Price Fixing

Call it the year of the fire sale: Squeezed by an historic recession, U.S. companies have slashed prices more deeply and cut deals more often than at any time in the past 50 years. Microsoft reduced the price of software leasing by 26%, PepsiCo created new low-price beverages and snacks, and sola...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 1, 2009

Balance-Sheet Blues

Leasing is one convergence project that some U.S. finance executives are eyeing very warily. All signs are that a revamped global standard, expected in 2011, would require companies to capitalize assets that have traditionally fallen under the operating-lease classification, and hence could be re...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 1, 2009

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

Convergence vs. Conversion

Recent comments by top Securities and Exchange Commission officials, including chairperson Mary Schapiro, have refueled the already-intense debate about whether the United States should adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Amid criticism that such a move would benefit only th...

By Marie Leone • Dec. 1, 2009

Unhappy Holidays

Consumer spending is the main engine of the U.S. economy, accounting for more than two-thirds of gross domestic product (GDP). But for the past two years, the engine has been sputtering. Much of its fuel, in the form of steady paychecks and easy credit, has evaporated. And many of its parts are a...

By Edward Teach • Dec. 1, 2009

CPAs Emit Faint Glimmer of Hope

The optimism of high-level accountants, including CFOs, has been inching up. Although perhaps centimeters would offer a more appropriate measurement of how they’ve changed their outlook compared with the first half of the year.Some financial leaders are seeing signs of revenue and profit growth —...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 18, 2009

Will Small Biz Get Sarbox Impunity?

The House Financial Services Committee has passed a bill that would exempt just over half of all publicly traded companies from the contentious internal-control provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that requires an auditor opinion.The proposed exemption has a long way to go before smaller companie...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 4, 2009

Companies Play Credit Catch-Up

It’s payback time. After months of stretching out their payables, companies are starting to catch up on their debt with their suppliers, according to the National Association of Credit Management.In turn, trade creditors have begun to see improvements in their collections during the past two mont...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 3, 2009

Senators Eye New Juice for Small Companies

Lawmakers are working on a new lifeline for small business, whose tiny portion of the federal stimulus package passed earlier this year will otherwise soon run out.Federal officials had initially estimated that funding for enhancements to two programs designed to spur bank lending to small compan...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 6, 2009

Deadline for Small Co. 404 Audit Reports: June 15

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that starting in nine months, it will require the smallest public companies to provide the auditor assessments of internal controls over financial reporting that are required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.Under Section 404 of Sarbox, pub...

By David Katz • Oct. 2, 2009

Auditor-Small Issuer Controls Spats Seen

Auditors and companies could soon clash on the issue of whether companies have the proper systems in place to avoid significant errors in their financial statements, Greg Wilson, deputy director of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s inspections division, recently warned audit firms n...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 1, 2009

Looking Up

In mid-September, Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke told an audience at the Brookings Institution that “the recession is very likely over at this point.” He may well be right, judging from the growing optimism of respondents to the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Out...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 1, 2009

The New Calculus of Offshoring

Even before Ajit Singh made a formal announcement about his company’s offshoring plans, employees knew what he would say. “The more I talked,” recalls the CEO of Bioimagene, a maker of computer-aided diagnostic tools, “the more I think they could see my rationale.”True, some voiced concern about ...

By Josh Hyatt • Oct. 1, 2009

Failure to Launch?

American economic history brims with big-name companies that can trace their beginnings to a recession. Coors was founded during the recession of 1873. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard cobbled together the prototypical garage start-up at the end of the Great Depression. Bill Gates, undeterred by sta...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 1, 2009

Stiglitz: GDP Blinded Us to the Crisis

One of the reasons the global financial crisis took the world by surprise may be that our measurement system failed. That is, market participants and government officials were not focused on the right set of statistical indicators, claims a report from a panel of top economists led by Nobel Prize...

By Marie Leone • Sept. 29, 2009

Curbing Fleet Costs

Paula Morisey doesn’t just have a company car, she has about 6,000. As fleet manager for Xerox, Morisey spends most of her time trying to ensure that the vehicles — mostly service vans filled with copier and printer parts — are operating as efficiently as possible, in all senses of the word effic...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 24, 2009

CFOs Put on a Happy Face

Optimism is growing among the CFO ranks as finance executives see an end to the Great Recession. Fifty-eight percent of finance execs say they are more optimistic about the economy than they were last quarter, and 48% say they are more optimistic about their own companies than they were three mon...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Sept. 15, 2009

Are Sales Set to Explode in 2010?

Do you trust your sales-team leaders to make accurate forecasts of future business? If so, you won’t be surprised if you find a pot of gold just around the corner.Among the many signs that the recession may be starting to lift, 83% of 129 sales executives surveyed by Watson Wyatt projected revenu...

By David McCann • Sept. 15, 2009

Hard Lessons

When Anthony Dombrowik was promoted from controller to CFO of the Red Lion Hotel Group in 2008, he knew the role would be challenging. What he didn’t know was that his first year would essentially be a trial by fire, requiring him to navigate through some of the most daunting times ever faced by ...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 1, 2009

For Intel, the Future Is Now

Editor’s note: Intel CFO Stacy Smith is a featured speaker at the CFO Rising West conference September 21-23, 2009 in Las Vegas. For more information, click here.Also, this article has been updated to correct an erroneous reference to Intel’s next generation of processing technology. The company ...

By David McCann • Aug. 25, 2009

Legally Blind

CFOs are leaving no stone unturned these days when it comes to saving money. In fact, many finance chiefs are systematic about asking vendors for discounts and better terms. That process, however, begets the need to know exactly how much a company is spending on a given product or service, knowle...

By Alix Stuart • Aug. 19, 2009

Feds Oil Up Their Antibribery Machine

Driven by the mass globalization of business, the U.S. government is continuing to speed up its enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Besides the greater compliance and legal risks to companies that the increased FCPA activity represents, it also presents the likelihood that CFOs will...

By David McCann • July 29, 2009

CFOs Not on the Recovery Bandwagon Yet

As financial markets embrace the idea that economic recovery is drawing near, CFOs are not as infused with optimism — indeed, many are downright skeptical that better times are right around the corner. That sentiment was clearly evident in the first two weeks of operation of the CFO Prediction Ma...

By Vincent Ryan • July 27, 2009

Turnaround, Here We Come

For many companies, experiencing the recession involves hanging on in survival mode — dumping costs, squeezing bucks out of working capital, and praying for an economic turnaround to rescue them in 2010. But since business is all about maximizing opportunities, even companies that continue to thr...

By David McCann • July 16, 2009

Waiting for a Sign

Adrift in a sea of conflicting economic indicators, CFOs are sending mixed signals in this quarter’s Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey. While they report a marked increase in optimism compared with last quarter, they still plan to lay off employees and cut spending. Fift...

By Kate O'Sullivan • July 15, 2009

Imperfect Futures

“A great deal of uncertainty exists in the global economy, making it extremely difficult to know how our customers will respond during the remainder of 2009.”Where have we heard this line before? In this case, it was Caterpillar CEO James Owens, a former CFO and economist, explaining in April why...

By Alix Stuart • July 15, 2009