Herz Closes the Books on FASB Tenure

The announcement that Robert Herz would retire as chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board on October 1, two years before his term expires, came as a shock to many accounting executives. After all, they have been busy planning for the major accounting changes that have been streaming ...

By Sarah Johnson and Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2010

“I Hate CFOs Who Always Say No.”

Clothing and gear manufacturer Patagonia has always relished the challenge of a hard climb. Since its founding in 1975 by legendary outdoorsman and environmentalist Yvon Chouinard, the company has pursued a dual mission: to make a profit even as it “uses business to inspire solutions to the envir...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 1, 2010

The Calm Before Reform

You didn’t think you were going to walk away unscathed, did you?The historic Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 is now law. The 2,300-page statute takes aim at the financial-services industry, imposing a raft of new regulations and capital requirements on banks and ...

By Randy Myers • Oct. 1, 2010

When Restating Causes a Furor

Like many court opinions hinging on the business judgment rule, last week’s case of California-based Nara Bancorp ended in a simple finding that masks a complex story — and carries potential lessons for future companies facing a tough decision.Reduced to basics, the Los Angeles County state judge...

By Roy Harris • Sept. 30, 2010

From Auditing to Whistle-blowing: A Dodd-Frank Timetable

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s newly released schedule for instituting the multiple reforms of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act starts this month with interpretive guidance for standards governing audits of brokers and dealers. Then from October through year...

By Roy Harris • Sept. 24, 2010

Short-Term Debt Rule Sheds Light on SEC, Too

When the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed last week to make company reporting of short-term borrowings more transparent, the action reflected more than the seriousness of the economic damage caused by debt patterns being hidden from scrutiny. It also said something about the commission...

By Roy Harris • Sept. 23, 2010

Will New Proxy Rules Pose Board Risks?

Like all rules empowering minority shareholders, the new proxy-access regulations from the Securities and Exchange Commission present some worries for companies. But will the measures — which ease the way for dissidents to nominate board candidates and to bring proposals to a vote — necessitate c...

By Roy Harris • Sept. 22, 2010

They’ll Take Their Chances

Enterprise risk management may be popular in concept, but it is still struggling to gain traction in the real world, especially among smaller companies. According to a recent survey by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Account...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 17, 2010

Modeling What Comes Next

While other insurance companies watched their investment portfolios bleed losses during the financial crisis, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America’s balance sheet came through the period very much intact. The New York-based mutual life insurer had less than 2% of invested assets in asse...

By Vincent Ryan • Sept. 8, 2010

SEC Pushes Companies for More Risk Info

The Securities and Exchange Commission is prodding companies to provide more information about the risks they face.The regulator wants companies to give more details about potential problems in annual and quarterly financial statements, as well as proxies. Among the subjects they’d like to see ad...

By Sarah Johnson • Sept. 1, 2010

Energy Upgrades Bring Cool Savings

United Electric Controls makes temperature sensors for a variety of commercial needs, yet until now it hasn’t had much wherewithal to regulate the climate at its own 100,000 square-foot headquarters in suburban Boston.Maddeningly, the company’s manufacturing machinery, which throws off a lot of h...

By David McCann • Aug. 25, 2010

A Bright Side of the Recession

Grim as the economic downturn has been for many workers, a fair number of them may be alive because of it.In short, the wave of layoffs that started in late 2008 and lasted through 2009 meant that there were fewer workers around to get hurt. Based on preliminary results of its census of fatal wor...

By David Katz • Aug. 24, 2010

A Heightened Demand for Disclosures

The major regulatory reform law signed by President Obama last month will eventually require companies across industries to add a slew of new disclosures to their regulatory filings. Among the changes: companies will need to divulge new calculations comparing employees’ total compensation with th...

By Sarah Johnson • Aug. 18, 2010

Does It Pay to Cooperate with Regulators?

The Securities and Exchange Commission gives credit to accused wrongdoers willing to play nice during its probes. For example, in last month’s settlement agreement with Sunrise Senior Living, which it had accused of financial-reporting fraud between 2003 and 2005, the regulator implied the result...

By Sarah Johnson • Aug. 3, 2010

SEC Pushes Companies for More Risk Information

The Securities and Exchange Commission has been prodding companies in recent reviews of regulatory filings to provide more information about the risks they face.In annual and quarterly financial statements, as well as proxies, the regulator wants companies to give more details about potential pro...

By Sarah Johnson • Aug. 2, 2010

Copiers: How Great Are the Risks?

Digital copiers pose security risks that companies may not appreciate, especially smaller firms without dedicated information-security staff. But what the greatest threat is, and how high the relative risk levels are, are matters of current debate.The issue has received a lot of attention since A...

By David McCann • July 29, 2010

GE Settles Iraq Kickback Case for $23 Million

General Electric has agreed to pay $23.4 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it violated Foreign Corrupt Practices Act accounting and internal-controls provisions.Through those violations, GE enabled four of its subsidiaries to bribe Iraqi government officials “to ob...

By David Katz • July 27, 2010

Paid to Whistle

Sure, money talks. But will it persuade witnesses to securities fraud to come forward and talk, even at the risk of losing their job and reputation?Congress hopes the answer is yes. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama on Wednesday, man...

By Sarah Johnson • July 23, 2010

Have Risk-Management Cuts Gone Too Far?

Among the targets in the wave of cost cutting that hit Corporate America last year were insurance and risk-management expenses. To be sure, buyers of commercial property-casualty and workers’ compensation coverage were aided by a hotly competitive market that drove prices down. Nevertheless, risk...

By David Katz • July 16, 2010

PCAOB Ups Auditors’ Double-Checking Duties

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has proposed a rule that could help uncover corporate fraudsters’ common practice of masking the true amounts of accounts, such as receivables or cash balances.The proposal updates a 15-year-old rule that governs audit confirmations — how auditors ver...

By Sarah Johnson • July 16, 2010

Learning Too Much from History?

Odds are good your company won’t make the same risk-management mistake that BP did — if, that is, your company has recently caused a major oil spill. According to a study of 168 senior finance executives from CFO Research Services (in conjunction with Liberty Mutual Group), companies often pay di...

By 10Rule • July 15, 2010

BP’s Spillover Effect

“When you fool with trust, you fool with the capital markets.” So warned Marianne Jennings, a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University, in a speech at the Institute of Management Accountants’s annual meeting last month. She was referring to the BP oil disaster, but her o...

By Scott Leibs and Kate O'Sullivan • July 15, 2010

To 404(b), or Not to 404(b)?

Dan Crow is one of the few small-company CFOs with an auditor’s stamp on his internal controls. Getting it wasn’t as time-consuming or as costly as it would have been several years ago, when large public companies first began complying with one of the most onerous requirements of the 2002 Sarbane...

By Sarah Johnson • July 12, 2010

Spies Like…Us?

Among the 346 people who attended the CFO Rising Conference in Orlando in March this year was a prodigious networker named Donald Howard Heathfield, a man the FBI now says was a Russian spy operating under a false identity.Heathfield and a woman who claims to be his wife, known as Tracey Lee Ann ...

By Tim Reason • July 7, 2010

Come Together over Cybercrime

“Cybercrime is not a problem that is growing, or coming, or off in the future,” said Greg Schaffer, an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who heads up the agency’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications. “This is a problem right now,” he told an audience of financ...

By Marie Leone • June 29, 2010