The Spy Who Bugged Me

Insects are not the only bugs you should worry about in your hotel room when traveling overseas. A recent General Accounting Office report details more than 75 incidents of audio and video surveillance in hotel and meeting rooms, along with laptop break-ins and high-pressure questions, experience...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 1, 2000

Olympic Trials

As Sydney shoots for the gold with the most expensive and elaborate Summer Olympics ever — carrying a price tag of $5 billion — a very different financial strategy is playing out for the next Winter Olympics, half a world away in Salt Lake City.Nestled below the peaks of Utah’s picture-postcard W...

By Roy Harris • Sept. 1, 2000

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

Cash Crop: The 2000 Working Capital Survey

Is it possible to run a great company without minding your cash flow P’s and Q’s? Probably not. Money trapped in working capital is money not being used to grow the company. And in today’s hotly competitive global marketplace, where product cycles are ever shorter, pricing power is often nonexist...

By Randy Myers • Aug. 1, 2000

Bullied by a Weak Euro

As they translate their European profits back into U.S. dollars, a host of American multinationals are claiming the euro’s 7 percent drop in value since the beginning of the year is pulling revenues down. Among others, The Gillette Co. says first-quarter sales in Europe would have increased 9 per...

By Alix Stuart • Aug. 1, 2000

Bullied by a Weak Euro

As they translate their European profits back into U.S. dollars, a host of American multinationals are claiming the euro’s 7 percent drop in value since the beginning of the year is pulling revenues down. Among others, The Gillette Co. says first-quarter sales in Europe would have increased 9 per...

By Alix Stuart • Aug. 1, 2000

Lowering the Bar

There are plenty of good reasons why U.S. corporate executives don’t invest in Russia. There are good reasons they pass up projects in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Not only are the political and economic risks far greater than in the United States, so is the challenge of opera...

By Andrew Osterland • Aug. 1, 2000

Rock Solid?

Launched in the 1960s by a pair of British entrepreneurs who squired Audrey Hepburn and Joan Collins around London, Hanson Plc has come back to earth. Gone is the glitzy $20 billion conglomeration of companies that once captivated growth investors. The focus today is on mundane businesses that pr...

By Jinny St. Goar • July 1, 2000

Lean Green Machines: The 2000 Optimal Cash Scorecard

How much cash is enough cash? As debates in corporate finance go, few are more basic or more persistent. On the one hand, cash supplies a cushion against hard times or a war chest to bankroll growth strategies. Yet cushions and war chests, if judged excessive, invite criticism and occasional prox...

By S.L. Mintz • July 1, 2000

Defusing Global Bond Risk

In the 1980s and ’90s, companies looking to launch a bond offering in an emerging market were often hamstrung by their inability to protect institutional investors from the kind of political shocks that had become all too familiar. While political risk insurance (PRI) did exist, it was available ...

By Nikos Valance • May 1, 2000

What’s a Merger Worth?

When Pfizer Inc. agreed in early February to pay more than $90 billion for Warner-Lambert Co. in the priciest hostile takeover ever, the deal triggered the inevitable question: Was the price tag justified?According to final terms of the deal, 2.75 shares of Pfizer will be exchanged for each share...

By S.L. Mintz • April 1, 2000

Sweet and Sour

Determined to exploit lucrative opportunities in China? Then prepare for some wild ups and downs along the way. Just ask Douglas MacLellan, chairman of WelCom Corp. The Playa del Rey, California-based company, which represents some 30 U.S. and Taiwanese investors, is part of a group of 25 foreign...

By Nikos Valance • March 1, 2000

NAFTA Effects

The violent protests surrounding the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle last November created headlines, but a quieter battle elsewhere over the rules of international trade may have more immediate implications for U.S. companies.The case of Loewen v. O’Keefe pit Loewen Group, a Ca...

By Nikos Valance • March 1, 2000

The Second Annual Knowledge Capital Scoreboard: A Knowing Glance

Increasingly , intangible knowledge assets are dwarfing the value of tangible book assets at many companies. But don’t ask for details. While corporate reports heap praise on various efforts to capitalize on knowledge, they fail to supply reliable, objective benchmarks for measuring the values a ...

By S.L. Mintz • Feb. 1, 2000

The Outlook

There is no question that over the past decade or so, chief financial officers have risen to prominence in the corporate landscape. And with the new century upon us, it’s only natural to wonder how the role may continue to evolve. What new responsibilities will they be expected to assume? Could a...

By Stephen Barr • Jan. 1, 2000

The Gurus

Unless Y2K turned out to be a much bigger catastrophe than most experts predicted, this issue of CFO reaches readers with 1,200 months to go until year-end 2099. No one can say for sure, of course, what the heirs of today’s finance professionals will face by the next fin de siècle. But the future...

By S.L. Mintz • Jan. 1, 2000

Who Knows?

Years after most executives first heard the term, knowledge management remains a fuzzy concept and an elusive corporate goal. No wonder, since few experts can even agree on what it is.“A lot of people still think of knowledge management as an IT solution to moving information around, and that’s a...

By Randy Myers • Dec. 1, 1999

Penny Pinchers: Our Sixth Annual SG&A Survey

Let’s face it. In the seventh year of the strongest bull market since World War II, the subject of cost savings is generally less riveting than, say, the size of the latest mega-merger. So it is perhaps not surprising that, with few exceptions, CFO magazine’s sixth annual SG&A survey reveals ...

By S.L. Mintz • Dec. 1, 1999

U.S. in Taxing Dilemma

A ruling by an international trade group could derail a domestic tax break that saves U.S. corporations billions annually. But there’s a strong likelihood that Uncle Sam will appeal the decision, and Congress may be called upon to draft new provisions that help companies compete internationally. ...

By John P. Mello Jr. • Oct. 1, 1999

The High Price of Potential

Those insane internet-company valuations have created quite a buzz on Wall Street of late. Although they’ve come down closer to Earth recently, it remains hard to divine rational explanations. Now a study of the Internet industry has found at least a little rhyme, if not reason, to the values–and...

By George Donnelly • Sept. 1, 1999

The Plight of a New Currency

Issues with the Euro?Pity the poor euro. Introduced with fanfare in January, the euro has sagged since its inception, coming close to parity with the dollar. But while the euro has spurred some embarrassment and political handwringing among its Eurozone advocates, the new currency’s weakness also...

By George Donnelly • Aug. 1, 1999

Smooth Operator

Greg Maffei says he doesn’t lose any sleep over Microsoft Corp.’s antitrust battle with the Justice Department, simply because the software giant’s 39-year-old senior vice president and CFO plays no role in the case. Yet Maffei claims that he worries about the company’s future nonetheless.What da...

By Ronald Fink • Aug. 1, 1999

Metrics for the Masses

More than a decade ago, Georgia-Pacific Co., in Atlanta, signed up with Stern Stewart & Co. and began measuring financial performance with Economic Value Added. It started making incentive payments to managers based on the EVA numbers. Then, before any thought could be given to extending the ...

By Bill Birchard • May 1, 1999

Forum: The Family of Managers

There’s a lot of criticism these days about the vagaries and personal politics involved with family businesses. As the chief financial officer of a 74-employee, second-generation family business, though, I’d say that any business would do well to adopt some of the underlying principles of a well-...

By Kent Noble • Sept. 1, 1998

Alan B. Graf Jr. – Fedex Corp.

Memphis in early August is about as hot as it gets in the summer-soaked South. Yet, there was Alan B. Graf Jr., executive vice president and CFO of FDX Corp. (parent of Federal Express), down in the trenches, sweating in a golf shirt, heavy gloves, and steel-toed boots, hauling packages at the co...

By Russ Banham • Sept. 1, 1998

Basil Anderson – Campbell Soup

For Campbell Soup Co., cost optimization is a key element of strategy. “It isn’t about head- count elimination or cutting for the sake of taking costs into the bottom line,” says Dale F. Morrison, CEO since June 1997 of the $6 billion food giant. “We call cost cutting a productivity program enabl...

By Ann Monroe • Sept. 1, 1998