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

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