Go West, Old Man

Tinkering with the circadian clock, the day-and-night cycle in the physiological processes of all living beings, is rarely a good idea. Poor health and accidents are more common in those who fly frequently or do shift work. Now a new study shows that the direction in which the clock is changed af...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 21, 2006

Down But Not Out

Rarely have Wall Street’s seers been so split. Not only are they divided about where the economy is headed, they even disagree about how it is faring today. Pessimists, such as Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics, reckon output is slowing from its already desultory pace of 1.6% a year in ...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 20, 2006

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

Dim Sums

China’s national bird, it is said, is the crane. They loom all over cities, as ever more skyscrapers, car factories and steel plants are constructed. Concern that the investment boom is out of control has forced the government to clamp down on new projects. As a result, investment in fixed assets...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 14, 2006

Setting up Shop in India

India’s retail revolution is at last getting started. At the moment 97% of retail sales are made in more than 15m tiny mom-and-pop stores, mostly of less than 500 square feet (46 square metres). But now Reliance Industries, the country’s largest business group, is to spend 250 billion rupees ($5....

By Economist Staff • Nov. 13, 2006

In Case of Emergency

When Tropical Storm Ernesto hit Florida in August, Bill Franklin, manager of travel for Mitretek Systems, was busy tracking how many of the company’s employees were in its path. With the help of an interactive database, Franklin could see their location and send them a group E-mail alert if neces...

By Laura DeMars • Nov. 13, 2006

The Carbon Economy

Hazelwood is the world’sdirtiest power station. Located nearthe vast Latrobe Valley brown coaldeposits in Australia’s Victoria state,the plant is a magnet for environmentalprotesters, angry that its emissionsof greenhouse gases per unit of electricitytopped a recent global rankingby the World Wil...

By Jason Karaian • Nov. 1, 2006

Passing the Bucks

Walter Dollard was never one to procrastinate — until heretired.During a 37-year career at WestinghouseElectric, the mechanical andnuclear-power engineer was able toaccumulate a sizable nest egg. After retiringat age 62, he consolidated it by takinghis pension in a lump sum and transferringthat m...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 1, 2006

View from Europe

It wasn’t all politics as usual at the UK Labour Party’s annual conference in Manchester in late September. On the afternoon that Chancellor Gordon Brown was giving his why-I’d-make-a-good-prime-minister speech, Industry Minister Margaret Hodge held a side meeting about a topic that has rankled m...

By Janet Kersnar • Nov. 1, 2006

Harry Potter and the Corner Office

Who would make a better CEO, Harry Potter orMoses? Should you run your companylike the New York Yankees, eventhough the team just failed again inthe clutch? What can Formula 1 racingteach you about developing talent?Does Attila the Hun still speak towould-be masters of the universe, oris Captain ...

By Joseph McCafferty • Nov. 1, 2006

Designs of Intelligence

Companies go to enormoustrouble to capture and store data,and then go to even more trouble(and expense) when they attemptto extract and use it. The systemsfor accomplishing the latter task goby various names — business intelligence(BI), performance management,analytics — and while a technologistc...

By Scott Leibs • Nov. 1, 2006

Business Travel to Cost More in 2007

The cost of business travel will increase across the board in 2007 as a result of continuing demand without a commensurate increase in supply, according to the latest American Express Global Business Travel Forecast.The average domestic North America trip inclusive of air fare, car rental, and ho...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 26, 2006

Going from Global Trends to Corporate Strategy

An executive’s ability to read trends accurately in a rapidly changing business environment can make all the difference between riding the currents of opportunity and paddling upstream against them. But even when you have a good feel for broad emerging macroeconomic, social, environmental, and bu...

By The McKinsey Quarterly • Oct. 18, 2006

Finance Execs: Energy Prices Not a Worry

Finance professionals are confident the energy crisis has passed.According to a new survey of treasury and finance professionals conducted earlier this week at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) Annual Conference, just 12 percent expect significant increases in the price of electri...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 17, 2006

CEO Confidence Sinks to Five-Year Low

Chief executive officers are more pessimistic now than they have been in five years, according to the Conference Board. For the first time in half a decade, organization’s CEO Confidence Measure has dipped below 50, falling to 44 in the third quarter. That approaches the nadir hit in the final q...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 12, 2006

Growing Pains

On December 11th last year, a huge explosion ripped through the Buncefield fuel depot in Hertfordshire, 56 kilometres northeast of London. The local fire chief described the blast at the depot, the main fuel hub for Heathrow and other airports around the city, as the largest of its kind in peacet...

By Tony McAuley • Oct. 10, 2006

CFOs: Kerry’s Sarbox Relief Bill Not Enough

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has introduced legislation to ease the concerns small companies have about the cost of complying with section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. But amid Congress’s month-long break until the Nov. 7 elections, followed by a year-end, lame-duck session, the bill isn’t expecte...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 3, 2006

A Chance to Direct

When Patriot Federal Bank, a community bank based in Canajoharie, New York, went looking for start-up capital last year, CFO Vince Fazio tapped into an unlikely source: individual retirement accounts. While the humble IRA will never be confused with a hedge fund, it turns out that in the right ha...

By Lori Calabro • Oct. 1, 2006

View from Asia

This summer I was on hand to help shoot a documentary in Qinghai province. The film chronicled the efforts of a Hong Kong charity to bring eye surgery to this forgotten part of China on the Northern Tibetan plateau. Because the land of parched mountains, dusty towns, and ancient temples is rugged...

By Tom Leander • Oct. 1, 2006

Rush to Judgment

Was Carly Fiorina embracing a disastrous “bigger is better” strategy when she engineered the 2002 merger of Hewlett-Packard Co. with Compaq Computer Corp.? Many at the time, both on Wall Street and within HP, saw the deal as Fiorina’s Folly. And some still do. HP’s board seemed to validate such c...

By Roy Harris • Oct. 1, 2006

Business Outlook Survey

Optimism among CFOs has hit its lowest point since the last recession, according to the latest Duke University/CFO Business Outlook Survey. Just 20 percent of finance chiefs are more optimistic about the direction of the U.S. economy, down from last quarter, when 24 percent had a positive outlook...

By Joseph McCafferty • Oct. 1, 2006

Small Biz: Regulation a Roadblock to Capital

Regulation is the biggest challenge to small businesses that want to raise capital, investment bankers and attorneys told the Securities and Exchange Commission at an SEC government-business forum on small business capital formation on Friday.One such challenge is the inefficiency of registration...

By Helen Shaw • Sept. 29, 2006

Small Business Fights Borrowing Squeeze

Unless the playing field is kept level to enable small banks to compete with big ones, corporate borrowers in the United States will face a market where there’s less competition for their business, a former top banking regulator on told Congress on Tuesday.In testimony before the Senate Committee...

By Rob Garver • Sept. 27, 2006

Managing Your Organization by the Evidence

When it comes to simple remedies, few are more seductive than those claiming to help companies create a healthy organization. One-dimensional messages about how to achieve sustainable organizational excellence remain in circulation even though most CEOs and other senior executives instinctively k...

By The McKinsey Quarterly • Sept. 21, 2006

Small Business Owners’ Outlook Declines

The malaise about the economy continues. Small business owners’ optimism is the lowest it’s been since March 2003, says a recent survey by the National Federation of Independent Business. This rise in pessimism nearly mirrors the rising negativity CFOs feel about the U.S. economy, a pessimism tha...

By Sarah Johnson • Sept. 20, 2006

Booking Trips the Old-fashioned Way

Not long ago, Randy Royer, the treasurer of Mesirow Financial Holdings, got caught in an ice storm in Portland, Ore. Because he had booked his trip online, he spent hours on the phone with airlines, trying to get back home to Chicago. In the end, he drove to Seattle (a two-hour trip that took six...

By Laura DeMars • Sept. 18, 2006