Risk: Page 16
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geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Poison Pills Haven’t Lost Their Potency
Last week Family Dollar Stores joined the handful of companies this year that have implemented a shareholder rights plan — aka poison pill — to fend off a takeover. The retailer’s board rejected an unsolicited $7 billion bid by hedge fund Trian Group, saying the offer “substantially undervalues t...
By Sarah Johnson • March 10, 2011 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Going Public by Accident
Facebook has long been associated with a blurring of the line between private and public. How many people, after all, have joined the social-networking site in order to tighten their ties to an inner circle of friends and family, only to find the details of their Bruce Springsteen obsession or pi...
By Russ Banham • March 1, 2011 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
In the Minority on Majority Voting
At Apple’s annual meeting next month, the company’s seven directors up for election — including CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence — will very likely keep their seats. Six of them have been on the board for at least three years and one board member, Ronald Sugar, former ...
By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 27, 2011 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Boardroom Focus in 2011: Growth
Many CFOs can expect less stressful, more positive board meetings in 2011, with an emphasis on strategy and growth, say corporate-governance experts.Take the issue of cash. For the past few years, anxious directors have been asking finance chiefs how they intend to raise or preserve it. Now, with...
By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 13, 2011 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Executive Comp: Say When
CFOs’ compensation packages will be exposed to shareholders’ scrutiny next year, thanks to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which imposes mandatory advisory votes on publicly traded companies. But how often investors get their so-called say on pay will depend on anot...
By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 17, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
A Guide to Board Diversity
Although women and minorities have been seeking seats on corporate boards for many years, progress toward diversity in the boardroom continues to be glacial. More than half of public companies do not have a single minority director, while almost one out of three companies lacks a female director,...
By Kate O'Sullivan • Nov. 23, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Missing from Proxies: Risk Talk
A recent analysis of 398 proxy statements filed by S&P 500 companies between February 28 and July 1 of this year found that only 22% of them mentioned that the CEO had any direct involvement in risk management. The study, conducted by Deloitte, also found that:• Just 35% of companies describe...
By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 1, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
A Fix for “Proxy Plumbing”
Finance executives want shareholders to come out of hiding, if for no other reason than to lower the costs of communicating with them.Toward that end, for the past several months the Securities and Exchange Commission has been soliciting comments on so-called proxy plumbing, the processes that de...
By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
More Bucks for Boards
A new study by accounting and consulting firm BDO found that director pay at midmarket companies rose 2% last year to an average of $110,500, a small increase reflecting the stagnant state of the economy. Of the 600 companies in eight industries studied, technology firms were the most generous wi...
By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 26, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Is Independence the Bane of Boards?
A study by three University of Southern California professors finds that strongly independent boards at financial institutions had a negative impact on the companies’ performance during the 2007-2008 economic meltdown. The controversial study, promoted by the American Accounting Association (AAA)...
By Roy Harris • Oct. 22, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Is Independence the Bane of Boards?
A study by three University of Southern California professors finds that strongly independent boards at financial institutions had a negative impact on the companies’ performance during the 2007-2008 economic meltdown. The controversial study, promoted by the American Accounting Association (AAA)...
By Roy Harris • Oct. 22, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Who’s in Charge Here?
On the eve of the 2008 elections, Richard Ferlauto, a union-pension-fund executive, noted that if the Democrats were to win big “it will be like Christmas for us.”While the Democrats did, in fact, sweep Congress and take the Presidency, the ensuing weeks hardly matched most people’s idea of Chris...
By Joseph McCafferty • Sept. 1, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Why Succession Planning Is So Hard
Earlier this month, Goodyear Tire and Rubber announced that the final stage of its CEO transition was under way. Richard Kramer, a 10-year company veteran and onetime CFO, will add chairman of the board to his duties in October, six months after assuming the CEO position for which he had been gro...
By Alix Stuart • Aug. 19, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
SEC Reviewing Proxy Process
Shareholder suffrage has never been a hotter topic. Just last week, public-company investors won the right to vote on executive compensation, and many are continuing the fight for the right to help create the agenda of items put up for vote in a proxy statement, such as how management is running ...
By Alix Stuart • July 27, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Boards: What’s Your Max?
Darlene Deptula-Hicks’s retirement plan entails doing extra work now, on top of her day job as CFO of medical-imaging software maker iCad. About six years ago, she began actively pursuing directorships to gain experience she can use later, when it’s time to move beyond the 9-to-5 grind. “You get ...
By Sarah Johnson • July 6, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Ethics and the Bottom Line
On Monday, Marianne Jennings avoided the standard warm and fuzzy lecture about ethics and went straight for the corporate-finance jugular. “Lapses in ethics hurt the cost of capital,” declared Jennings, a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University. Speaking at the Institut...
By Marie Leone • June 8, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Should CFOs Serve on Their Own Boards?
Few public-company CFOs these days serve on their own companies’ boards, in part thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley regulations that require boards to maintain a majority of independent directors and a general push from investors to have fewer insiders involved. However, companies that do elect their CFOs ...
By Alix Stuart • May 6, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Putting the “New” in Revenue
It seems there’s always room for one more executive in the C-suite, and as companies focus on growth, the trendy moniker these days is “chief revenue officer,” a role that enjoyed a brief cachet during the dot-com era.While there are no official statistics on how many CROs exist, it seems virtual...
By Alix Stuart • April 1, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Which Way on Say-on-Pay?
While they are not yet mandatory, and won’t be until 2011 at the earliest, say-on-pay provisions are nonetheless being adopted by a growing number of companies. In 2008 a mere 6 companies voted to give shareholders an advisory vote on executive compensation; at press time, 56 planned to put the m...
By Alix Stuart • April 1, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Who Should Be in the Boardroom?
With board members more concerned about risk management and succession planning these days, CFOs should make sure they — and their staffs — have a strong presence in the boardroom, a group of retired CFOs-turned-board members told financial executives attending the CFO Rising conference in Orland...
By Alix Stuart • March 12, 2010 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Getting (and Giving) the Message
Internal communication issues are rarely top priorities for CFOs — that is, until they create potential liabilities. Witness e-mail messages and the policies (or lack thereof) surrounding them. Often, an e-mail flub is nothing more than embarrassing. At worst, though, the message could be entered...
By Marie Leone • Aug. 28, 2009 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Satyam Overlooked Oversight
The $1 billion accounting scandal at India’s Satyam Computer Services has raised several key governance questions about the company’s board and its auditors. One of the most perplexing is: Where does the buck stop. That is, why didn’t oversight mechanisms uncover the fraud sooner?One governance e...
By Marie Leone • Jan. 16, 2009 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Crisis Makes Boards Info-Insatiable
CFOs are feeling pressure from all directions these days, not the least from their directors, who are ratcheting up their focus on finance.Directors are insisting on more frequent communications from CFOs, asking them for more detailed information, and demanding more insight on risk, according to...
By David McCann • Dec. 11, 2008 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Wal-Mart Invests in Wind
Wal-Mart Stores announced it is making a substantial investment in wind energy as part of a company-wide goal to eventually be supplied by 100 percent renewable energy.The world’s largest retailer pledged to use wind power to supply up to 15 percent of its total energy load in roughly 360 Texas s...
By Stephen Taub • Nov. 20, 2008 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Board Compensation Jumps to Over $2m
Board compensation averaged more than $2 million among the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies, producing a 12-percent median increase for individual directors, according to a survey by the Corporate Library.The Portland, Me.-based independent research firm said that the median increase in total ...
By Roy Harris • Nov. 19, 2008
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