Global Business Outlook Survey

These days, “optimism” is a relative term. “I’m not optimistic, but I think things may be improving, if only because we’ve bottomed out,” says Jeff Burchill, CFO of FM Global, a commercial-property insurer.The fact that 53 percent of finance executives responding to this quarter’s Duke University...

By Kate O'Sullivan • July 15, 2008

IFRS and When

The curtain has risen, the band is playing — but when, precisely, will international financial reporting standards (IFRS) take center stage?That’s the question on the minds of companies, academics, audit firms, and virtually every other entity remotely connected with corporate finance. There is g...

By Tim Reason and Scott Leibs • July 15, 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

But We Will Dominate the Swimming Events

Let’s hope the United States doesn’t perform this badly in all international competitions, or the Beijing Olympics will be about as compelling to watch as a “Bassmaster Classic” rerun.Earlier this year, the Amsterdam-based Global Reporting Initiative, a nonprofit group that issues widely used gui...

By Josh Hyatt • July 15, 2008

Game Theory Versus Practice

When Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Yahoo last February, the software giant knew the struggling search firm would not come easily into the fold. But Microsoft had anticipated the eventual minuet of offer and counteroffer five months before its announcement, thanks to the powers of g...

By Alan Rappeport • July 15, 2008

What Keeps CFOs Up at Night?

With oil prices hovering at around $140 a barrel, the cost of fuel has officially registered on finance executives’ radar screens. In the most recent Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook Survey, conducted in June, fuel costs reached a virtual tie with consumer demand as the number-one worr...

By Kate O'Sullivan • July 11, 2008

Where, Not How

Research by McKinsey has found that where a company competes is more important than how it competes. In analysing revenue between 1996 and 2006 of 400 large-cap companies, it emerged that more than half of all of the growth of the average company was due to underlying growth in market segments, a...

By Janet Kersnar • July 7, 2008

Business Outlook Survey

From tailwinds to headwinds. That’s how analysts at Morgan Stanley recently described the “new inflation regime” taking hold in economies around the world.Deregulation, globalisation and strong productivity growth kept a lid on inflation for 20 years, allowing central bankers to hold interest rat...

By Jason Karaian • July 7, 2008

Can You Hear Me?

The shining glass building that houses the officesof ICI India is an unusual sight. The structure itselfis ordinary — it would blend in perfectly in a suburbanLondon office park. But this isn’t England. It’s Gurgaon,India, the chaotic and dusty special economic zone more thanan hour’s drive from ...

By Don Durfee • July 3, 2008

Made in India

Bharat Doshi, finance chief of India’s US$6.2billion Mahindra Group, is ever grateful hewas only 42 years old in 1991. Back then, hewas executive assistant to the managing directorof Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), the automotive arm ofthe Mahindra Group. As such, he spent much of his time inD...

By M. Mahanama • July 2, 2008

SEC Delays 404(b) Compliance for Small Biz

The Securities and Exchange Commission has granted small companies a one-year reprieve with regard to complying with the auditor-attestation requirements of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. When it approved the extension on Friday afternoon, the SEC said it wants to study the cost burden...

By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2008

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

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

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

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

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