Bill Would Broaden Scrutiny of Foreign Investments

If President Bush signs a bill to vet acquisitions by overseas companies that’s making its way to the White House, foreign companies could soon face greater scrutiny in the interests of national security when investing in the United States.The legislation would overhaul the Committee on Foreign I...

By Alan Rappeport • July 12, 2007

Growing with the Flow

Twenty years ago, Charles Mulford was talking to the CEO of a high-tech start-up that had very ambitious growth plans. “I was very interested in the company,” he says, “but I questioned how they were going to finance their aggressive growth strategy. The CEO really surprised me when he said, ‘We’...

By Scott Leibs • July 11, 2007

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

SEC Throws Small Companies a Bone

On the heels of congressional criticism that the Securities and Exchange Commission isn’t being friendly enough to small businesses, the regulator has proposed rule changes that would let an estimated 1,500 more companies take advantage of lighter disclosure rules first created for the smallest p...

By Sarah Johnson • July 10, 2007

Finance-Worker Confidence Takes a Plunge

In what has been a roller-coaster year for confidence survey results for accounting and finance employees, confidence dipped sharply in June, according to the Hudson Employment Index. The index score dropped 9.8 points to 106.3, after an upward surge in May. Hudson said lower hiring expectations ...

By Stephen Taub • July 5, 2007

Tangled Up in Tasks

The estimate is startling. Naturally, upon reading it, I have to leave my office and tell a colleague about it.According to Basex Inc., a knowledge-management research firm, work interruptions cost the U.S. economy at least $650 billion a year. Analysts Jonathan B. Spira and David M. Goldes recko...

By Edward Teach • July 1, 2007

View from China: Taking Stock

These days everyone in Shanghai seems to own stock shares, including my barber. A man in his late 60s, he owns a small shop in a part of Shanghai once known as the French Concession. A week before the big stock-market dive that hit the Shanghai exchange, he told me he had placed his life savings ...

By Wu Chen • July 1, 2007

GlobalSantaFe Probes Possible Nigerian Woes

Offshore oil driller GlobalSantaFe Corp. said it began a voluntary probe of its Nigerian operations for possible violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and local laws. It said that another company’s settlement of a case involving a customs agent, and similar studies by two other com...

By Kate Plourd • June 26, 2007

Congresswoman Turns Up the Heat on SEC

Nydia Velazquez, chair of the House Committee on Small Business, fired off a press release expressing her disappointment that the Securities and Exchange Commission missed her 20-day deadline to provide a cost estimate for compliance with the internal-control provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. ...

By Sarah Johnson • June 26, 2007

Companies Follow Earmark Trail

Editor’s Note: This article, on the apparent effectiveness of small company lobbying, originally appeared yesterday in our sister publication, Roll Call. With the 2008 election season already in full swing, CFO.com will occasionally bring its readers selected stories from our sister publication t...

By Paul Singer • June 26, 2007

J-SOX Nation

This past April, Japanese pitching sensation DaisukeMatsuzaka wowed Red Sox Nation with his “gyroball.” From now untilnext April, Dave Sackett expects to be equally mesmerized by Japan’sversion of the corporate curveball.The corporate controller of Ulvac Technologies is charged withimplementing J...

By Cheryl Rosen • June 22, 2007

Quick Quiz: What’s a Reporting Entity?

Before you can translate words into another language, you have to be sure you understand what they mean in your own country. Even the English definitions of the most basic accounting terms — such as “reporting entity” — can be interpreted differently at small private businesses and at large publi...

By Cheryl Rosen • June 22, 2007

Painful Memories: SEC Grilled on 404 Costs

Under congressional pressure to ease the future burdens of small businesses in complying with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission is being asked to return to an issue that’s likely to open old wounds: quantifying the costs to companies of complying with t...

By David Katz • June 12, 2007

Senators Urge SEC to Delay 404, Again

Senators John Kerry and Olympia Snowe have sent another letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox asking him to give small companies more time to prepare for complying with the internal-control provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The small-business committees in both...

By Sarah Johnson • June 8, 2007

Survey: CFOs Gloomy about Economy

CFOs are feeling gloomier about the U.S. economy this quarter, their optimism sagging on concerns about rising labor costs and weak consumer demand, according to the latest Duke University/CFO Business Outlook Survey. For the first time this year, a majority of CFOs are feeling pessimistic about ...

By Alan Rappeport • June 7, 2007

Coming This Summer: 404 for All

The jury is still out on whether recent rule changes will make it easier for small companies to comply with section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. Chances are, they’ll start to find out this summer.The House Committee on Small Businesses heard testimony Tuesday from regulators and advocates for smaller p...

By Alan Rappeport • June 5, 2007

Measuring Up

When Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez gave up a double, a single, and another double in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, he not only squandered a three-run lead (and ultimately the pennant), but also provided a poignant lesson in the value of metrics.Martinez’s eighth inning coll...

By Scott Leibs • June 1, 2007

A Piece of the P-E

Think of private equity as a can of Red Bull for your personal portfolio. But there’s a catch: you have to wait 2 to 10 years for the rush to kick in.Actually, there are several catches, including high entrance costs, complex record-keeping, and a curious mix of volatility (high) and risk (surpri...

By Marie Leone • June 1, 2007

View from Europe: Global Bribery

When news broke this spring that the Securities and Exchange Commission had launched an informal investigation into the bribery scandals plaguing Siemens, CFOs in Europe gave a collective shudder. Combined with the announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice also had the German electronics a...

By Janet Kersnar • June 1, 2007

Did Hawk Fly Too High?

Hawk Corp. said the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a formal investigation into the auto-parts maker’s compliance with section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley ActAccording to a filing issued Wednesday by Hawk, the SEC is apparently exploring whether or not various stock transactions mig...

By Stephen Taub • May 30, 2007

Going Twice…

The top end of the auction world can be a rarefied place. Giving an investor presentation in New York in March, William Sheridan, the finance chief at auction house Sotheby’s, described how one of the company’s principal assets, and a significant barrier to entry for competitors, is “unparalleled...

By Tony McAuley • May 17, 2007

Employers Hit for Misclassifying Workers

A growing number of larger companies are incorrectly calling some of their employees “independent contractors” and saving as much as 30 percent in payroll costs by doing so, according to employee advocates testifying at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Tuesday. Misclassifying some of t...

By Sarah Johnson • May 8, 2007

The Bright Side of Bubbles

The American economy is forever blowing bubbles. Housing seems to be the investment bubble du jour, coming on the heels of the Internet bubble, which popped seven years ago. The two are linked: as the dot-com economy slowed, Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan steadily lowered the feder...

By Edward Teach • May 1, 2007

Long-term Thinking

Spend enough time sorting through the intricacies of long-term-care insurance and you may decide that John Maynard Keynes’s famous axiom, “In the long run, we are all dead,” is positively comforting. While almost no one would dispute that longevity is good, it comes at a price: as baby boomers in...

By Marie Leone • May 1, 2007

Finance vs. Marketing

Companies are still struggling to measure their returns on marketing investments, and two recent studies shed some light on why. For one thing, marketing and finance disagree as to how well current programs to measure the ROI of expenses such as advertising and direct mail actually perform. At ma...

By Joseph McCafferty • May 1, 2007

A Sense of Things to Come

The military uses for wireless technology are persuasive. For example, pilots can fly above a war zone and drop thousands of small wireless sensors, the size of a small pebble and costing a dollar apiece, over the terrain. As soon as they settle the devices start communicating with each other, we...

By Economist Staff • April 30, 2007