A Chill Wind Blows East

WHICH country will be the next Iceland? The dramatic collapse of the Nordic country’s economy has concentrated international attention on other risky but obscure corners of the financial system. The stability of the Ukrainian hryvnia, the ill-regulated Kazakh banking system, and Hungarian borrowe...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 21, 2008

At Yahoo and Merrill, Jobs Are in Peril

Merrill Lynch & Co. has joined a parade of companies announcing major job-cut prospects, with CEO John Thain telling the press that the investment banking giant expects thousands of job cuts after it is acquired by Bank of America.Thain said to Bloomberg News that most of the cuts will impac...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 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

Small Business and the $700B Bailout

The U.S. Treasury has opened up the bidding process for small businesses to offer their expertise in helping the agency manage the purchases of financial institutions’ bad assets. On Friday, Treasury issued a statement reporting how small companies can become financial agents or bid for procureme...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 20, 2008

A CFO Survey: Payroll Cuts Are Imminent

More than half of the CFOs participating in a recent survey (56 percent) said they expect the credit crisis to force them to cut payroll in the coming year. Further, 57 percent anticipated slashing operating costs by more than 5 percent, while 50 percent said they predict a decline in company rev...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 17, 2008

As IBM Goes…? One Can Hope

What the Fed’s rate cuts and bailouts couldn’t do, International Business Machines Corp. did — at least to start Thursday — as the upbeat analysis of its third-quarter earnings statement gave investors some respite from the persistent gloom.The ironic backdrop of a Dow Jones Industrial Average th...

By Roy Harris • Oct. 9, 2008

Cut or Grow?

Our latest quarterly poll of senior finance executives asked them to rank their strategic priorities for 2009. (See “Business Outlook Survey.”) All consider top-line growth and cost-cutting as the top goals, but the degree of emphasis on these and other priorities varies by country. German compan...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 6, 2008

Here, There and Everywhere

Poznan is described in travel guides as a quaint, historic university city with a population of less than 1m. Most visitors to Poland are lured instead by bustling Warsaw or trendy Krakow, with Poznan attracting attention only because it lies on the Paris-Berlin-Moscow rail route.But Poznan’s eco...

By Janet Kersnar and Bennett Voyles • Oct. 6, 2008

Business Outlook Survey

“A global economic slow-down is looming,” according to the European Commission’s latest forecast. According to finance chiefs, the slowdown is already well under way, and likely to get worse before it gets better.Pessimists outnumber optimists worldwide in this quarter’s poll of nearly 1,300 seni...

By Jason Karaian • Oct. 3, 2008

Cut or Grow? It Depends

The Duke University/CFO magazine Global Business Outlook Survey recently asked chief financial officers to rank their strategic priorities for 2009. The tug-of-war between revenue growth and cost-cutting was evident, with a strong number of responses in both categories. Ultimately, the top priori...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 1, 2008

Convergence Divergence

The unveiling of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new road map to international financial reporting standards (IFRS) in late summer came as a relief to some, but also sparked a backlash as critics questioned not only certain details but the entire rationale for adopting international stan...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 1, 2008

Dear Mr. President

On November 4, the nation will choose either Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain as its 44th President. The winner will inherit a mess. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a crisis in the credit markets, a painful housing bust, and soaring energy and commodity prices head the list of thorny...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 1, 2008

The Champ Feels Some Heat

Deep into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, it is easy to imagine that the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies and the resurgence of London as a financial center could tilt the balance of capital-markets power. America’s biggest global banks, desperate to rebuild capita...

By Randy Myers • Oct. 1, 2008

And They’re Off! (But Should You Worry?)

When Kathleen Casey-Kirschling collected her first Social Security check in Vero Beach, Florida, last February, alarm bells went off across the nation. Casey-Kirschling, born January 1, 1946, is considered the first baby boomer. Therefore, her retirement foreshadows the mass exodus of tens of mil...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2008

Business Outlook Survey

When it comes to predicting a U.S. economic revival, even optimistic finance executives sound gloomy. They do expect the economy to show signs of life — but not until mid-2009. And while this quarter’s Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook Survey counts fewer pessimistic CFOs than it did la...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 1, 2008

View from Europe

Although spared the mudslinging ads on television and in local press, CFO son this side of the Atlantic are watching the final weeks of the U.S. Presidential campaigns more closely than they have in previous elections. Indeed, regardless of whether they’re in the Obama or McCain camp, there’s a w...

By Janet Kersnar • Oct. 1, 2008

Equipment Financing Hits a Skid

Companies are pulling back on financing equipment for their businesses as tight credit and diminished demand is showing new signs of spreading throughout the economy. The August survey by the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association shows that new business volume dropped by 14.5 percent, falling...

By Alan Rappeport • Sept. 25, 2008

Financial Crisis Means Rougher Flying for Boeing

Running Boeing Co. these days must seem like managing air-traffic control at O’Hare on a stormy day full of delays and re-routings. And like an overworked controller, CEO Jim McNerney tries to sound calm when asked whether credit-strapped airline customers may be forced into canceling orders, or ...

By Roy Harris • Sept. 25, 2008

Leaping Layoffs, and Not Just on Wall St.

The financial services industry may be imploding and combining, with untold layoffs yet to come. But a number of companies seemingly far-removed from banking already have announced sizable layoffs this week.The mounting number of unemployed hardly bodes well for the overall economy, which recentl...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 17, 2008

A Turn for the Worse

THE second quarter of this year was the most profitable ever for Big Oil: the six largest Western oil companies reported a 40% jump in profits, to a combined $51.6 billion. Exxon Mobil, the biggest of them all, banked $11.7 billion, the highest-ever quarterly profit reported by an American firm, ...

By Economist Staff • Sept. 12, 2008

Internal Controls Flummox Small Companies

More than one-third of small, publicly traded companies reported they had ineffective internal controls this year, the first in which they had to comply with the controls provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Only half that many larger companies said the same about their first experience with Sarb...

By Sarah Johnson • Sept. 10, 2008

E&Y Study: Small Caps Ripe for Picking

A decline in market capitalization among companies listed in the Russell 2000 Index of small-cap companies is driving strong mergers and acquisitions activity, according to an Ernst & Young analysis of the index’s annual reconstitution.A total of 137 companies were removed from the index beca...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 10, 2008

Feeling for the Bottom

CFOs predict job cuts and scant capital spending throughout the remainder of 2008 and the first half of next year, with most CFOs thinking a recovery is not likely to begin until next summer at the earliest, according to the results of the latest quarterly Duke University/CFO magazine Global Busi...

By Tim Reason • Sept. 9, 2008

Baidu CFO Jennifer Li

Last December, Baidu, China’s top Internet search provider, suffered a blow — the death of its popular CFO, 40-year-old Shawn Wang, who saw the company through its 2005 Nasdaq IPO. In March, Baidu tapped another 40-year-old, Jennifer Li, the North America controller of GMAC, the financing arm of ...

By Don Durfee • Sept. 8, 2008

Two Airlines Cut Fuel Surcharges

What goes up may just come down — even fuel surcharges.A large number of energy guzzlers, from airlines and cruise companies to truckers to chemical companies, were quick to institute fuel surcharges as the price of oil surged earlier this year, topping out at more than $147 per barrel. Now that ...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 5, 2008

Credit Check

Read the rankings of Europe’s 100 largest debt issuers by Moody’s KMV.Wolfgang Reithofer was exasperated. When presenting a stellar set of 2007 results, the CEO of Wienerberger, a €2.5 billion Austrian building materials group, lamented how the firm’s share price had “disconnected” from its finan...

By Jason Karaian • Sept. 3, 2008