Supreme Court: A Sarbox Split

In a ruling against the makeup of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the U.S. Supreme Court has tweaked part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act but decided that such a change does not open up the entire 2002 law to scrutiny. The ruling also preserves the legitimacy of the PCAOB, which oversees...

By Sarah Johnson • June 28, 2010

More Shareholder Say on Auditors

Shareholders have weighed in on companies’ choices for outside accounting firms in higher numbers this year. The uptick comes after a Securities and Exchange Commission rule went into effect that had nothing to do with how companies pick which audit firms will review their financials every year.R...

By Sarah Johnson • June 25, 2010

Liquidity Worries Haunt Nonprofits

In the early part of the economic downturn, liquidity became a watchword among corporations and their banks. Companies issuing “good-as-cash” investments such as auction-rate securities suddenly couldn’t get to their funds. Debt covenants based on corporate liquidity suddenly looked wobbly. Cash ...

By David Katz • June 24, 2010

Living Like It’s 1931

The calendar says 2010, but Frank Partnoy believes that in certain respects, we’re living like it’s 1931. That was a transitional year between the 1929 stock market crash and the passing of two transformative securities laws, in 1933 and 1934, that established a regulatory body for public compani...

By Sarah Johnson • June 17, 2010

Seven Pillars of Hedging Wisdom

Recent fluctuations in currencies and commodity prices have once again highlighted the importance of hedging expertise. The dollar’s continued rise against the euro, pound sterling, and Australian and Canadian dollars promises to eat into the operating income of companies that earn the bulk of th...

By Vincent Ryan • June 14, 2010

Survey: It’s a Riskier World

Interest-rate risk tops finance executives’ list of concerns in a new global survey of risk-management practices, followed by foreign-exchange risk and credit risk. Threats from all of these areas, as well as geopolitical, commodity, and energy risks, have increased in recent years, say finance c...

By Kate O'Sullivan • June 7, 2010

A Big Fat Crisis Averted?

What began as concern regarding Greece’s sovereign debt burden has now mushroomed into fears about other Eurozone nations. Mounting anxiety about the finances of Spain, Portugal, and Italy continued to roil global markets even after an initial rescue package for Greece was announced, prompting Eu...

By Kate O'Sullivan • June 1, 2010

Google Shakes Up Investor Relations

Google’s recent announcement that it is revamping some of its investor-relations processes may open the way for other companies to streamline their own.One key change: Google will no longer distribute financial news through newswire services, such as Business Wire and PR Newswire, but instead wil...

By Alix Stuart • June 1, 2010

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Odds are good that your company is losing money in the worst possible way — through theft. According to a new biannual study from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), companies that fell victim to fraud suffered a median loss of $160,000, and 25% of the nearly 2,000 cases examined...

By Marie Leone • June 1, 2010

What Your Board Is Worried About

Ever wonder what your board members are talking about when you’re not in the room? While strategies for dealing with the recession and recovery have topped most board agendas recently, a new study of more than 100 board members conducted by the accounting and business advisory firm Eisner LLP ide...

By Kate O'Sullivan • May 28, 2010

New SEC Finance Chief Will Stress Internal Controls

Kenneth Johnson, the acting finance chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission for much of the past year, has been named CFO of the agency.“My two top priorities will be to ensure strong internal controls and to manage responsibly the agency’s growing budget,” he told CFO in an e-mail. “Not ...

By David Katz • May 21, 2010

How Much Should Workers Know?

Companies may have to reveal more about their decisions regarding why some workers are given more rights than others under a proposal the Department of Labor is considering.The proposed regulation is just one of many circulating in Washington that aim to get a handle on how companies classify the...

By Sarah Johnson • May 21, 2010

Drilling for Answers

It has been nearly a month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 people and opening a well that continues to release thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. As BP, the majority owner of the well, desperately tries to stop the leak, ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • May 20, 2010

Forecast Perpetually Sunny, for Analysts

As many companies gear up for growth, CFOs are perhaps more optimistic than they have been in a long time. Few, however, are likely to be as optimistic as Wall Street analysts. A recent study by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. finds that on average, analysts’ forecasts of annual earnings have ...

By Alix Stuart • May 13, 2010

Greek Tragedy Unfolds

With the euro falling to a 14-month low and rioting in Greece claiming three lives this week, the Greek debt crisis seems far from over. Last week’s announcement of a €110 billion rescue package, nearly three times the size of the original bailout proposal, did little to calm fears about Greece’s...

By Kate O'Sullivan • May 7, 2010

You Complete My Audit

The relationship between accounting firms and their corporate clients has been shaky over the past decade, to say the least. In the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, accounting firms dumped some risky clients, shuttered ancillary consulting arms, and raised fees. That strained the collegial bond be...

By Sarah Johnson • May 1, 2010

The SEC Has a Few Questions for You

It was a letter that Tom Cawley, CFO of Peet’s Coffee & Tea, couldn’t ignore.Seven months after the company filed its 2008 annual report, there it was: a missive from the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking certain clarifications about the company’s assumptions and business relationshi...

By Sarah Johnson • May 1, 2010

What’s a Reputation Worth?

As the Toyota Motor Corp. is learning, none of the perils a company faces is harder to measure than damage to its reputation. Other hazards, from a plant explosion to a terrorist attack to a natural disaster, may threaten a company’s very ability to operate, but a sullied corporate image exacts a...

By David Katz • May 1, 2010

A Global View of Risk

Rather than viewing single risks in isolation, executives should try to better understand the connections among a host of global problems that could affect their businesses in the next decade, urged John Merkovsky, managing director of Marsh Risk Consulting, at the annual Risk and Insurance Manag...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 29, 2010

Google Shakes Up Investor Relations

Google’s announcement last week that it is revamping some of its investor-relations processes may well open the way for other companies to streamline their own.A key feature of the revamp: Google will no longer distribute financial news through newswire services, such as Business Wire and PR News...

By Alix Stuart • April 26, 2010

State Environmental Laws: At Your Disposal

Just whose trash is it, anyway? In March Maine became the latest state to mandate that certain products and forms of packaging remain the responsibility of those who make them, up to and including the time the products are thrown away.More than 30 states have now passed what are known as “extende...

By Karen M. Kroll • April 19, 2010

Crackdown on Corruption

In the latest example of ongoing efforts at the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission to crack down on violators of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), Daimler agreed last week to pay $185 million in penalties to settle charges it repeatedly and systematically pai...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 9, 2010

Who Will Buy?

Public-company CFOs may find some appeal in a new tool designed to identify institutional investors with a high probability of buying a company’s stock as well as existing holders at risk of selling, an investor-relations consultant says.Smart Targets, which Thomson Reuters is providing free to c...

By David McCann • April 7, 2010

Trained in Risk

Kristi Matus brings a different orientation to the CFO’s office. Formerly the chief operating officer of a bank, Matus took a position in 2002 as an actuary developing life-insurance products at USAA, a financial-services company serving the armed forces. The role suited Matus, who has a degree i...

By David Katz and Vincent Ryan • April 7, 2010

How High Is Your RQ?

The presence of a steady hand at finance has become a key driver of how the public feels about a given company, suggest the findings of a new Harris Interactive survey of corporate visibility, released on Monday. Indeed, if the research is indicative, reputational risk management has entered the ...

By David Katz • April 6, 2010