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

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

Explore the Trendline➔

Tax policy shifts: What CFOs need to know to stay ahead

Discover how evolving tax policies are creating new opportunities and challenges for CFOs.

By CFO.com staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emanuel May Be Headed to White House

In a move that could set off a high-profile leadership scramble in the House, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) has been offered the job of White House chief of staff by President-elect Obama, ABC News is reporting.Emanuel, a veteran of the Clinton White House, has not yet given Obam...

By Roll Call Staff • Nov. 5, 2008

Hunting for Scalps

AMERICANS are turning creative as they strive to make sense of the crisis. On October 29th a group of artists will stage a “literal meltdown” by placing a 1,500lb (680kg) ice sculpture of the word “economy” in Manhattan’s Foley Square. The installation will, according to one collaborator, “metaph...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 23, 2008

More Than Words

Sympathy is not something often felt for a company with a corruption-riddled past. So what makes Siemens different? Two years after an avalanche of accusations hit the German electronics and engineering firm, anger, disgust and even disappointment certainly prevail. But it’s hard not to feel a li...

By Janet Kersnar • Oct. 3, 2008

Deception Perception

From financial-statement shenanigans to fraudulent billing schemes, corporate frauds can be elusive, to say the least. Fraudsters usually operate alone, rarely have criminal records, and are nearly as likely to be female as male. No wonder the typical case persists two full years. Finance executi...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 1, 2008

Best Intentions

“We must become a good company,” the chief executive declares, having just returned from a conference featuring the philanthropic Google Guys, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. “And I don’t just mean good in the business sense; I mean good in the ‘Don’t be evil’ sense. You know about the On...

By Matthew Bishop • Sept. 1, 2008

More Holders Back “Say on Pay” in 2008

With the vote by shareholders at Valero Energy Corp. a shareholder-voting majority at 10 companies supported nonbinding resolutions calling for a so-called Say on Pay policy during this year’s proxy season, according to Risk Metrics.Altogether, the shareholder proposals — offering holders a vote ...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 27, 2008

It Takes a Crisis

“Our new procedures go all the way down to the 434,000th employee,” says Joseph Kaeser, the notably unembattled CFO of German industrial giant Siemens AG. New procedures certainly seemed called for in the wake of the company’s infamous bribes-for-contracts scandal, which came to light in 2006 and...

By Scott Leibs • July 15, 2008