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

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

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

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