Breeden’s Governance Block-buster

At H&R Block, Richard Breeden has put his governance policies where his mouth is.Block, for which the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman now serves as company chairman, announced sweeping changes to corporate policies at the tax preparation company. Breeden, now a hedge fund a...

By Stephen Taub • June 18, 2008

Clawbacks Claw Their Way into Corporate Strategy

Companies are catching onto the idea of clawback contract provisions — some of which are designed to punish executives for faulty financial statements — according to a new report from The Corporate Library.Clawbacks came into fashion in the wake of corporate scandals earlier this decade, and were...

By Alan Rappeport • June 4, 2008

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

Derek Higgs, 1944-2008

Sir Derek Higgs, an influential British financier, died suddenly from a heart attack on April 28th. He will be best remembered in corporate boardrooms as the author of a widely respected report, published in 2003, about the effectiveness of non-executive directors. Amid accounting and governance ...

By Jason Karaian • June 2, 2008

Shareholders Speak, Banks Listen

The subprime crisis and credit crunch led to shake-ups at two major banks that recently faced irate shareholders: Wachovia and Washington Mutual.Wachovia announced that chief executive officer Ken Thompson “is retiring at the request of the board.” His interim replacement as CEO was current chair...

By Stephen Taub • June 2, 2008

Not-So-Modest Proposals

Directors would do well to heed their shareholders, if only out of concern for their jobs, according to new research by a trio of business school professors. The study, which examined the results of 620 majority-vote proposals (all dealing with governance issues), found that directors who failed ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • June 1, 2008

Strange Bedfellows

Last month Tom Katzenmeyer, vice-president of investor relations at Limited Brands, met representatives of the government of the Canadian province of Alberta. Limited Brands is an American apparel firm with sales of $10.1 billion last year; its best-known division is Victoria’s Secret, which sell...

By Economist Staff • May 27, 2008

The Real Price of Payoffs, According to E&Y

Corporate corruption is growing globally despite international efforts to curb the palm-greasing practices of companies, according to a new survey by Ernst & Young.In recent years regulators have cracked down hard on illicit practices such as bribery, drawing on tougher legislation and using ...

By Alan Rappeport • May 19, 2008

Dubious Claims

Even more astounding than employees who claim items such as lap dancers and cat food as business expenses is that most employers approve them.Around 12% of employee expenses fall outside of corporate policy, though managers reject only 0.5% of claims, according to a report from expense management...

By Laura Cameron • April 7, 2008

Are CFOs Fit for Outside Board Seats?

Citigroup’s announcement on Monday that it plans to stress finance and investing know-how in filling upcoming openings on its board of directors could be the tip of an iceberg.More financial-services companies whose earnings were hijacked by their investments in subprime mortgage-backed securitie...

By David McCann • April 3, 2008

Payment Fraud on the Rise

Every year fraud detection gets more sophisticated, yet the prevalence of fraud — and the costs — continues to rise.In its latest survey of payment fraud, the Association for Financial Professionals found that 71 percent of organizations experienced payment fraud in 2007 and a third of them saw m...

By Alan Rappeport • March 14, 2008

To Catch a Thief

Even after losing Société Générale €3.9 billion, rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel couldn’t help but pour salt on the wound. “The fact alone that I didn’t take any days off in 2007 should have alerted my supervisors,” he told French financial investigators. “It’s one of the elementary rules of internal...

By Laura Cameron • March 3, 2008

The New Complex

There once was a chief executive who was furious at how complex his company had grown. To prove his point, he often waved in the air a routine document that needed as many as 25 signatures. It wasn’t the heavy bureaucratic burden that peeved him. Rather, he was annoyed that, by the time the docum...

By Janet Kersnar • March 3, 2008

Jailed and Now Broke

Vencent A. Donlan, a former stock options administrator at Wireless Facilities Inc., has settled civil charges of stock and stock options theft, adding hefty financial penalties to the lengthy prison sentence already handed down.Donlan and his wife, Robin D. Colls Donlan, who was named as a relie...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 26, 2008

The Class Action Resurgence Is Just Beginning

A 43-percent surge in securities class action lawsuits in 2007 — after a year-long lull — likely will continue, growing into a “perfect storm” of swelling litigation by this year, a study by The Corporate Library predicts. Among the results from the continued rise, which the study links strongly ...

By Roy Harris • Feb. 21, 2008

Then and Now: What Lerach Told Us

Editor’s Note:Six years ago, plaintiff’s attorney William Lerach sat down with CFO magazine to give his view on the cause of the financial meltdowns at Enron, Worldcom, and other companies of the day. As was his wont, Lerach pulled no punches, blaming the Public Securities Litigation Reform Act, ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 11, 2008

Value Judgement

The burgeoning “carbon neutral” and “fair trade” policies espoused by companies are more than just marketing, according to Heidi Welsh. The analyst at RiskMetrics says that the consultancy’s clients, especially institutional investors, increasingly include information about companies’ “sustainabi...

By Laura Cameron • Feb. 4, 2008

CFO to Testify Against Boss in Escrow Theft

The chief financial officer of a Minneapolis title and escrow firm pleaded guilty to embezzling $135,000, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.Christine Hein, who had served as CFO of Profile Title & Escrow Corp. since 2002, admitted she diverted the sum from a secret escrow account for ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 21, 2008

La Vita Less Dolce

Can you say “Sarbanes-Oxley” in Italian? According to some experts, it sounds like “law 262,” though this is not an exact translation.Passed in 2005, two years after the massive accounting scandal at Italian dairy group Parmalat, 262 requires a manager at listed companies in the country to sign o...

By Tim Burke • Dec. 10, 2007

KPMG Spreads the Ethics Gospel

Ethics programming abounds in college and university accounting curriculums. And as normal with higher education, courses tend to be more theoretical than practical. Now, though, a set of tools is being made available to schools by a veritable laboratory of real-world accounting ethics dilemmas: ...

By David McCann • Nov. 29, 2007

Moody’s Frets over Fidelity’s Governance

FMR Corp.’s conversion in October from a corporation to a limited liability company has spurred Moody’s Investors Service to release a report describing its ongoing concerns about the investment company’s governance. The change doesn’t affect FMR’s credit rating, which continues to be Aa3, the ...

By Stephen Taub and David McCann • Nov. 8, 2007

Day of Reckoning for Ex-Freddie Chief

Former Freddie Mac CEO Leland Brendsel agreed to a $16.4 million settlement with the government stemming from the mortgage company’s accounting scandal four years ago. Brendsel will pay $2.5 million to the government and disgorge previously paid salary and bonuses of $10.5 million to Freddie Mac....

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 7, 2007

Talk about a Revolution

Add management guru Gary Hamel’s name to the list of proselytisers for a radical change in management philosophy. “We’re prisoners of the industrial age management model,” he laments, in an interview with CFO Europe. “The idea that companies are run as hierarchies, that their people are not very ...

By Morice Mendoza • Nov. 5, 2007

Ethical Foundations

Companies are not shy about promoting themselves to shareholders as ethical investments, but how ethical are they when it comes to investing their own cash?It was a question raised recently by UKSIF, a London network for sustainable and responsible financial-service providers, as it canvassed pen...

By Janet Kersnar • Nov. 5, 2007

Study: Audit Committees Rubber-Stamp Management

While audit committees have become much smarter and more active since passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, they are still feeling out their new authority. Even though they wield more influence than ever over the hiring and firing of auditors, for example, management continues to hold greate...

By Edward Teach • Oct. 24, 2007

How to Fight Fraud: Know Thyself

Facing down fraud within a company is inherently tricky. Insiders know a firm’s weak spots and blind spots, making them well placed to skim some extra earnings.Less than 10 percent of corporate embezzlements are reported, according to Frank Abagnale, whose life was portrayed in the hit film “Catc...

By Alan Rappeport • Oct. 11, 2007