailout money — will closer scrutiny of directors’ pay be far behind?Maybe not, though until recently, few shareholders have objected to board compensation, despite the fact that it has risen steadil...

    By • Feb. 10, 2009
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    Paying the Piper

    Creating political theatre by cracking down on executive pay may prove to be the easy part for Barack Obama. Coming up with a sensible and effective way to compensate senior managers at companies bailed out by the American taxpayer will be far trickier-and the new president’s first effort, unveil...

    By Economist Staff • Feb. 9, 2009
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    Delphi: No Health Care for Retirees

    Delphi Corp. is seeking permission to cancel health-care and life-insurance benefits for current and future salaried retirees, the Associated Press reports.The bankrupt auto-parts supplier told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York it wants to cut the benefits to 15,000 retirees as soon as April ...

    By Stephen Taub • Feb. 6, 2009