HP’s CFO Speaks on the Cloud, Shadow IT, and Tumultuous Times at HP

In its most recent 10-K filing, Hewlett-Packard, number 11 among the 2011 Fortune 500, lists among its business risks “the growing demand for an increasing array of mobile computing devices” as well as the “development of cloud-based solutions,” both of which could “reduce demand for some of our ...

By David Rosenbaum • Jan. 12, 2012

Getting In with the Grid

Short of turning off the lights at night, few CFOs get involved with corporate energy management efforts. At EnerNOC, which recruits companies to participate in demand-response programs and become more energy-efficient in other ways, only 2% of the firm’s 50,000 customer contacts have “finance” i...

By Alix Stuart • Dec. 16, 2011

Five Ways to Revitalize Your Supply Chain

With a new year fast approaching, there is no better time to think about new ways to strategically leverage your supply chain. To begin, we must learn to think beyond order fulfillment and meeting customer demand and consider instead how new-product introduction, improved business performance, an...

By Shawn Casemore • Dec. 12, 2011

The Data Sovereignty Minefield

Most, but not all, of the world’s leading cloud providers — Salesforce, Amazon, Google, Rackspace, et al. — are hosted in the United States. This means that data contained in U.S.-hosted clouds is subject to U.S. laws governing security and privacy, which further means that the laws of the United...

By Rob Livingstone • Nov. 8, 2011

To Err Is Human . . . and Punishable by the SEC

If you ran a chronically underfunded department that was part of an organization in urgent need of across-the-board belt-tightening, would you go out of your way to take on new responsibilities with your limited resources? I doubt it.But according to recent media reports, the Securities and Excha...

By Russell G. Ryan • Nov. 1, 2011

Risks of a Model Still Maturing

If one were to swallow the cloud-computing hype whole, its adoption in the enterprise is inevitable. It will lower IT costs and speed up IT delivery and business-project implementations. It will transform IT as we know it, all at the flick of a switch. However, back on planet Earth, the volatile ...

By Rob Livingstone • Oct. 17, 2011

Garbage Out, Trouble In

What should you do with your old computers? It’s not always clear. Federal regulations on recycling electronics have been historically lax, but new state laws are cropping up across the country. At least 25 states have enacted their own regulations regarding the disposal of computer hardware cont...

By Marielle Segarra • Sept. 21, 2011

Cloud Control

A recent Ponemon Institute study reports that a significant majority of 127 cloud-computing service providers surveyed believe it is their customers’ responsibility to secure the cloud, not theirs.Or, as Andrew Schrader, national sales director of e-mail hosting and services cloud provider AppRiv...

By David Rosenbaum • Sept. 1, 2011

Debt-Ceiling Distress

The federal debt-ceiling drama could affect companies in a number of ways, if Congress doesn’t raise the government’s credit limit soon. And while most CFOs are watching and waiting, a handful of public companies have been spelling out those ways in their recent filings with the Securities and Ex...

By Alix Stuart • July 29, 2011

Any Interest in Interest?

Among the many regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act is a rare gift for companies that becomes effective today: the ability of banks to pay interest on business checking accounts. Previously, banks were prohibited from offering interest on these accounts under a decades-old rule called Regulation Q. ...

By Sarah Johnson • July 21, 2011

How Western Union Smooths Out Risk

Western Union, the 160-year-old money transfer and payments company, operates across 200 countries and territories through 450,000 agents. Its consumer customers are largely migrant workers sending earnings back to their family in their home country. So changes in employment levels worldwide, tig...

By Vincent Ryan • July 18, 2011

Creating a Culture of Compliance

Cell-phone markets in Central America and Southeast Asia were booming early in the decade, and Alcatel SA paid dearly to get in on the action, in more ways than one.The Paris telecommunications giant doled out $8 million in bribes to “consultants” (including a well-connected perfume distributor i...

By Kimberly Blanton • July 15, 2011

Sources of Misery

As a compliance manager at TriQuint Semiconductor, John Sharp has spent much of the past year focused on one little-known compliance rule before it goes into effect. To satisfy it, he must query hundreds of suppliers to figure out the origin of some 450 materials used in his company’s products. I...

By Sarah Johnson • July 15, 2011

Fuel Intentions

With the price of fuel climbing about 30% from January to early June, it’s small wonder that 80% of finance chiefs reported in the most recent Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey that high oil prices are hurting their companies (see “Treading Water“).Finance executives hav...

By Alix Stuart • July 15, 2011

Pushing Back on Proxy Firms

When the votes started coming in, Lakeland Industries CFO Gary Pokrassa was taken aback. After all, the ballot for his company’s annual meeting was tiny and routine. It didn’t contain any questions about executive compensation, since Lakeland is a smaller company, not yet subject to the say-on-pa...

By Sarah Johnson • July 12, 2011

U.K. Bribery Act Goes into Effect

A law going into effect July 1 potentially raises the personal liability of U.S.-based CFOs whose companies do business in the United Kingdom. The U.K. Bribery Act builds off of the 33-year-old U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and is expected to have a broad reach.Violators could face up...

By Sarah Johnson • July 1, 2011

U.K. Bribery Act Goes into Effect

A law going into effect July 1 potentially raises the personal liability of U.S.-based CFOs whose companies do business in the United Kingdom. The U.K. Bribery Act builds off of the 33-year-old U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and is expected to have a broad reach.Violators could face up...

By Sarah Johnson • July 1, 2011

Mining an Emerging Market

Winston Churchill allegedly said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Daniel Carlson and the investors in Colombia Clean Power & Fuels fall in the second slot. Carlson is the former CFO and now a director of Colombia Cl...

By Vincent Ryan • June 27, 2011

Expect to Pay Higher Pension Premiums

Companies that offer defined-benefit pension plans to employees will likely see their premiums rise again. The prospect has been suggested in the ongoing discussions on Capitol Hill over the U.S. government’s financial problems.“Unfortunately, since the PBGC’s deficit is going up, [companies’] pr...

By Sarah Johnson • June 24, 2011

How to Manage Risk Management

Risk management is not just about managing financial risks, such as risks relating to currency movements or changes in the price of commodities. It’s not just about managing the risk of failing to comply with laws and regulations. It’s not just about the risk of errors in the financial statements...

By Norman Marks • June 15, 2011

Risk Managers’ Outlook Improves, Somewhat

Risk managers have loosened up a bit. Emphasis on “a bit.”The financial crisis is still fresh in memory, and they have plenty of worries to keep them up at night. But a fairly new index that measures risk managers’ concerns has declined since last year, suggesting their optimism is growing.For no...

By Sarah Johnson • June 10, 2011

Supreme Court Eases Way for Class Action

A new U.S. Supreme Court decision makes it slightly harder for companies in some states to push back against securities lawsuits becoming classified as class actions. In a unanimous decision on Monday, the justices rejected a lower court’s decision that Halliburton shareholders could not sue the ...

By Sarah Johnson • June 8, 2011

A World of Risk

Even as specialty chemical products manufacturer H.B. Fuller grew sales in Europe, India, the Middle East, and Africa to 30% of its total revenue last year, it also had to deal with growth of a different kind — the groundswell of political opposition to Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.That turmoil ...

By Vincent Ryan • June 1, 2011

Giving Shareholders More Say

After a decade of conceding on various shareholder demands (majority voting, annual director elections, expanded disclosures) and nearly one year after the Dodd-Frank Act gave investors a say on pay, companies are rethinking how they communicate with shareholders — and whether they should do it m...

By Sarah Johnson • June 1, 2011

Risks for Retailers: A New Top 10

Retailers are less worried about consumer spending these days, suggesting that their confidence level has risen from the doldrums, according to a recent review of regulatory filings by BDO USA.The accounting firm found that concern over consumer confidence and spending has fallen out of retailers...

By Sarah Johnson • May 31, 2011