Nonfinancial Measurements Fall Short

While the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulatory efforts are aimed squarely at fighting fraud and fostering better internal controls, they miss the mark on nonfinancial measures that could have an equally large impact on a company’s success or failure.This is one of the main conclusions from a n...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 19, 2004

How Green Is My Company?

Suncor Energy Inc. has come clean. The Calgary-based integrated energy company, which reported $6.3 billion (Canadian) in revenues last year, also reported its environmental, social, and economic performance in a 78-page confessional that bares all — from greenhouse gas emissions to workforce div...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 18, 2004

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

Thoughts on ”Being Green”

We asked a number of notable individuals and organizations to share their thoughts on the question, “Can companies still afford to be green?”CFO.com welcomes your thoughts, too. Send your letters to: The Editor, CFO.com, 111 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019, or email us at [email protected]. Please...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 15, 2004

Corporate America, Save This Recovery

This is what the economy has been waiting for…sort of.In the past week, at least three software companies — Siebel Systems Inc., PeopleSoft Inc., and VeriSign Inc. — announced stronger-than-expected third-quarter results.Those announcements have strong implications for the overall economy, which ...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 6, 2004

The Dragon and the Eagle

Over the past year the world economy has grown by almost 5 percent, its fastest pace in two decades. Growth has been powered by two high-octane fuels: America’s exceptionally loose monetary policy, which has encouraged consumers to keep spending; and an unprecedented investment boom in China. Ame...

By Pam Woodall • Oct. 1, 2004

Are Oil Prices Headed for a Fall?

How high will the price of oil go? That’s a critical question for many finance executives are likely to ask as they budget their companies’ costs.With the cost of crude oil now at about $50 a barrel, almost every day another dire report portends a further surge in prices.Yet, despite the prevail...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 30, 2004

When It Rains…

For an operation that has fallen short of expectations and been a consistent money-loser, Microsoft’s business-applications unit certainly gets a lot of attention.As part of its seemingly endless effort to acquire PeopleSoft Inc., Oracle Corp. responded to federal antitrust charges this summer by...

By Norm Alster • Sept. 28, 2004

Monetary Policy: The Next Four Years

How would four years of a John Kerry Administration differ from a second term under George W. Bush? Finance executives must soon wrestle with that question, and they must do so as corporate managers as well as individual citizens.Their current inclinations are clear enough. According to a recent ...

By Ronald Fink • Sept. 27, 2004

Look Who’s Talking

When Bobby Lie, now a senior vice president for enterprise architecture at Fidelity Investments, was in charge of usage-based billing, he had the largely thankless task of hitting up the financial-services company’s many business units for their respective shares of network expenditures. With net...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 16, 2004

Watch for Those Late-Summer ”Delayoffs”

Is the nation’s employment picture really getting any brighter?Earlier this month we learned that the August unemployment rate held steady at 5.4 percent, down from its recent high of 6.3 percent in June 2003. That same week the Business Roundtable reported that 88 percent of the CEOs it surveyed...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 15, 2004

Stand by Me

Two years ago, at a panel discussion on the sometimes contentious relationship between CFOs and CIOs, one finance executive drew a hearty laugh from the crowd when he said, “My relationship with our CIO poses no problem at all — because the position is currently vacant.”At about the same time, an...

By Scott Leibs • Sept. 15, 2004

Rolling Along

Not many people have heard of European Metal Recycling. But since the early 1990s, UK-based EMR has been building a formidable empire, and is now one of the largest metal recyclers in the world. Its international network of 65 processing sites handles more than 8.5m tonnes of scrap metal a year, ...

By Janet Kersnar • Sept. 14, 2004

Happy, but Hesitant

Not much has changed since last quarter’s CFO Global Confidence Survey. Finance executives are still fairly bullish on the economy, and they even expect that raises may be on the horizon.The evidence on this latter point can be found in the top business concerns U.S. CFOs cite these days. Last qu...

By Joseph McCafferty • Sept. 3, 2004

The Tract of the Matter

Just over a year ago, Nicholas G. Carr offered a modest proposal that still has the information technology industry reeling. The veteran Harvard Business Review editor wrote an article headlined “IT Doesn’t Matter,” in which he argued that companies should stop looking to IT for competitive advan...

By Scott Leibs • Sept. 1, 2004

Economic Slowdown Sharper Than Projected

The U.S. economy’s rate of expansion slowed more sharply in the second quarter than originally projected, according to a report by the Department of Commerce.Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at a...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 30, 2004

Charley Horse for Jobless Claims

In an eagerly anticipated report issued yesterday by the Department of Labor, seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims for the week ending August 21 stood at 343,000, an increase of 10,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 333,000.The four-week moving average was 336,750, a decrea...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 27, 2004

Capex Rising after Two-Year Decline

Capital expenditures among Standard & Poor’s 500 companies are up following two years of decline, according to a report from Standard & Poor’s. By the end of 2004, capex will likely show a year-on-year increase of 5.53 percent, propelled by “a fourth quarter boost from the demise of the a...

By Marie Leone • Aug. 26, 2004

Greener Buildings, ‘Greener’ Bottom Line

Toyota Motor Sales USA likes green the way Henry Ford liked black. Not that Toyota is offering customers a Camry “in any color they choose, as long as it’s green” — the division’s new Torrance, California, headquarters is one of the largest environmentally friendly building complexes in the Unite...

By Russ Banham • Aug. 11, 2004

Getting Your Seat at the Strategy Table

Corporate finance has long had a diverse, if predominantly backward-looking, charter: track revenues and expenses against the budget, manage the balance sheet, build the income statement, and report results. Today, finance is being asked to play an increasingly important forward-looking role in f...

By Randy Myers • Aug. 3, 2004

Consumers Confident, Economy Sluggish

Consumer confidence is rising, according to two reports issued last week, but a slowdown in the shopping habits of Americans is dragging on the performance of the U.S. economy, according to government data released Friday.The University of Michigan’s consumer-confidence index inched up from 95.6 ...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 2, 2004

Cloudy or Clear?

When managers at Leica Microsystems get a call from their treasurer, Burkhard Straub, they know it’s serious. Ever since he joined the 540m ($662 million) German high-tech optical device maker three years ago, business unit heads have had to submit rolling monthly cash flow forecasts covering thr...

By Jason Karaian • July 28, 2004

Is the Real Estate Boom Sustainable?

The June run-up in sales of existing homes, to a record 6,950,000 annualized units, may have rekindled concerns that a real estate bubble may be ready to burst, but don’t look for housing prices to drop just yet, according to Moody’s Investors Service.Home sales last month were 17.4 percent highe...

By Ed Zwirn • July 28, 2004

Consumer Confidence Continues to Rise

Consumers are more confident about the economy than at any time in the past four years, according to the Conference Board.The private forecasting group announced Tuesday that its consumer confidence index, which increased sharply in June, posted further gains in July. The index, which is based on...

By Ed Zwirn • July 28, 2004

Edgy Optimism at Fast-Growing Companies

Chief executive officers at fast-growing companies are cautiously optimistic about prospects for the economy.Nearly three-quarters of these CEOs expect the economy to continue expanding for at least the next two to three years — yet two-thirds are using a planning cycle of one year or less.These ...

By Stephen Taub • July 22, 2004

International Standards Causing a Stir

More than 27 percent of U.K.-listed companies expect “their key performance indicators,” including earnings per share, will be “negatively affected” by new accounting rules that go into effect in 2005, reported Bloomberg. The wire service cited a study by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in...

By Stephen Taub • July 9, 2004