Chairman/CEO Out at Computer Associates

Sanjay Kumar has resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of embattled software giant Computer Associates International Inc. He also resigned from the board of directors.Kumar has, however, been named to the new position of chief software architect.Lewis Ranieri, who has served as the boa...

By Stephen Taub • April 22, 2004

More Dissenters Oppose Citi Directors

On Tuesday the New York State Common Retirement Fund — which has $118 billion of assets and 22.4 million Citigroup shares — announced plans to withhold votes for two Citi director’s at the company’s annual meeting April 20, reported The New York Times.A day earlier, the California Public Employee...

By Dave Cook • April 15, 2004

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

A New Era in Corporate Governance

More progress has been made improving the governance of US corporations during the past couple of years than in the several decades preceding them. New reporting requirements that stock exchanges have ordered in response to high-profile scandals, together with tougher auditing standards under the...

By The McKinsey Quarterly • April 15, 2004

Splitting Top Jobs and the Bottom Line

On the evening following last month’s tumultuous annual meeting of Walt Disney Co., the board of directors removed chief executive officer Michael Eisner from his role as chairman of the board. That initiative, and many similar proposals, have been driven by shareholders who worry that too great ...

By Dave Cook • April 13, 2004

Fannie, Freddie Urged to Split Top Jobs

The federal agency that oversees mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has recommended a number of corporate governance changes to “address current weaknesses and help reduce the potential for future corporate misconduct.”“As government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddi...

By Stephen Taub • April 9, 2004

Calpers Holds Back More Votes

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), the largest public pension fund, said it will withhold votes from several directors at Genentech Inc., Eli Lilly & Co., and Safeway Inc.At Genentech and Eli Lilly, one reason for the Calpers action is an auditor that was authorized...

By Stephen Taub • April 9, 2004

Against the Tide: Four CEOs Named Chairman

Recently, more and more companies — including Walt Disney and Dell — are splitting the chairman and chief executive jobs. Indeed, in the past year, the percentage of S&P 500 CEOs who also serve as chairman fell to 76 percent from the 80 percent figure reported for the previous year, according...

By Stephen Taub • March 31, 2004

Proxy Season: PeopleSoft, Tyco, Safeway

Voters in the United States will have to endure nearly eight more months of attacks, half-truths, and scare tactics before they go to the polls to select the next president and many other government officials.It’s voting time already for most shareholders, however; spring is the height of the ann...

By Stephen Taub • March 29, 2004

Fidelity Chief: Don’t Split Top Jobs

Edward C. Johnson III, the chief executive of Fidelity Investments and the chairman of its 280 funds, would rather fight than split.In an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, Johnson stated his opposition to a proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission that the chairman of the fund and...

By Ed Zwirn • Feb. 19, 2004

Judgment Calls

Pity corporate boards. Used to rubber-stamping the wishes of imperial CEOs, they have been ever more rudely assailed by politicians, regulators, and shareholder activists since the fall of Enron. Now, they are being challenged in courtrooms not just over failures to detect accounting shenanigans,...

By Kris Frieswick • Feb. 19, 2004

Shuffleboard Season

As most large companies gear up for an annual rite of spring — shareholder meetings — a number of companies are announcing their board candidates, changing the way they elect their board members, or booting a number of them off the ballot.Just in the past week alone, the activity has been furious...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 4, 2004

Union Pacific Promotes Two Finance Execs

Union Pacific Corp. announced that Ivor J. Evans has been elected vice chairman and that chief financial officer James R. Young has been elected president of Union Pacific Railroad, succeeding Evans. They will join chairman and chief executive officer Dick Davidson in a newly created Office of th...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 3, 2004

Oracle’s Ellison, Henley to Sell Shares

Oracle Corp. chief executive officer Larry Ellison and chairman and chief financial officer Jeff Henley each plans to sell large stakes in the software giant over a period of time. The scheduling will allow the two insiders to sell their shares gradually, to reduce market impact and avoid concern...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 3, 2004

New Terrain

As former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow negotiated the plea bargain that has landed him a 10-year prison sentence, many finance chiefs were quietly hoping that some stern justice would help restore investor confidence. “Jail time will be an effective way to inhibit fraud,” says Regina Sommer, CFO of Ne...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2004

Revolving Doors

The last thing Boeing Co. needed this winter was another ethics scandal. Not long before, the company had endured one involving improper use of some Raytheon Co. documents. And it was only just in July of this year that Boeing commissioned Warren Rudman, the former senator and ethics expert, to l...

By Roy Harris • Dec. 16, 2003

Soaring out of a Job

In one of the most profound cases of bad timing in recent memory, publisher John Wiley & Sons sent out advance review copies of Soaring Through Turbulence, Mike Sears’s new book (written with Thomas A. Schweich), days before Sears was canned as CFO of Boeing Co. The book’s publication was “de...

By Kris Frieswick • Dec. 16, 2003

How to Run a Company Well

Leading a big public company is one of the world’s most important jobs. It is already fiendishly difficult, and seems to be getting harder all the time. Those who make it to the top frequently fail: they stay for shorter and shorter periods. And there is more competition than there used to be for...

By Frances Cairncross • Oct. 24, 2003

Facing a Stronger Board: Two Masters?

Walter Schuetze, once the Securities and Exchange Commission’s chief enforcement-division accountant under Arthur Levitt, can hardly contain his exuberance about being audit-committee chair for Computer Associates International Inc. “I like getting into the nitty-gritty of the business,” says the...

By Alix Stuart • May 1, 2003

On Boards, Are Women the Fairer Sex?

As corporate governance continues to be hotly debated in the wake of several high profile business scandals, some women executives are pushing for more female board members.That was the topic of a seminar held Tuesday in Waltham, Mass., by the New England Chapter of the National Association of Co...

By Lisa Yoon • April 10, 2003

Looking Good Isn’t Enough

We’re sure that Priscilla Presley, Alexander M. Haig Jr., and Francis Ford Coppola are valued members of the board of MGM Inc., upon which they all sit, but we wonder what all the new director-independence and financial-literacy requirements will mean for the future of celebrity board members.“I ...

By Kris Frieswick • March 1, 2003

Corporate Governance

Amid all the hand-wringing about boards of directors, several well-known–and some not so well-known–players in corporate governance have introduced board-ratings systems.Last month, for example, GovernanceMetrics International Inc. was scheduled to launch its GMI Ratings. According to CEO Gavin A...

By Lori Calabro • Dec. 1, 2002

Board Games

Former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow is by all accounts a persuasive personality, but that doesn’t explain why Enron’s board of directors failed to raise even the smallest red flag. Not once did it voice an objection to any of management’s accounting practices, according to a Senate subcommittee invest...

By Andrew Osterland • Nov. 1, 2002

Executive Indictments

Call it a squeeze play. Prosecutors looking to pin corporate scandals on the top dog often press other executives for information that could prove a case against the CEO in exchange for leniency for the informers. And despite the intense camaraderie most CFOs claim to share with their CEOs, finan...

By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2002

Laundry Time

Last month former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow was formally charged for his alleged role in the scandal at the bankrupt energy giant. The criminal complaint includes charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.Given the complexity of the alleged cr...

By Joseph McCafferty • Nov. 1, 2002

White-Collar Crime

Early last month, Alan Gauthier was sentenced to five months in prison after being convicted of consumer fraud. The former CFO of Exide Technologies admitted sending the Securities and Exchange Commission a false audit opinion letter involving a scam in which Exide sold defective batteries to ret...

By Joseph McCafferty • Oct. 1, 2002