CFOs Open to Improving Tech Literacy

CFOs are acknowledging that technology has become increasingly important to the success of finance departments. That new awareness comes even as they admit there is a serious knowledge gap among finance executives when it comes to emerging technologies.That’s according to a survey of 930 CFOs con...

By Taylor Provost • May 30, 2013

FCPA Compliance: Let Data Do the Work

The recent news that Ralph Lauren Corp (RLC) will pay about $1.6 million to resolve Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations may at first blush look like another example of a company getting caught in a bribery scandal. In fact, RLC found the $568,000 bribes paid to an Argentinian customs ...

By John Verver • May 29, 2013

Regulatory Climate Has Tech Companies on Edge

New regulations stemming from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, along with a number of new policies from federal and state regulators, are the number one concern of U.S. technology companies, according to a new risk report from accounting and consulting firm BDO USA. ...

By Taylor Provost • May 21, 2013

Cat Bonds: A Way to Hedge Corporate Risk?

Slowly but surely, pricing for catastrophe bonds is inching to a point at which at least one broker thinks a corporation with a huge, concentrated risk — a $500 million facility on the San Andreas fault, say — may find the bonds a useful way to hedge against a natural disaster.To be sure, such a ...

By David Katz • May 16, 2013

Why CFOs Should Oversee Company Cloud Initiatives

In a competitive global economy, it is essential for CFOs to be engaged in understanding technologies and how they are influencing business strategies and presenting new risks. Cloud services support a wide range of business activities, such as, communication, collaboration, project management, s...

By Janet A. Stiven • May 1, 2013

Mortgage Insurance Crackdown: a Cautionary Tale for CFOs

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recent crackdown on alleged “kickbacks” paid by mortgage insurers to mortgage lenders should put the CFOs of companies that deal with consumers or are involved in captive insurance arrangements on alert, insurance experts say.On April 4, the CFPB, create...

By David Katz • April 19, 2013

Social-Media Analytics Offer New Insight on Risk

More businesses than ever will begin using social media to identify quickly arising intellectual-property, reputational and brand-value risks, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers survey.PwC’s Risk in Review report, based on responses from 800 global executives, found that risks related to t...

By Taylor Provost • April 15, 2013

How Sound Are Your Business Continuity Plans?

Mismanaging a potential risk exposure can cost your organization money as well as reduce your shareholder value. It can also leave your company unprepared to take advantage of business opportunities and limit growth and innovation. The more an organization understands its risk exposures and plans...

By Kristina Narvaez • April 12, 2013

Liability Insurance Spikes of 10 Percent Seen

Despite a devastating six months of storm-related property damage, CFOs and risk managers will see much stiffer rate hikes for casualty insurance than for property coverage over the next six months, according to a report released yesterday by Willis Group Holdings, the big commercial insurance br...

By David Katz • April 11, 2013

Five Steps to Smarter IT Vendor Management

The IT industry is notoriously successful at fueling the hype associated with the Next Big Thing. As a result, CFOs are finding themselves increasingly hemmed in by appealing, emerging, and potentially disruptive technologies, such as cloud computing, digital wallets or 3D printing. New technolog...

By Rob Livingstone • April 9, 2013

How to Save on Legal Costs

CFOs managing tight budgets get some help for the bottom line by taking new approaches to fee arrangements for outside legal counsel.Law firms, like companies in many industries, have struggled financially since 2008. While law-firm costs (professional salaries, rent, staff, pension obligations) ...

By Stephen P. Dunn • March 29, 2013

Finance Chiefs Tackling Tough Insurance Markets

If there ever was a question that the CFOs working for small-to-midsize companies were heavily involved in buying property-casualty insurance to cover their firm’s risk exposures, here’s an answer: 61% of such finance chiefs directly negotiate the purchasing of corporate insurance.Asked which sta...

By David Katz • March 27, 2013

It’s the Regulation

Top 10 concerns of board members and C-suite executives for 2013:1) Regulatory changes and heightened regulatory scrutiny may affect the manner in which our products or services will be produced or delivered.2) Economic conditions in markets we currently serve will significantly restrict growth o...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 21, 2013

Employers Fear Terror-Insurance Sunset

Corporate insurance buyers and insurance companies are pushing Congress to pass a bill introduced on Tuesday that would extend the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007, which is slated to sunset at the end of 2014.The current law provides a federal reinsurance backstop to ...

By Caroline McDonald • Feb. 7, 2013

Supply Breaks Slash Share Values 7%

Supply-chain disruptions cut about 7% of a firm’s shareholder value, according to research by Accenture cited in a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) report on supply-chain resiliency.As a “result of information dissipation, communication and speculations,” shareholder value typically starts slipp...

By David Katz • Feb. 6, 2013

The Cloud Success Trap

Right now, some organizations are discovering that getting their various enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems to play together nicely is far from a simple task. In fact, managing the disparate technologies, risks, and contracts that are pulled behind a wagon train of cloud providers re...

By Rob Livingstone • Jan. 30, 2013

At the Corner of Finance and Risk Management

John Phelps, the 2013 president of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, has a message for CFOs: they need to see risk management as a valuable tool that can help move a company toward its objectives while helping with cost containment. He would also like them to understand that risk can be ...

By Caroline McDonald • Jan. 18, 2013

A World of Trouble

In “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann, a young businessman visits his ailing cousin in a sanatorium in Davos, in the Swiss Alps. The businessman starts to feel unwell himself. The sanatorium’s chief doctor, who also owns the place, advises him to rest. He ends up staying for seven interminable y...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 17, 2013

How LG, Samsung Are Leading in Energy-Efficient Electronics

Companies behind this year’s new televisions, mobile phones, appliances and numerous electronics gadgets are all trying to point out each product’s unique features and innovative characteristics. They’re competing for air time, after all.But there is one sensibility they all share this year – a m...

By Heather Clancy • Jan. 17, 2013

The Cost of IT Convenience

Consumer-oriented collaboration and file-sharing tools that have gained popularity as the workforce becomes increasingly mobile are customarily cheap, even free, for employees to use. But they could be costing businesses plenty, a recent study suggests.Cloud-computing and mobile devices (smartpho...

By Taylor Provost • Jan. 9, 2013

Why Not Drop Health Insurance and Pay the Penalty?

By now, most companies are aware of the so-called play-or-pay rules under health-care reform that will be in full effect on January 1, 2014. The options for companies are well known: they can “play,” or provide an acceptable level of health insurance at an affordable cost to all employees who wor...

By Benjamin S. Lupin • Jan. 3, 2013

Protecting Information in the Cloud

The use of highly scaled, shared, and automated IT platforms—known as cloud computing—is growing rapidly. Adopters are driven by the prospects of increasing agility and gaining access to more computing resources for less money. Large institutions are building and managing private-cloud environmen...

By Chris Rezek and James Kaplan • Jan. 2, 2013

How SAP’s Sustainability Program Got Built

Less than three miles south of Stanford University, just below a slope crowned by Coast Live Oaks, sits the American office of the world’s largest business software company. From here, Chief Sustainability Officer Peter Graf directs the sustainability and corporate social responsibility efforts o...

By Liz Enochs • Dec. 26, 2012

It’s Their Phone but Your Risk

When the phrase bring your own device entered the corporate lexicon, the business world rushed to implement safeguards for employee-owned mobile gadgets and devise policies for their use. But according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’s 2013 Global State of Information Security survey, the rush has slow...

By Taylor Provost • Dec. 18, 2012

Sandy Clogs the Fuel Line

Gas shortages in the wake of Hurricane Sandy have revealed weaknesses in the Northeast gas supply chain that will require fixes from the private sector and federal and state government, according to a petroleum analyst.Fuel problems that already existed, such as obsolete laws and a shortage of re...

By Caroline McDonald • Dec. 15, 2012