Location, Location, Location

CFOs contemplating an office move may want to head south, and not just for the sunshine and golf, according to a new study by KPMG that ranks 22 large U.S. cities on a variety of business operating costs. Tampa leads the pack as the most cost-competitive large city for business, followed by Atlan...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 2, 2010

Painful Conversions

Just two years ago, EXL, a business process outsourcing company, didn’t have a treasury department. The finance staff and senior management watched currency fluctuations carefully, but they lacked an explicit policy to address the risk to their cash flows.That risk hit with a vengeance in 2008, w...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 1, 2010

The Paperless Chase

Over the past decade, companies have been increasingly communicating with their investors online, as regulators have allowed them to reduce the number of printed annual reports and proxy materials they mail to shareholders. But if the trend has been good for investor-relations budgets (and postal...

By Sarah Johnson • March 30, 2010

How the SEC Would Spend $1.3 Billion

A 12% increase in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s budget would enable the regulator to hire 374 more employees, some of whom would work for its corporate-finance and enforcement divisions, said SEC chairman Mary Schapiro today.Schapiro testified before a House appropriations subcommittee...

By Sarah Johnson • March 17, 2010

The Greening of Materiality

New guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission was intended to clarify how companies should explain the effects of climate change on their businesses, but last month’s 29-page interpretive release may raise more questions than it answers.Investor groups have long been critical of compan...

By Sarah Johnson • March 1, 2010

Is Your Broker Mediocre?

These are bargain-basement days for insurance buyers. In the fourth quarter of 2009, workers’-compensation and general-liability premiums dropped 5.5% and 5%, respectively, from the previous year, according to a survey of 1,100 risk managers by Advisen and the Risk and Insurance Management Societ...

By David Katz • March 1, 2010

Keeping Your Ideas to Yourself

Despite their misleading label, intangible assets are hardly abstract.  A company’s intellectual property (IP) — the creative knowledge that underlies its products or services – is often what drives profitability and growth.  But because such knowledge-based assets don’t count for much on corpora...

By Josh Hyatt • Feb. 25, 2010

Who’s Minding Risk?

Monday-morning quarterbacks pinned the blame for the financial crisis largely on excessive risk taking, particularly at large financial institutions. Subsequent calls for regulatory reform have increasingly included nonfinancial companies and their boards, which critics accuse of having been lax ...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 22, 2010

Hot Topic: Climate-Change Disclosure

Last month the subject of disclosing the business impact of climate change generated plenty of heat at an open meeting of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Going forward the SEC’s new interpretive guidance on the matter could make some finance chiefs a little warm under the collar.By a 3-to...

By Sarah Johnson and Marie Leone • Feb. 19, 2010

How Risky Is Your Board?

For most companies, the risk of securities litigation ebbed somewhat during the past two years, as the plaintiffs’ bar devoted much of its time and energy to complex and potentially lucrative actions against financial-services firms. Now, as the credit crisis wanes, the risk is rising again for n...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Feb. 16, 2010

Former SEC Top Cop Sees More Lawsuits

Corporations and their directors and officers face an increased risk of being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for aiding and abetting the frauds of other companies, the SEC’s former enforcement chief says.To be sure, the chances of Congress boosting plaintiffs’ ability to sue on su...

By David Katz • Feb. 9, 2010

Congress to Debate Companies’ Speech and Spending Rights

Sen. John Kerry wants to restrict companies’ funding of political campaigns — which was loosened by a January Supreme Court decision — through a constitutional amendment.Such a change would “make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals,” ...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 2, 2010

GRC: The Solution Remains Elusive

The software category known as “governance, risk, and compliance” ended 2009 pretty much where it began: still lacking a clear identity. Any apt description of GRC, in fact, remains tantamount to, as one industry insider puts it, “an academic definition of the word mess.“It is an open question wh...

By David McCann • Feb. 1, 2010

SEC Comes Clean on Climate Disclosures

New guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission will prompt companies to reexamine how they explain the effects of climate change on their business in regulatory filings. The clarification from the regulator arrives just as companies with a calendar year-end are putting together their 10...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 27, 2010

Bad Times for Brokers

In a topsy-turvy financial world, commercial insurance premiums have kept on a steady downward course. The trend continued in the fourth quarter of 2009, with prices for liability coverage declining and property insurance holding steady, according to a new survey of 1,100 risk managers.The survey...

By David Katz • Jan. 19, 2010

Truth and No Consequences

Witnesses to securities fraud have had little incentive to tattle on their errant co-workers — or accomplices, as the case may be. Coming forward, after all, can put one’s career, reputation, and wallet at risk. “In terms of your legal exposure, there [has been] little or no incentive to step for...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 14, 2010

A Risk Top 10 for 2010

After the economic turmoil of 2009, CFOs could be forgiven for trying to relax a bit. But the new year will offer plenty of reasons to stay awake at night, according to a new survey by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB).The business-research company recently asked finance executives to identify ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Jan. 12, 2010

Could New Regs Bring More Lawsuits?

The number of securities class-action claims made in 2009 declined 24% from the previous year, according to a recent study by the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and Cornerstone Research. A total of 169 claims were made in 2009, compared with 223 in 2008. However, the di...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 11, 2010

Best of 2009: Regulation

The year 2009 was a traumatic one for financial regulators, no less than for the publicly traded companies and the accounting firms they oversee. Tarnished by revelations of excessive risk-taking (see the banking meltdown) and massive fraud (see Bernard Madoff), regulatory agencies faced the pros...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Jan. 4, 2010

Best of 2009: Risk Management

The 2004 Basel II capital accords break down “risk management” into three basic categories: market, credit, and operational. As they routinely do, operational risks — the potential for man-made or machine-made losses — have plagued finance chiefs in 2009. But there can be little doubt that credit...

By CFO Staff and David Katz • Dec. 28, 2009

Protecting a Privilege

Bank of America’s agreement to turn over privileged documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year was not popular with corporate lawyers wanting to maintain employees’ and companies’ legal rights. For the past decade, they have warned that protections of the confidential i...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 22, 2009

Stalling on Sarbox

Rick Brounstein, CFO of microcap company NewCardio, hopes one day to be required to comply with the auditor-attestation requirement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, known as Section 404(b). Really, he does.Presuming the time comes when NewCardio’s technology, which is designed to improve the accuracy o...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 17, 2009

Will the SEC Get Personal?

When a U.S. District Court judge rejected a $33 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America in September, he was especially troubled that the regulator’s case had not singled out any employees for allegedly making misstatements.In his ruling denying the s...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 15, 2009

Wait ‘Til Next Year for Credit, Suppliers Say

As they have in other parts of their jobs, finance chiefs have reasons to be cautiously optimistic about their trade-credit relationships with customers. After an extraordinarily bleak 2009, which saw many suppliers forced to renegotiate terms with their customers or write off bad debt altogether...

By David Katz • Dec. 14, 2009

As Internal Audit Staffs Shrink, Will Fraud Rise?

Few corporate departments have been spared layoffs in recent months, and internal audit and compliance are no exceptions. According to a new poll by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services, 27% of executives reported reductions in these areas at their companies in the past 18 months, despite the fac...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Dec. 10, 2009