Who Really Profits?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in a global economy, international operations are a key indicator of a company’s strength. It is also universally acknowledged that reliable information on the profitability of these operations is almost impossible for outsiders to obtain.The Templeton ...

By Nikos Valance • Oct. 1, 2000

Getting Current Online

With around $1.5 trillion swap-ping hands every day, the foreign exchange market is a natural to enter the online exchange arena. However, while banks are racing to form Internet currency trading venturesmost notably FX Alliance LLC, owned by 13 major international banks; and Atriax, owned by Cit...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 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

2000 Excellence Awards: Kim Patmore

After 30 years as a senior accounting associate at Western Union, now a division of First Data Corp., Pam Kotowski was ready to retire. “Every day, I recorded journal entries, pulled down the back reports, and did the transfer to treasury. It was very predictable,” she says. “I was pretty much bu...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Larry Carter

Larry Carter won’t stop to declare victory. Sometime in the past year, Cisco Systems Inc.’s finance organization–arguably the most efficient in the world–achieved its much- touted aim of a “virtual close.” On any given workday, the San Jose, California-based Internet networking company can now pr...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Richard Kelson

In the fall of 1997, storm clouds suddenly darkened the horizon for Alcoa Inc. Aluminum prices, a leading indicator of Alcoa’s earnings, plunged 12 percent during one 60-day period. The Asian crisis weakened demand, and Alcoa’s stock began to lag the industrial averages that it had beaten the pre...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Joseph Martin

Joe Martin had just decided to help with the semiconductor industry’s first leveraged buyout when some peers had a question for him. “They said, ‘Are you out of your mind?'” recalls Martin, now the CFO of Fairchild Semiconductor International, the entity that emerged from the LBO of several forme...

By George Donnelly • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Mark Swartz

Tyco International Ltd. was supposed to be the next Cendant. Or the next Sunbeam, perhaps, or Waste Management. Go ahead, pick your favorite corporate behemoth recently brought to its knees for aggressive accounting practices. Because that’s what was supposed to happen to Tyco after allegations s...

By Stephen Barr • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Steven Shindler

When Steven Shindler joined Nextel Communications Inc. in 1996, he knew he had a lot to learn. The wireless company, based in Reston, Virginia, was racing to build its technology, management team, and, above all, coffers. And while Shindler, a 10-year banking veteran, had lent to the wireless ind...

By Ian Springsteel • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Judy C. Lewent

When it comes to helping build revenues, the CFO’s job is challenged by the growth strategy that the CEO establishes. At Merck & Co., that means focusing far more on internal growth than most of its pharmaceuticals competitors do, as well as undertaking joint ventures rather than acquisitions...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: David Willey

As the youngster in the credit-card game a few years ago, Capital One was at a decided disadvantage. The Richmond, Virginia-based bank, born in 1995 as a spin-off of Signet Bank, had no demonstrated ability to weather a recession. It also had an undiversified and cyclical asset base, which would ...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Jeffrey O. Henley

On any given day at Oracle Corp.’s Redwood Shores, California, headquarters, you can count on seeing customers in Jeff Henley’s office. Oracle’s CFO meets with as many as three a day, giving each an hour of his time. Henley calculates that he spends more than 50 percent of his day talking with cu...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 1, 2000

Revenue Strategies: Testing the Pricing

Although Alan Greenspan and the Feds have done a good job of keeping the lid on inþation, higher basic costs are forcing chief financial officers to consider boosting prices. CFOs expect to raise the prices of their companies’ products 3.5 percent during the next year, up from an expected 2.2 per...

By Tom Woodruff • Sept. 9, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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