Foreign Tax Break Results in Huge Windfall

A 2004 law designed to encourage U.S. multinational companies to invest repatriated foreign earnings was “extremely successful,” according to a new analysis by Grant Thornton.The accounting firm says newly available IRS data reveals that the one-time dividend deduction offered under the American ...

By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2008

CFOs’ Fuel Fears Rise to Join Consumer Worries

Soaring fuel costs have joined sagging consumer demand in a virtual tie as top concerns of CFOs, according to the latest Duke University/CFO magazine Global Business Outlook Survey.It is the first time that fuel costs have risen to that level, equaling the consumer related worries that for severa...

By Alan Rappeport • June 18, 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

Beijing Broad Jump

Being an Olympic sponsor is a little like being an Olympic athlete. Years of work, yearsof planning, a huge investment — and in the end, there’s a chance you’ll end upwith nothing but bruises to show for your trouble.This spring, sponsors faced their first untied shoe moment when Western activist...

By Bennett Voyles • June 16, 2008

Extra Extra: Weep All about It

The contraction of the newspaper business is not reflected just by declining readership, profits, and employment. It’s also shrinking balance sheets.The latest one to deliver bad news: Gannett. The company announced it will take non-cash charges of $2.5 billion to $3 billion for the quarter endin...

By Stephen Taub • June 9, 2008

Flight Cutbacks to Whack T&E Budgets

Soaring oil prices have pushed major U.S. airlines to lop off about 10 percent of their seat capacity, roughly equaling the greatest previous cutbacks, seen in the months following the 2001 terrorist attacks.On Thursday Continental announced an 11 percent reduction. That news came a day after Uni...

By David McCann • June 6, 2008

Four Play

You’ve seen the advertisements: a group of good-looking professionals gathers to discuss pressing global problems over lunch in, say, Rome. All sorts of service providers are keen to show you just how global they are. But as CFOs know too well, the reality hasn’t quite caught up with the advertis...

By Bennett Voyles • June 2, 2008

Counter Attack

Most retailers want you to come to their checkout lines with as much merchandise as you can carry. Not Abercrombie & Fitch. The $3.75 billion apparel retailer actually limits the number of items customers can buy to 20, bumping it up to 50 only during the Christmas and back-to-school shopping...

By Randy Myers • June 1, 2008

Capex Caution

Capital spending generally goes as the economy goes — which means it’s currently in the doldrums. Growth of U.S. capital expenditures (capex) has slowed from a robust 21 percent in 2006 to 13 percent in 2007 to nominal growth projected for 2008, according to business consultancy The Hackett Group...

By Avital Louria Hahn • June 1, 2008

Staying on Course

CaseCentral, a San Francisco–based litigation support firm, may seem as recession-proof as a business can be. It provides an electronic platform for evidence management to companies battling lawsuits — not a sector likely to see a precipitous falloff in business. Even so, CaseCentral isn’t immune...

By Karen M. Kroll • June 1, 2008

How Bad Will It Get?

Is the U.S. economy in a recession? By a well-known rule of thumb — two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth — no. Gross domestic product grew an estimated 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008, the same pace as in the fourth quarter of 2007. Many economists forecast more growth for...

By Edward Teach • June 1, 2008

ROC Solid

In their never-ending quest to drive shareholder value, CFOs have a bevy of favorite performance gauges to point them in the right direction. But do popular metrics such as return on equity (ROE) and return on net assets (RONA) truly focus CFOs on the correct strategies for boosting a company’s v...

By Vincent Ryan • June 1, 2008

View from Europe

When Saudi Arabia’s government announced last month that it would join the list of Middle Eastern and Asian countries that have launched sovereign-wealth funds (SWFs), CFOs in Europe had more than just a passing interest. These SWFs — from the Government Investment Corp. in Singapore to Abu Dhabi...

By Janet Kersnar • June 1, 2008

Another One Bites the Dust

Silverjet didn’t cite skyrocketing fuel costs as its reason for ceasing operations Friday, but it didn’t need to be said. If the price of oil doesn’t moderate, soon there may be more airlines grounded than flying.In a statement on its Website, U.K.-based Silverjet — an all-business-class carrier ...

By Stephen Taub • May 30, 2008

Oil Blues Force Companies to Cut Back

At least two major companies made decisions this week in response to the surging price of oil, while a third is mulling a big change due to the weak economy.JetBlue Airways announced it plans to defer the delivery of 21 Airbus A320 aircraft, originally scheduled for delivery between 2009 through ...

By Stephen Taub • May 28, 2008

Maybe There’s No Pony, Small Biz Worries

The pessimism among small business owners is deepening by the quarter.A Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey conducted in April — compiling ratings in the areas of financial situation, cash flow, revenues, capital allocation, job hiring, and credit availability — found that optimism rat...

By Stephen Taub • May 27, 2008

SEC Rule Aids Small-Biz Capital

The Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted a rule amendment to increase the availability of capital to smaller companies that may not have ready access to the public capital markets or other forms of conventional financing.With the rule change, more small, financially troubled businesses ...

By Stephen Taub • May 16, 2008

Financial Firms Drag Down S&P 500

Call it a tale of two markets: first-quarter 2008 operating earnings for the S&P 500 declined 25.9 percent from a year earlier — but excluding financial companies, the group actually enjoyed a healthy gain, according to preliminary figures from Standard & Poor’s.It was the third consecuti...

By Stephen Taub • May 16, 2008

SEC Plans to Boost Small-Business Capital Formation

The Securities and Exchange Commission will consider a proposal its staff says would boost access to capital for small companies that are either developing or struggling. The rule amendment would give more small, financially troubled businesses a better chance at getting investment dollars. As it...

By Sarah Johnson • May 8, 2008

Steppes Ahead

Last month, a standing-room-only crowd packed a posh London hotel for a conference about an unlikely topic: Mongolian capital markets. A year ago, notes J Peter Morrow, CEO of Ulaanbaatar-based Khan Bank, such a gathering “would have been somewhere between irrelevant and fatuous.” Now, however, w...

By Laura Cameron • May 5, 2008

Weather Report

Whether it’s due to regulation, pressure from stakeholders or genuine anxiety about the fate of our planet, climate change is becoming a boardroom issue. Or, at least, companies are making it appear so.Corporate Register, an online directory of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, rec...

By Laura Cameron • May 5, 2008

Small Businesses Bitten by Credit Crunch

The credit crunch and soft economy are taking their toll on small companies. Recent studies and reports from lenders show that small businesses are either having a harder time getting credit or struggling to pay off their debt.Consider, for example, the recent earnings report from Advanta Corp., ...

By Stephen Taub • May 2, 2008

Half Full, and Then Some

Confidence is in short supply these days. The prospect of a lengthy recession has left just about everyone feeling nervous and insecure. Finance chiefs in particular are gloomier than ever, as indicated by CFO magazine’s recent Business Outlook surveys, which found that nearly 90 percent don’t an...

By Alan Rappeport • May 1, 2008

View from Asia: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I was hosting a dinner of multinational executives in Shanghai recently when the CFO of a well-known U.S. company that has been operating in China for ages told me that he was about to conclude a long assignment in Shenzen and move back to New York.He said that he was looking forward to returning...

By Tom Leander • May 1, 2008

Europe Feels Effects of Credit Crunch

The global credit crunch is clearly taking a toll on European companies.In the first quarter of 2008, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded 35 issuers in Europe and upgraded only 17. The gap of downgrades to upgrades was the worst since the third quarter of 2006, when the ratings gap was at minus ...

By Stephen Taub • April 29, 2008

For Global Credit Ratings, Down Is Way Up

Another measure of global credit quality plunged in the first quarter, as the ratio of downgrades-to-upgrades ratio soared to 3-to-1 from 2-to-1 in the previous quarter.As recently as the 2007 second quarter, the number of upgrades had approximated the number of downgrades, according to a new rep...

By Stephen Taub • April 28, 2008