And in This Corner, the Price-Fighter

At first glance this may not seem like the ideal time for you to greenlight a new product launch. After all, consumers have neither cash nor credit, they fear for their jobs (if they still have them), and they’re waving the financial equivalent of white flags in record numbers (as of June, person...

By Josh Hyatt • Dec. 1, 2008

View from Asia

There is no longer any doubt. Just a month ago, many executives in Asia were still arguing that the region could escape the worst of the financial crisis. But now that the U.S. banking disaster has become a global slump, companies from Beijing to Bangalore are suffering.Some Asian operations have...

By Don Durfee • Dec. 1, 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

CFO Pessimists Outpoll Optimists 16- to-1

The pessimism felt by CFOs and senior-level executive CPAs about the U.S. economy surged in the fourth quarter after three previous periods of increasingly negative feelings, according to a survey by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the University of North Carolina busin...

By Roy Harris • Nov. 24, 2008

Uncertainty, Not Tight Credit, Chills Small Biz Lending

A pair of bankers at a recent Securities and Exchange Commission panel on small-business capital formation said they are ready, willing, and able to lend to small businesses. The problem, they believe, is that vexed small businesses display little demand for credit.“We tell people we’ve got money...

By Kate Plourd • Nov. 21, 2008

Forecasters Gloomy, Too

Consensus estimates show that professional forecasters have turned sharply negative on their outlook for the economy for the rest of this year and 2009.Real GDP will decline at a 2.6 percent rate in the final quarter of this year and will decline again in the first quarter of next year, by 1.3 pe...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 17, 2008

Winnowing the Work Forces

This article was updated to include late-breaking announcements by U.S. Steel and Citigroup.The financial crisis continues to land hard on the nation’s work force. Jobless claims last week surged by 32,000, to a seasonally adjusted 516,000, and layoff announcements continued to thin out payrolls ...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 13, 2008

Icons No More

“HAVE lunch, or be lunch.” The Silicon Valley mantra coined by Scott McNealy, the outspoken former boss of Sun Microsystems, a troubled computer-maker, still rings true as the technology industry heads into recession. At particular risk of being lunch are Sun and another once-mighty technology fi...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 11, 2008

Road to Reform

Margaret Hansen expects to be in big demand on the corporate speaking circuit. Not that she’s the author of a top-selling self-help book or a reformed wrong-doer with salacious stories to tell. Rather, she’s the procurement director for global travel at Chicago-based consultancy AT Kearney. She r...

By Gabor Taroczy • Nov. 4, 2008

An October to Remember — or Forget

The October nightmare lives on as reports stream in about how bad the situation was for corporate finance. In the latest reminder, the October Credit Manager’s Index plummeted to a record low, according to the National Association of Credit Management.“The misery was spread all around but manufac...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 3, 2008

Up in the Air

Airlines are piling on the luxury, presenting a dilemma for business travellers. As financial conditions worsen, how committed are flyers to cutting costs when their own personal comfort is at stake? CFOs can expect the strain on their corporate travel policies to be particularly severe.So far, m...

By Esther Shein and Gabor Taroczy • Nov. 3, 2008

Top Concerns of CFOs

“How deep will the downturn be? Honestly, I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”Wrenching market movements have humbled a host of hedge fund managers, investment bankers and other assorted masters of the financial universe in recent weeks. For CFOs such as Claude Changarnier of Microsoft In...

By Jason Karaian • Nov. 3, 2008

Dare to Compare

What caused the credit crunch? In large part, it can be explained by a lack of trust, most notably between banks. A similar lack of faith often hampers corporate benchmarking efforts, a subject addressed at a conference held by the Global Benchmarking Network (GBN) last month in Budapest.Robert C...

By Gabor Taroczy • Nov. 3, 2008

Higher & Higher

In recent years, product pricing warranted daily discussions between CFO Alan Hippe and his colleagues at Continental, a €16.6 billion German tyre maker. Today, those conversations are just as likely to be taking place by the hour. Amid rising raw material costs, “pricing is key,” Hippe says. “It...

By Tim Burke • Nov. 3, 2008

Or We Could Just Teleconference…

Yet another sign of the times: no more fancy steak dinners on the company’s tab. Morton’s Restaurant Group, which derives 80 percent of its revenues from business travelers, stands to take a hit in 2009, thanks to serious cuts in travel spending, Jefferies & Co. analyst Jeff Farmer warned inv...

By Kate Plourd • Nov. 1, 2008

Small Companies Will Lag, but By How Much?

Let this be a warning to CFOs of private companies: The shift to new global financial reporting standards may yet happen during the Bush Administration. That would be the Jenna Bush Administration.Such was the tone of the most recent meeting of the Private Company Financial Reporting Committee (P...

By Josh Hyatt • Nov. 1, 2008

The Dollar May Be Up, But Are You?

One beneficiary of Wall Street’s bailout is the dollar, which is hot again. The greenback rose 12 percent against the euro between July and October, and is likely to get stronger over the next year, some experts say, even as the Treasury Department piles on debt to shore up banks.Thanks to the as...

By Avital Louria Hahn • Nov. 1, 2008

Top Concerns of CFOs

Rest assured, another Great Depression is not on the way. That’s because it’s already here — at least as an accurate description of the psychological state of most finance executives.In fact, even before the latest round of bad news from Wall Street, CFOs were anxious about sputtering consumer de...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Nov. 1, 2008

The Great Green Hope

Amid much talk in this election year about blue states and red states, another color is being heard from: green. Politicians, mindful of soaring unemployment and wildly fluctuating oil prices, are advocating job creation in clean-energy-related fields. Pundits like Thomas Friedman (particularly i...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Nov. 1, 2008

Local Knowledge

The shining glass building that houses the offices of ICI India would blend in perfectly in a U.S. suburban office park. But it’s located in Gurgaon, India, a so-called special economic zone more than an hour’s drive from Delhi. Inside an air-conditioned office, while sidewalk vendors carry on a ...

By Don Durfee • Nov. 1, 2008

View from China

For years the United States has blamed its huge trade deficit on China. What many haven’t appreciated is that underneath China’s export surplus lies a problem — for China. Chinese manufacturers have long provided financing to U.S. buyers — the bulk of China’s exports to the United States are on o...

By Wu Chen • Nov. 1, 2008

Drop ‘Til You Shop

It is official: the American consumer, for so long the main force driving the global economy, has cracked. Figures released on Thursday October 30th showed that America’s economy shrank at an annualised rate of 0.3 percent in the third quarter. The story behind the breakdown was a far sharper dec...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 31, 2008

Behind but Unbowed

JOHN MCCAIN has survived against long odds before. But, despite a stubborn televised interview on Sunday October 26th, in which he touted a poll showing him just a few points behind Barack Obama in the race for the White House, soon he may have to tape up his windows to keep out bad news. Pollste...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 29, 2008

Consumer Confidence Plunges to Record Low

Consumer confidence plummeted to a record low in October, signaling fears that business and labor-market conditions are sharply deteriorating, according to a closely watched monthly survey.The Conference Board said today that its consumer confidence index skidded to 38 from 61.4 in September. The...

By Alan Rappeport • Oct. 28, 2008

Market Turning Bad for Luxury Goods

Even the rich cut back during tough economic times, a new report from Bain & Company underscores. Growth in the worldwide luxury goods market is expected to slow substantially by year-end, to 3 percent, a steep fall from 6.5 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2006, according to Bain’s annual L...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 28, 2008

Flying Through a Storm

FOR AN industry that relies on thrust and lift, the ongoing difficulties of the financial system and the prospect of a widespread recession are reasons to worry. The skies look black indeed for many airlines. So far in 2008 over 30 carriers around the world have seen their planes take off for the...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 22, 2008