The ROI of Doing the Right Thing

In its early days in 1980s Chico, Calif., independent brewing company Sierra Nevada had to employ practices that were friendly to the environment because “we didn’t have the resources to be wasteful,” said Bill Bales, the company’s finance chief, at CFO’s Playbook West conference on Tuesday. So c...

By Vincent Ryan • June 7, 2013

In Recovery

Ready, set, grow? Such is the mind-set of finance executives around the world as they shift from a cash-hoarding mentality to preparing to blaze new paths to expansion in a slowly reviving economy. It’s an unmistakable, if unevenly distributed, sentiment that emerged from the sixth annual “Global...

By David W. Owens and Matt Surka • June 5, 2013

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

CFO Optimism: Growing Strong

Mirroring the mood of the economy, CFO confidence is on the upswing in the United States. “With consumer sentiment strong, the market booming, and some of the other indicators up, CFOs feel like there’s a recovery happening,” says Tom Fitzsimmons, CFO of TMP Worldwide, a digital recruitment-adver...

By David W. Owens • June 5, 2013

Economic Recovery Is on Thin Ice: Buchholz

The U.S. economic recovery this time around is “darn difficult and confounding,” said Todd Buchholz, speaking to a roomful of CFOs in San Francisco Monday. By that he meant it defies the thinking about economic cycles that had worked for decades and had driven government and central bank policies...

By Vincent Ryan • June 4, 2013

How To Prevent a Shareholder Blowup

In February, Greenlight Capital brought a lawsuit against Apple, demanding that it return some of its then-$137 billion in cash holdings to its shareholders. Although the hedge fund dropped the suit in March, its president, David Einhorn, has continued to pressure the tech giant. Apple isn’t the ...

By Marielle Segarra • June 4, 2013

Are Private Companies Gearing Up to Borrow?

Private companies in the United States may be in a good position to borrow. They are less likely to default, on average, than they were last year, according to data from financial-information company Sageworks, making them more creditworthy. The average probability of default among thousands of p...

By Marielle Segarra • May 30, 2013

How Well Do Banks Serve Small Businesses?

Do banks provide what their small-business customers need? One viewpoint is that they focus too much on loans and not enough on other potentially useful services.  “The most profitable products banks have are the loan products,” says BC Krishna, president and CEO of online payment tool provider M...

By Marielle Segarra • May 28, 2013

E-Payments Growing, But Still Bring Risks

Electronic payments are becoming more popular among small and midsize businesses. In a recent report by consulting firm Greenwich Associates, 43% of small companies and 55% of large middle market companies said they expect to increase the number of e-payments they make over the next 12 months.Gre...

By Marielle Segarra • May 22, 2013

How Chris-Craft Weathered the Storm

The last few years haven’t exactly been smooth sailing for Chris-Craft, the boat-building company founded more than a century ago and long revered for its quality and craftmanship. In 2000, its parent company, Outboard Marine Corporation, filed for bankruptcy. The following year, private-equity g...

By Marielle Segarra • May 20, 2013

How to Avoid Organizational Mood Swings

Companies that adhere to a CEO mantra of “spend aggressively for growth” can be exhilarating places to work. Yet they can also become environments of gloom, dragged down by debilitating managerial mood swings. When growth falls short of plan, as it often does, the climate can shift rapidly from b...

By Robert Sher • May 16, 2013

Counting the Cost of Living

In recent years inflation has been one of the few economic indices that has not caused much trouble to Americans. Contrary to repeated warnings, it has neither rocketed higher nor turned into deflation. But policymakers now face a different sort of inflation problem: determining which of many com...

By Economist Staff • May 15, 2013

CFOs Benefit from Shared-Services Shakeup

For CFOs, the world was once a simpler place. The role of the finance function was clear: To keep costs down and allocate funding for growth while closing the books in an accurate manner. Working largely within their own borders and dealing with predictable markets, CFOs centralized and consolida...

By David Axson • May 13, 2013

Drug Abuse Hikes Workers’ Comp. Risks

CFOs worried about mounting workers’ compensation costs at their companies should look closely at how freely — and chronically — doctors are prescribing narcotics to injured workers in states where the companies operate.The differences among states can be striking. At the top end, one in six inju...

By David Katz • May 13, 2013

Small Business Loan Process Could Ease

The Small Business Administration is hoping to make it easier for small businesses to secure loans. Earlier this year, the SBA proposed several changes to its loan programs designed to “expand program accessibility for more small businesses and streamline the paperwork burden,” says Jeanne Hulit,...

By Marielle Segarra • May 9, 2013

Weathering the Weather

Since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, catastrophes like the massive floods in Thailand and Pakistan, a prolonged drought in the Southwestern United States, and the one-two punch of hurricanes Irene and Sandy seem to be occurring with more frequency, with expensive consequences f...

By Russ Banham • May 8, 2013

SBA Loans on Upswing

Small business lending may be warming. The Small Business Administration has backed more small business loans so far this fiscal year than it did during the same period in 2012. As of May 4, the SBA had approved about 26,000 loans through its 7(a) program, compared to about 25,000 last fiscal yea...

By Marielle Segarra • May 6, 2013

Credit-Insurance Prices Falling for U.S. Companies

Samsung is an “ultra-conservative” company when it comes to protecting itself against the costs of bad debt, says Joseph McNamara. That was true before the Asian financial crisis of 1997, and the many corporate bankruptcies in South Korea at the time only stiffened the company’s resolve to not be...

By David Katz • May 3, 2013

The Art of Marketing

CFO is a publication about corporate finance. Yesterday, I interviewed a fellow solely because he got a tattoo.Now, listen up: what I’m about to tell you might well be for your own good.On its face, Rapid Realty’s offer to raise commissions for its independent sales agents who get a tattoo showin...

By David McCann • May 2, 2013

Sales Soaring at Private Construction Companies

The housing sector is rebounding in a big way. Average home prices in 20 cities rose 9.3 percent over the 12 months ending February 2013, the biggest jump in residential real estate prices since 2006, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, released Tuesday.With that in m...

By Marielle Segarra • April 30, 2013

Sizing Up the Data

A retailer specializing in big and tall men’s apparel, Destination XL Group, holds its products’ sizes above all other aspects of clothing retail – including price. “It’s not the price of the items that get men into Destination XL stores,” says Dennis Hernreich, CFO of the company, formerly Casua...

By Taylor Provost • April 29, 2013

How Venture Capital and Crowdfunding Can Coexist

The one-year anniversary of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act just passed, but the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to write rules governing equity-based crowdfunding. In the meantime, some venture capital (VC) firms worry that crowdfunding, a means of collective financing ...

By Marielle Segarra • April 24, 2013

Should You Consider Cyber-Liability Insurance?

Telecommunications giant Verizon on Tuesday released its annual investigative report of data breaches, which found that small businesses are the number-one target of cyber-espionage attackers.Almost half of the 621 confirmed data-breach incidents Verizon recorded in 2012 occurred at companies wit...

By Taylor Provost • April 24, 2013

Why SMBs Should Embrace Negative Customer Feedback

Last week, the company I work for, a daily deals website called 1SaleADay.com, began selling a credit card pocketknife, a utility knife that folds into the size of a credit card. Soon after, a customer in law enforcement posted the following message, criticizing the sale of this product: “As a La...

By Eliyahu Federman • April 22, 2013

Does Leaking an M&A Deal Pay?

As recently as last February, the premature leak of a merger deal occurred. The Securities and Exchange Commission froze the Goldman Sachs account of a Swiss trader who allegedly bought a large number of Heinz call options the day before Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital agreed to buy Heinz. But ...

By Vincent Ryan • April 16, 2013

Obama Tax Could Make Terrorism Insurance Scarce

An Obama administration proposal to eliminate the tax deduction for reinsurance premiums paid by U.S.-based insurance companies to their foreign affiliates would boost prices for terrorism coverage and property-casualty insurance overall, corporate risk managers say.As a result of the provision, ...

By David Katz • April 16, 2013