Human Capital: Page 90

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    Hired: CFO; Spending Limit: $700 Billion

    Veteran federal CFO Thomas Bloom has been appointed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as interim finance chief of the newly created Office of Financial Stability. Bloom currently is CFO for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.According to the OCC, Bloom will leave his current job for ...

    By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 9, 2008
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    A Mentor Makes a Career

    How do you become the CFO of a public company at age 35, despite never having imagined it, let alone actively pursued it? One way is by having a champion who believes in you even more than you believe in yourself. And it doesn’t hurt, by the way, if that champion is one of the business world’s mo...

    By • Oct. 9, 2008
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending October 10

    • Bruce Kiddoo has been promoted to CFO and principle accounting officer for Maxim Integrated Products after serving as vice president of finance since August 2007. Kiddoo replaces Alan Hale, who was brought on to lead the company through a complicated financial restatement. • GenomeQuest has hir...

    By Kate Plourd • Oct. 9, 2008
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    Executive Blues: Search Prospects Fade

    The economic slowdown is taking a toll even on the usually buoyant confidence of executive recruiters. An index that gauges just that — sampling how they feel about hiring prospects for the ensuing six months — slipped to a level that suggests there will be a decline in search assignments. Accord...

    By Stephen Taub • Oct. 7, 2008
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    The Bear Ate My Pension: $2 Trillion Worth

    Pension plans in the U.S. have lost as much as $2 trillion during the current bear market, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It notes that Federal Reserve data suggest the decline in the value of financial assets cost pension funds roughly $1 trillion — almost 10 percent o...

    By Stephen Taub • Oct. 7, 2008
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    Pension Plan Quality Is Withering

    A new study finds that the ratio of pension plan assets to liabilities has moved from overfunded to underfunded.According to an analysis by Mercer, the overall plan ratio was 104 percent at the end of 2007, but fell to 97 percent at the end of the third quarter. As a result, the $60 billion surpl...

    By Stephen Taub • Oct. 7, 2008
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    Making a Connection

    Less than a quarter of employees in Europe are “engaged” in, or satisfied with, their jobs, according to a study by consultancy BlessingWhite. Worryingly, nearly the same percentage of workers are “disengaged.” In finance, the ranks of the engaged are barely bigger than those of the disengaged, p...

    By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 7, 2008
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    Call of Duty

    It is often said that business is war. If so, a stint in the armed forces should benefit senior executives.This may be one of the reasons that Vattenfall recently recruited Dag Andresen as its new CFO. Andresen joined the Swedish utility last month, following seven years at banking group Nordea. ...

    By Gabor Taroczy • Oct. 6, 2008
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    Accepted Abroad

    Bedi Singh may have grown up in India and studied in the UK, but it’s the call of Hollywood that has defined his finance career. His appointment in May as CFO of MGM, the iconic film production and distribution company, follows stints as the finance chief at News Corporation’s Fox Filmed Entertai...

    By John Zhu • Oct. 6, 2008
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    Pension-plan Funding Levels Slide

    The global plunge in the financial markets has caused the average funded status of pension plans for U.S.-based S&P-500 companies to fall to 92 percent, from 99 percent at the beginning of the year, according to Merrill Lynch estimates. On average, pension-plan asset returns are down 11.6 per...

    By Stephen Taub • Oct. 6, 2008
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    Crude Profits

    “Because it is my first conference call, let me introduce myself,” said a voice on the other end of the line. “You can call me Patrick.” This casual introduction marked a changing of the guard at the top of corporate finance in Europe. Analysts on the August conference were hearing from Patrick d...

    By Jason Karaian • Oct. 3, 2008
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    Marriott CFO: Thousands of Jobs Ride on Bailout

    Pass the bailout bill — now. That was the message to Congress from Marriott International CFO Arne Sorenson, during a conference call with investors.He said that if a comprehensive stabilization plan is not passed very soon, the resulting credit squeeze could threaten business in the hotel indus...

    By Stephen Taub • Oct. 2, 2008
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending October 3

    • ConocoPhillips promoted John Carrig from executive vice president of finance CFO to president and chief operating officer. He will continue to report to CEO Jim Mulva. Replacing him at the finance helm will be Sig Cornelius, currently senior vice president of planning, strategy, and corporate ...

    By Kate Plourd and Gabor Taroczy • Oct. 2, 2008
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    Discontent Runs High

    Fewer than one-third of employees in North America are actually “engaged” in, or satisfied with, their job, according to a recent study by consulting firm BlessingWhite, while 19 percent are fully disengaged. Bad news for CFOs: of the 10 departments surveyed, finance came in next to last, with on...

    By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 1, 2008
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    Comp Rx: Kill Employment Contracts?

    Employment contracts for CEOs and other senior executives were not very common until about 20 years ago. And according to a noted compensation expert, investors’ interests would be served well by a return to the old way.Excessive executive pay could be limited by a simple but radical change: the ...

    By • Oct. 1, 2008
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    Can Ex-CFOs Save Freddie & Fannie?

    When Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson orchestrated the government’s historic takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he tapped two ex-CFOs to head up the struggling government-sponsored enterprises. Herbert Allison will be in charge of Fannie Mae, while David Moffett will be the top executive at ...

    By Stephen Taub • Oct. 1, 2008
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    Enron: Another Final Chapter

    Former Enron shareholders got a little payback last month when a federal judge approved the distribution of $7.2 billion in settlements. Like so much else about Enron, the case is historic, representing the largest settlement ever in U.S. securities litigation, according to the Securities Class A...

    By Stephen Taub • Oct. 1, 2008
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    Leaving Home

    After 25 years at General Electric Capital Corp., Keith Helming was ready to fulfill his career goal and become a public-company CFO — even if it meant relocating. So in 2006, he moved across the Atlantic to become the finance chief of Aercap, an Amsterdam-based aviation lessor. Then owned by a p...

    By Kate Plourd • Oct. 1, 2008
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    MasterCard’s Martina Hund-Mejean

    At first glance, MasterCard’s core business model would seem enviable: it collects a fee on every payment it processes. But while Martina Hund-Mejean, who became CFO last year, appreciates “the high profitability of this sector,” she’s quick to add a cautionary note: “We can never put our head in...

    By Avital Louria Hahn • Oct. 1, 2008
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    Benefits: Adult Education

    If you want to offer employees an inexpensive benefit that will foster loyalty and boost productivity, consider a navigation system. No, not a GPS, but a tool that will guide them in making a host of decisions about everything from tuition-reimbursement programs to 401(k) strategies to consumer-d...

    By Josh Hyatt • Oct. 1, 2008
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    A Chicken and Nest-Egg Problem

    Most CFOs think that offering employees a 401(k) plan is not only a necessary part of doing business but “the right thing to do,” according to a recent survey of more than 200 finance executives by CFO Research Services (in collaboration with Charles Schwab Co.). Getting employees to participate,...

    By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2008
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    The Bailout Proposal Is Vague on Exec Pay

    As lawmakers promised, the discussion draft of the proposed bailout bill now making its way through Congress contains tough talk about compensation limits covering the top five executives at financial firm that sells distressed assets to the government. But it is a very unspecific sort of talk.No...

    By • Sept. 29, 2008
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    Critics Call Out Bailout Plan’s Exec-Pay Provisions

    The bill to allow the federal government to bail out financial institutions laden with toxic debt included a compensation rule that would have elevated finance chiefs to the same “covered executive” status as CEOs, disallowing tax deductions on portions of their pay. The bill was voted down by ...

    By Alan Rappeport • Sept. 29, 2008
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    Wall Street Wallets to Get Whacked

    Even when Wall Street is down, the bond sellers and other revenue producers still have to get paid. For 2008, though, financial-services firms are expected to decrease bonus pools by 40 percent to 50 percent from last year. Since the bonus represents the vast majority of annual income for most of...

    By • Sept. 26, 2008
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    CFOs on the Move: Week Ending September 26

    • Sallie Krawcheck, the head of Citigroup’s Global Wealth Management operation and the company’s former CFO, is the latest of many senior-level departures from Citi. She was said to be leaving to pursue other opportunities. • The online brokerage E-Trade has named former Pitney Bowes CFO Bruce ...

    By Gabor Taroczy and Kate Plourd • Sept. 25, 2008