Braced for Change

Plenty of M&A deals have an unwanted impact on someone, be it the executive who loses out in a boardroom reshuffle or the shareholder whose holdings are diluted. In the technology industry, there’s another knock-on effect: a deal can aggravate the acquired company’s customers, whose CFO and C...

By Tim Burke • Sept. 3, 2008

Top Ten Concerns of CFOs

Though his company makes fuel tanks for commercial vehicles, Ludwig Gold is as concerned about what goes inside the containers as the tanks themselves. The head of corporate finance and controlling at Salzburger Aluminium, like most finance executives around the world, cites the cost of fuel as o...

By Jason Karaian • Sept. 3, 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

Gunning for Global Graft

Anyone trying to grease a few palms abroad, beware. The Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission are on track to file a record number of enforcement actions this year based on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits the bribing of foreign officials....

By Kate O'Sullivan • Sept. 1, 2008

Roiled by Oil

It’s official: The price of oil is a problem. Even as the going rate for black gold set one record after another, finance chiefs seemed largely unconcerned. But when gasoline crested the $4-per-gallon mark this summer, fuel prices rose to the top of the list of finance executives’ concerns for th...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Sept. 1, 2008

The Taxman Cometh

After years of doling out tax breaks and incentives to support the domestic information technology industry that made offshoring a household word (and lured plenty of U.S. businesses to Bangalore and other high-tech hot spots), India’s government is looking for a little payback. The 2008 Finance ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Sept. 1, 2008

View from Asia

As corporate growth grinds to a halt in the United States and Europe, the bosses of global companies are rediscovering their enthusiasm for emerging markets. Companies ranging from Sony to General Electric to General Motors stress that, despite gloom at home, prospects for their Asian operations ...

By Don Durfee • Sept. 1, 2008

Chinese Bank to Raise Almost $15 Billion

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China is considering selling as much as $14.6 billion of bonds after domestic loan growth and overseas acquisitions reduced its capital, Bloomberg News reported.The world’s largest bank plans to sell the subordinated debt in batches by 2011, according to the wi...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 22, 2008

Bankrupt Congoleum’s Net Goes Through the Floor

The turmoil in the overall housing market is making things worse for Congoleum Corp.’s struggle to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The maker of resilient sheet vinyl — commonly referred to as linoleum — reported a 75 percent decline in net income in the second quarter on an 18 perce...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 14, 2008

In a State of Shock

IT HAS been 33 years since the headline “Ford to City: DROP DEAD” was on the front page of the Daily News, but it has not been forgotten by New Yorkers. At the time, New York was on the brink of bankruptcy. The city defaulted on some bonds and owed $5 billion. One in five of all city jobs (includ...

By Economist Staff • Aug. 4, 2008

Despite Lower Oil Prices, Airlines Add Fees

Although the price of a barrel of oil may be down about $25 from its high of a few weeks ago, airlines and other companies are still citing the rising cost of energy as they hike nuisance fees.On Thursday, for example, Northwest Airlines Corp. said it would add fuel surcharges of up to $80 for ma...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 1, 2008

More Energy Hikes? CEOs, CFOs Think So

Small and medium-sized manufacturers are bracing for even higher energy, raw materials and transportation costs in the near term, a survey of CFOs and CEOs by accounting and consulting-services firm RSM McGladrey shows.Nearly half (48 percent) the companies polled over the past 10 days were expec...

By Stephen Taub • July 31, 2008

Help from a $1B Revolver at Office Depot

Office Depot Inc. amended its revolving credit in the first quarter, and the struggling office-supplies retailer said it had obtained commitments for a fully underwritten facility in excess of $1 billion to be in place by the end of the third quarter.The amended credit agreement will be collatera...

By Stephen Taub • July 30, 2008

Which Way Will Capital Vote?

FOR a short while in his early 20s, Barack Obama edited reports in New York for Business International, a publishing firm that was later bought by The Economist Group. He did not much like it, so he quit to become a community organiser. That was his only first-hand experience of business. John Mc...

By Economist Staff • July 24, 2008

A Mess at Merrill

Merrill Lynch announced a string of disappointing news Thursday evening in an earnings call scheduled after the close of the markets. The struggling investment bank revealed a $9.4 billion write-down, $4.6 billion in second-quarter losses, the sale of its prized 20 percent stake in financial-info...

By Alan Rappeport • July 18, 2008

Global Business Outlook Survey

These days, “optimism” is a relative term. “I’m not optimistic, but I think things may be improving, if only because we’ve bottomed out,” says Jeff Burchill, CFO of FM Global, a commercial-property insurer.The fact that 53 percent of finance executives responding to this quarter’s Duke University...

By Kate O'Sullivan • July 15, 2008

IFRS and When

The curtain has risen, the band is playing — but when, precisely, will international financial reporting standards (IFRS) take center stage?That’s the question on the minds of companies, academics, audit firms, and virtually every other entity remotely connected with corporate finance. There is g...

By Tim Reason and Scott Leibs • July 15, 2008

But We Will Dominate the Swimming Events

Let’s hope the United States doesn’t perform this badly in all international competitions, or the Beijing Olympics will be about as compelling to watch as a “Bassmaster Classic” rerun.Earlier this year, the Amsterdam-based Global Reporting Initiative, a nonprofit group that issues widely used gui...

By Josh Hyatt • July 15, 2008

Game Theory Versus Practice

When Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Yahoo last February, the software giant knew the struggling search firm would not come easily into the fold. But Microsoft had anticipated the eventual minuet of offer and counteroffer five months before its announcement, thanks to the powers of g...

By Alan Rappeport • July 15, 2008

View from China

Has China, and particularly the factory-rich region of the Pearl River Delta in southern China, lost its edge as a low-cost manufacturing base? Local industry associations report that more than 10,000 factories have closed down. Equal numbers of Taiwanese and Hong Kong factory-owners have fled th...

By Wu Chen • July 15, 2008

What Keeps CFOs Up at Night?

With oil prices hovering at around $140 a barrel, the cost of fuel has officially registered on finance executives’ radar screens. In the most recent Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook Survey, conducted in June, fuel costs reached a virtual tie with consumer demand as the number-one worr...

By Kate O'Sullivan • July 11, 2008

Where, Not How

Research by McKinsey has found that where a company competes is more important than how it competes. In analysing revenue between 1996 and 2006 of 400 large-cap companies, it emerged that more than half of all of the growth of the average company was due to underlying growth in market segments, a...

By Janet Kersnar • July 7, 2008

Business Outlook Survey

From tailwinds to headwinds. That’s how analysts at Morgan Stanley recently described the “new inflation regime” taking hold in economies around the world.Deregulation, globalisation and strong productivity growth kept a lid on inflation for 20 years, allowing central bankers to hold interest rat...

By Jason Karaian • July 7, 2008

Can You Hear Me?

The shining glass building that houses the officesof ICI India is an unusual sight. The structure itselfis ordinary — it would blend in perfectly in a suburbanLondon office park. But this isn’t England. It’s Gurgaon,India, the chaotic and dusty special economic zone more thanan hour’s drive from ...

By Don Durfee • July 3, 2008

Made in India

Bharat Doshi, finance chief of India’s US$6.2billion Mahindra Group, is ever grateful hewas only 42 years old in 1991. Back then, hewas executive assistant to the managing directorof Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), the automotive arm ofthe Mahindra Group. As such, he spent much of his time inD...

By M. Mahanama • July 2, 2008

SEC Delays 404(b) Compliance for Small Biz

The Securities and Exchange Commission has granted small companies a one-year reprieve with regard to complying with the auditor-attestation requirements of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. When it approved the extension on Friday afternoon, the SEC said it wants to study the cost burden...

By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2008