The Fine Art of NIT-picking

Twice in this issue, we mention Moore’s Law, the well-known dictum that computer chips will double in power and halve in price every 18 months. Not only does the law pithily capture the essence of the digital innovation that has shaped society for several decades, it is that rarest of things: a p...

By Scott Leibs • Nov. 17, 2003

America’s Business Recovery

Evidence of a turn in the business cycle has been met with almost bewildered disbelief by many American executives. The evidence has been rolling in: profits are rising strongly; investment by non-farm, non-financial corporations has expanded briskly for two quarters in a row; and corporate spend...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 14, 2003

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

The Misery of Manufacturing

Rich-country manufacturing has supposedly been in decline for so long that it is surprising that the politicians, unions and journalists who leap so nobly to its defence find much left to save. But they do: after years of silence on this hoariest of economic fallacies — that manufacturing is some...

By Economist Staff • Sept. 26, 2003

Lessons Learned

Like many investors, Ed Goldfinger, CFO of Empirix Inc., in Waltham, Massachusetts, got “a bit overexcited” during the dot-com frenzy. And while he doesn’t consider himself to have been “burned very badly,” he says the experience taught him several lessons. The experience taught him several lesso...

By Lori Calabro • Sept. 19, 2003

Behind the Music

MTV, the television network built on cool, is feeling the heat.What was once a humble cable station known for airing music videos in endless rotation is now a programming powerhouse and media juggernaut. Fueled in part by a string of acquisitions, MTV has made forays into radio, movies, books, We...

By Peter Krass • Sept. 17, 2003

Barely Working: The 2003 Working Capital Survey

Maybe they were preoccupied with governance issues. But whatever the reason, U.S. companies blew some good chances last year to generate extra cash via working capital improvements. That’s the primary conclusion of CFO’s annual CFO’s annual working capital survey, conducted by REL Consultancy Gro...

By Tim Reason • Sept. 3, 2003

Are We There Yet?

Prepare the bulls: CFOs are feeling better about the outlook for the U.S. economy. While few are ready to declare the downturn over just yet, most are increasingly optimistic. In fact, finance chiefs are more hopeful about economic prospects over the next year than they have been since December 2...

By Joseph McCafferty • Sept. 1, 2003

Try, Try Again

At first glance, May’s merger between OM of Sweden and Hex of Finland wasn’t the most eye-catching deal. After all, even combined, the two Nordic stock exchanges will still be small fry relative to the trading volume that the heavyweights — Euronext, London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Deutsche Borse...

By Ian Rowley • July 1, 2003

Filling the Void

Who says lightning never strikes twice?When Bertelsmann, the 18 billion euros German media giant, accepted a 1.05 billion euros bid for BertelsmannSpringer from Candover and Cinven in May, it was the second time in four month the two private equity houses had joined forces to acquire a publishing...

By Ian Rowley • July 1, 2003

MVPs of MVA

Like the wicked queen in the tale of Snow White, analysts are forever trying to identify the fairest of them all — the strongest, most innovative, and fastest-growing companies. Finance executives, in turn, are constantly seeking a metric that communicates a company’s financial condition in a way...

By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2003

Rolling Budgets, with a Twist

From his office in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Bruce Borquist uses the Internet to collect daily budget changes tied to hyperinflation in El Salvador, on-again, off-again irrigation projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and hospital reconstruction in Nepal. Borquist, the CFO of Intern...

By Marie Leone • June 3, 2003

Minority Revolt

NatSteel’s offer looks generous in the extreme. At a time when SARS-stricken companies in Asia have put a lid on spending, the Singapore engineering group plans to double its announced dividend payout. The sum its majority owners want to distribute to public shareholders is US$240 million, equal ...

By Abe De Ramos • June 1, 2003

Economy: Reloaded?

Now that the war in Iraq is over, will the economy bounce back soon? Plenty of finance chiefs think so. In fact, CFOs are generally more hopeful about the short-term prospects for the U.S. economy than they have been in a year.According to our quarterly Global Confidence Survey of finance executi...

By Joseph McCafferty • June 1, 2003

Liquor and Liquidity

For foreign creditors struggling with Asia’s tortuous debt restructurings, events last month at Korean liquor maker Jinro could well offer something to cheer about. On May 14, the Seoul District Court ruled in favour of a petition filed by US investment bank Goldman Sachs and appointed a receiver...

By Chirs Leahy • June 1, 2003

Reporting for Duty

If you want to know what Ken Lever thinks about shareholder value, look no further than the annual report at Tomkins, the £3.4 billion (€4.7 billion) UK engineering conglomerate where he’s CFO.Since joining Tomkins four years ago, he’s been pumping more and more information into the firm’s annual...

By Ben McLannahan • June 1, 2003

How to Improve Performance Management

State-of-the-art software systems can help finance become a more efficient collector and analyst of data, well-equipped to model and test the impact of changes both within and external to the organization — and able to share that power with other parts of the enterprise. These systems allow budge...

By Randy Myers • June 1, 2003

Three Gorges: Dam Expensive

Yichang, a city built on the banks of a murky section of the great Yangtze River, a team of investment bankers from China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) is working round the clock to help Yangtze Electric Power obtain an A-share listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Hard...

By Yang Jian • May 9, 2003

Through the Looking Glass

The conduit, that odd species of special purpose entity, is all the rage among the region’s universal banks. Citigroup, HSBC, Standard Chartered, ING, Bank of America and ABN AMRO make wide use of them for the simple reason that conduits allow them to exploit an equally peculiar regulatory loopho...

By Jasper Moiseiwitsch • May 1, 2003

Standing Up to SARS

There’s a certain zest brought on by a crisis that suits Martin Cubbon, group finance chief of Swire Pacific, a Hong Kong — based conglomerate that owns beleaguered airline Cathay Pacific. Even as the deadly Sars virus rampages across Asia, he coolly taps his fingers on his desk and rattles off c...

By Tom Leander and Abe De Ramos • May 1, 2003

Good News, Bad News

From a fundraising perspective, it’s hard to quibble with Deutsche Telekom’s debut mandatory convertible bond issue. For one thing, the deal raised over E2 billion for the cash-strapped German telecoms giant in a single morning in February. For another, the funds are recognised as equity capital ...

By Ian Rowley • May 1, 2003

How’m I Doing?

Companies expend a lot of effort (and money) in assessing where they are and where they’re going, but even the best don’t think they do it very well. The Hackett Group, which benchmarks best practices at more than 2,000 companies, found that only a third of the companies it classifies as “world-c...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 17, 2003

Boo-hoo Economics

Uncertainty about a potential war in the Middle East is causing much consternation among finance chiefs. In fact, CFOs are gloomier about the short-term economic prospects for the United States than they’ve been since December 2001, when the specter of recession loomed.According to our quarterly ...

By Joseph McCafferty • March 1, 2003

SSCs: Are They Dinosaurs?

If you want to know why shared service centers (SSCs) keep CFOs awake at night, Ric Piper could probably tell you. Until last October, Piper was group finance director of WS Atkins, an £806 million ($1.328 billion) U.K. engineering consultancy whose SSC in a small town in the west of England was ...

By Janet Kersnar • Feb. 1, 2003

The Downside of Downsizing

Companies thought that recent cost cuts would push them out of the doldrums — or at least boost earnings enough to please shareholders. That hasn’t happened. Is another round of cuts in order?Lawrence Serven, a principal at ButtonwoodLLP.com, a Stamford, Connecticut-based management-consulting fi...

By Lynn Doan • Feb. 1, 2003

Business Intelligence: Mastering Data

Cognos Inc.’s successful bid for rival Adaytum Inc. last December (see “Adaytum: An Addendum,” below) is just one indication that the business-intelligence (BI) software market is heating up. Analysts expect further consolidation as software firms battle in a large ($11 billion, according to IDC ...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2003