Circuit Breaker: Enron Dumps CFO Amid Conflict Questions

Enron Corp. is set to replace CFO Andrew Fastow. As CFO.com reported in a story earlier this week, Fastow’s role in a limited partnership has raised concerns about a conflict of interest. Fastow is succeeded by Jeff McMahon, who had been serving as chairman and CEO of Enron’s Industrial Markets g...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 25, 2001

Operation Cooperation: SEC Has New Enforcement Policy

A new policy from the SEC states that the commission may not take enforcement action against a company it investigates — if the company cooperates fully with the authorities. The SEC unveiled the unprecedented policy as part of its settlement of financial-reporting fraud charges against Gisela de...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 24, 2001

Related Party Crashers? SEC Looking Into Possible Conflict on Interest at Enron

The Securities and Exchange Commission has requested that Enron provide information regarding certain related party transactions. “We welcome this request,” said Kenneth L. Lay, Enron chairman and CEO in a prepared statement. “We will cooperate fully with the SEC.”Enron, North America’s biggest b...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 22, 2001

Losing My Insurance

Even before September 11, risk managers knew they’d be in for a tough time negotiating renewals on property-casualty policies. They just didn’t know how tough.The many years of soft insurance pricing and the economic downturn were enough to make for fairly certain premium hikes in the fall and wi...

By David Katz • Oct. 19, 2001

Report: Enron CFO Reaped Millions from Partnership

Talk about the appearance of a conflict of interest. A limited partnership organized by Andrew Fastow, CFO at Enron Corp. since 1997, racked up millions of dollars in profits from transactions conducted with the energy company, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing an internal partnership ...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 19, 2001

Changes to Regulation Fair Disclosure: Why Bother?

Securities and Exchange Commissioner Laura Unger says she plans to release a report on Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) within a month, according to Reuters. The SEC rule, which requires publicly traded companies to disclose material information simultaneously to the general public and the financi...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 18, 2001

Terrorist Aftermath: Employees Give Employers High Marks

Most workers (59 percent) say their employers are doing a great job of communicating with them and addressing concerns about the company’s business prospects in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks. Only seven percent said they’d received no communication from their employers. This is accordi...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 17, 2001

Terror Attacks Could Result in $70 Billion Insurance Tab, Analyst Says

A leading insurance industry analyst says that the insurance bill from the September 11 attacks could be as high $70 billion, according to Reuters.The most realistic cost range of insured losses is now between $30 billion and $70 billion, Mark Hewlett, managing director of Moody’s European Insura...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 16, 2001

Weather Derivatives: Climate Control

Rough game on the back nine? Late for a meeting? Lousy earnings report? Blame it on the weather. Last quarter, Deere & Co., Six Flags Inc., and The TJX Cos. all pointed fingers at Mother Nature when their numbers came up short.But they and other companies may not be able to use weather condit...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 12, 2001

Longtime Safeco CFO Retires

Management at insurance company Safeco Corp. announced that CFO Rod Pierson is retiring effective December 31. Pierson has been with the Seattle-based company for more than 27 years. “I’ve enjoyed my time here at Safeco tremendously,” said Pierson. “I really feel like the company’s headed in the ...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 11, 2001

Terror Hits Bond Holdings of Two Insurers

For at least two prominent insurance companies,the Sept. 11 terror attacks will hit produce a greater loss on the investment side than on the insurance side.Prudential Financial Inc. and Principal Financial Group Inc. said that policy claims from the terrorist attacks may actually wind up less th...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 9, 2001

Insurers Link Up to Provide Aviation War-Risk Coverage

American International Group and at least 15 other insurers are linking up to provide aviation-war-risk and hijacking liability coverage totaling $1 billion per airline. The coverage kicks in above $50 million in primary coverage available in the aviation-insurance market, according to an AIG rel...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 4, 2001

Death Row for Computers?

Bob Knowles’s company destroyed 130 tons of computer hardware between January and July, and it’s on track to smelt 300 additional tons by year’s end — more than tripling last year’s mark. The CEO of Denver-based Technology Recycling attributes the dramatic rise in its business volume to new priva...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 1, 2001

Class Struggle

The equity structure of public corporations may be a lively subject for academic debate, but it’s rarely an issue in takeover battles.For Philadelphia-based cable service provider Comcast Corp., however, it could cost the company the biggest deal in its history. On July 18, the board of directors...

By Andrew Osterland • Oct. 1, 2001

Defined-Contribution Plans: the Next Big Thing after Managed Care?

With managed care apparently dead as a cost-containment tool, what can employers do to stop the steep rise of their health-benefit expenses?For a long time, CFOs could delegate such worries to their human resources people, confident that HR could use managed care to curb medical inflation.But wit...

By David Katz • Sept. 28, 2001

Disclosure: Best to Beat the Clock

Battles are won, goes the Civil War-era maxim, by he who “gets there first with the most.” The same applies to investor relations, says Mike Coke, CFO of AMB Property Corp.In 1999 the San Francisco-based real estate investment trust (REIT) reported its results a full month after the close of the ...

By Tim Reason • Sept. 25, 2001

Desperate Times: Insurers Likely to Receive Aid

Following the large financial losses incurred by the insurers as a result of the September 11 attacks, Congress is considering legislation that would offer tax relief for the insurance industry.For example, the bill would remove barriers to mergers and give some insurers a tax break by allowing t...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 21, 2001

Robert Herdman Named SEC’s Top Accountant

The Securities and Exchange Commission named Robert Herdman, a former senior partner with Ernst & Young, as its new top accountant.Herdman will oversee and direct all of the commission’s accountants and accounting-related efforts, and communicates with national and international accounting co...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 20, 2001

Changing Flight Patterns

On the day before the terror attacks, many CFOs were looking to cut the costs of corporate travel through such methods as streamlining expense reporting and cutting out travel agents. Now, however, with the new knowledge that a commercial jet can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction, finan...

By Jennifer Caplan • Sept. 19, 2001

Come January, Expect Premium Premiums

Last week the National Association of Insurance Commissioners estimated that insurance companies and reinsurers will have to pay out about $10 billion in claims stemming from the recent terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.$10 billion is not exactly pocket change. It may not exactly ...

By John Goff • Sept. 19, 2001

Aon, Marsh Search for Their Missing

Marsh and Aon, the two top commercial insurance brokers, were still searching for their missing six days after the terror attacks destroyed the companies’ offices in the World Trade Center.In a statement issued Monday, Jeffrey Greenberg, chairman of Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC), said were...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 17, 2001

Safe at Home: Virtual Annual Meetings

As the newly hired director of finance and investor relations for Inforte, a technology consultancy in Chicago, Tami Kamarauskas wanted to bring some innovative thinking to her post. This past spring she got her chance by running the company’s annual meeting with no worries over coffee, doughnuts...

By Karen Bannan • Sept. 15, 2001

SEC Wants Better Segment Reporting

Make room, earnings management. Despite recent reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission is intensifying its crackdown on accounting fraud, agency officials are warning that their investigative spotlight may now also be trained on disclosure issues.In March, Robert Bayless, chief accoun...

By Tim Reason • Sept. 3, 2001

Insulated from Asbestos?

Twenty years ago, litigation costs related to asbestos in its joint compound product cost USG Corp. about $12 million a year. Ten years ago, that was still true. This year, however, is a different story. “We’d paid out $114 million this year and, had we not filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protect...

By Russ Banham • Sept. 1, 2001

E-mail Monitoring

In her opinion in Fraser v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. et al., Judge Anita B. Brody of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled that because the company accessed Richard Fraser’s E-mail from the message storage system after it had been read by its intended recip...

By Joan Urdang • Sept. 1, 2001