How Many Investors Is Too Many?

Last January, following a $1.5 billion Goldman Sachs private placement, Facebook announced that it would start publicly disclosing its financials in 2012. The reason: the company expected to trigger the Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-standing requirement that private companies with 500...

By Sarah Johnson • May 17, 2011

How Many Investors Is Too Many?

Last January, following a $1.5 billion Goldman Sachs private placement, Facebook announced that it would start publicly disclosing its financials in 2012. The reason: the company expected to trigger the Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-standing requirement that private companies with 500...

By Sarah Johnson • May 17, 2011

Can CFOs Be Whistle-blowers?

Draft legislation would exclude CFOs from collecting a whistle-blower bounty created under the Dodd-Frank Act. The law passed last year aimed to give witnesses to securities fraud a monetary incentive — starting at $100,000 — to report wrongdoing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under a...

By Sarah Johnson • May 13, 2011

Modeling Disaster

“It’s surprising anyone can get any sleep,” says Bill Keogh, president of Eqecat, a global catastrophe risk modeling provider and consultancy. “There’s a lot out there that we don’t know about.”Keogh is referring to the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. Aside from its ...

By David Rosenbaum • May 2, 2011

Working on Waste

In the coming months, Congress will give another go at passing a law restricting how electronic devices are recycled. Previous attempts at establishing a nationwide stance for preventing the transfer of the growing heap of TVs, cell phones, and computers from the United States to developing natio...

By Sarah Johnson • April 22, 2011

Insurance Prices Poised to Rise, Slowly

Not surprisingly, the destruction of lives, homes, and buildings from last month’s historic earthquake and tsunami outside Tokyo has hit the earnings figures of insurance companies and, more significantly, reinsurance companies.Buyers of commercial insurance in the United States will likely not s...

By Sarah Johnson • April 20, 2011

Insurance Prices Poised to Rise, Slowly

Not surprisingly, the destruction of lives, homes, and buildings from last month’s historic earthquake and tsunami outside Tokyo has hit the earnings figures of insurance companies and, more significantly, reinsurance companies.Buyers of commercial insurance in the United States will likely not s...

By Sarah Johnson • April 20, 2011

At BP, the Cleanup Continues

Nearly one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and releasing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP is still cleaning up the mess on nearby beaches — as well as its reputation with investors.The latter activity was evident on Thursday at the compa...

By Sarah Johnson • April 14, 2011

Budget Fight Threatens IPO Pipeline

Among the multitudes who are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the budget showdown on Capitol Hill are the finance chiefs of companies waiting to go public. Should lawmakers fail to agree on a fiscal 2011 budget by the Friday night deadline, the federal government would largely shut down — and so...

By Sarah Johnson • April 7, 2011

The Price of Uncertainty

When Catherine D’Amico, CFO of Monro Muffler, sought relief from volatile commodity prices, she found it in the form of tires — some $8 million worth.The automotive-services firm upped its total inventory by 11% between March and December of 2010, to almost $100 million. Two-thirds of that increa...

By Sarah Johnson • April 1, 2011

Disaster Averted?

Thanks to the global financial meltdown, we now know what a “black swan” is. But do we know from which direction the next one will swim into view, and what to do when it does?Black swans are, of course, those highly improbable but painfully consequential events that strike from the blue — or from...

By Russ Banham • April 1, 2011

Business Failures Down, but Not Done

Bankruptcy has been in the headlines recently, thanks to the high-profile Chapter 11 filings of companies such as gourmet-food retailer Harry & David and bookseller Borders. But business failures overall have been declining, according to the most recent data from Dun & Bradstreet. Formal ...

By Alix Stuart • March 30, 2011

Rallying ‘Round the Red Flags

For individuals, identity theft typically involves a modest financial loss and a large headache in denying that they purchased high-end home-theater systems and custom Jaguars.For a company, the consequences are more dire. TJ Maxx, the poster child for mass credit-card theft, estimated the overal...

By Carol E. Curtis • March 1, 2011

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fraud

As a convicted felon, Sam E. Antar, the former CFO for the now-defunct consumer-electronics chain Crazy Eddie, no doubt has regrets. Among them: he is no longer in the game at a time when corporate fraud is experiencing a resurgence. “If I were out of retirement today, I’d be bigger than Bernie M...

By Laton McCartney • March 1, 2011

Rallying ‘Round the Red Flags

For individuals, identity theft typically involves a modest financial loss and a large headache in denying that they purchased high-end home-theater systems and custom Jaguars.For a company, the consequences are more dire. TJ Maxx, the poster child for mass credit-card theft, estimated the overal...

By Carol E. Curtis • March 1, 2011

Fat Cats and Fall Guys

If your CEO is living high off the hog, it could be a real problem — for you.Two recent cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission put CFOs in the crosshairs for alleged abuse of corporate perks by their bosses. The SEC argues in both cases that the CFOs failed to properly report or ...

By Kimberly Blanton • March 1, 2011

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fraud

As a convicted felon, Sam E. Antar, the former CFO for the now-defunct consumer-electronics chain Crazy Eddie, no doubt has regrets. Among them: he is no longer in the game at a time when corporate fraud is experiencing a resurgence. “If I were out of retirement today, I’d be bigger than Bernie M...

By Laton McCartney • March 1, 2011

Going Public by Accident

Facebook has long been associated with a blurring of the line between private and public. How many people, after all, have joined the social-networking site in order to tighten their ties to an inner circle of friends and family, only to find the details of their Bruce Springsteen obsession or pi...

By Russ Banham • March 1, 2011

Commodity Prices: High and Volatile

For Catherine D’Amico, CFO of Monro Muffler, relief from the uncertainty of commodity prices came in the form of tires — some $8 million worth.The automotive-service company upped its total inventory by 11% between March and December of 2010, to $95.6 million. Two-thirds of that increase went tow...

By Sarah Johnson • March 1, 2011

Fat Cats and Fall Guys

If your CEO is living high off the hog, it could be a real problem — for you.Two recent cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission put CFOs in the crosshairs for alleged abuse of corporate perks by their bosses. The SEC argues in both cases that the CFOs failed to properly report or ...

By Kimberly Blanton • March 1, 2011

Are Lower Swipe Fees Still in the Cards?

The Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment, which calls for the Federal Reserve to cap the interchange or “swipe” fees that financial institutions charge merchants for debit- and credit-card approvals, has provoked no shortage of controversy. Consumer-facing businesses have roundly cheered the measure...

By Alix Stuart • Feb. 28, 2011

Deal-Breaker: Fear of the FCPA

For companies shifting to growth mode after months of cost-cutting, expanding into emerging markets could be key, particularly through a merger or acquisition. Indeed, a third of M&A activity in 2010 was conducted in emerging markets, according to Thomson Reuters, marking a 76% increase over ...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 15, 2011

Any More Bright Ideas?

As the economy has struggled, the calls for America to pull itself out of its recessionary funk with an intensified commitment to innovation have grown louder by the day. Has America lost its R&D edge? Has the overall pace of invention slowed, and, if so, by how much? New figures regarding th...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 1, 2011

The Faces Are New, but the Agenda Is Not

Just in time for The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, CFOs have some new names to learn as two major regulators welcome fresh leadership. In December, the Financial Accounting Foundation, parent of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), named Leslie Seidman as ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Feb. 1, 2011

Any More Bright Ideas?

As the economy has struggled, the calls for America to pull itself out of its recessionary funk with an intensified commitment to innovation have grown louder by the day. Has America lost its R&D edge? Has the overall pace of invention slowed, and, if so, by how much? New figures regarding th...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 1, 2011