Poised for Growth

Finance executives are feeling much better now than they did in late 2012, when worries about the fiscal cliff overshadowed the last Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey. CFOs are seeing signs of strength in their businesses and seem to be looking forward to the year ahead,...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 15, 2013

Easy Money Policies Could End Badly: IMF

When the major central banks inevitably try to end aggressive monetary stimulus, the casualty could be financial stability, according to a report released Thursday.The report, from the International Monetary Fund, echoes some of the rising voices expressing concern about the smooth withdrawal of ...

By Vincent Ryan • April 12, 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

A Cure for Supply-Chain Blues

“Collaboration” and “supply chain” go hand in hand, or you might think they should. But there are two kinds of collaboration with respect to supply chains. While many companies are focused on working with suppliers to arrive at more efficient and effective solutions, our studies have repeatedly s...

By Shawn Casemore • April 10, 2013

Small-Business Optimism Falters

Small-business optimism is dwindling, according to a report released yesterday by the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group. After three months of growth, last month’s Index of Small Business Optimism fell 1.3 points, to 89.5. The index components that declined most were labo...

By Marielle Segarra • April 10, 2013

Marine Insurance: A Tale of Two Coverages

CFOs of shipping companies, or, for that matter, companies that ship cargo or clean up after shipwrecks, should take note: A convergence of circumstances has led to a split in the marine insurance market, with hull and machinery coverage softening and protection and indemnity (P&I) skyrocketi...

By Caroline McDonald • April 5, 2013

Can Mandatory Environmental Insurance Resolve Pollution Problems in China?

The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection recently mandated nationwide compulsory purchase of pollution liability insurance for companies with high environmental risks, ahead of the originally forecasted target date of 2015.There is little doubt that this accelerated notice is a response t...

By Julien Combeau • April 3, 2013

Sharing Synergies Can Boost Buyers’ Share Prices

When the buyer in a merger or acquisition estimates it can close redundant plants, cut headcount, centralize administrative functions, or realize other synergies post-transaction, it generally doesn’t want to share much of that potential value with the target company.In fact, the standard thinkin...

By Vincent Ryan • April 1, 2013

Can Software Take the Guesswork out of Pricing?

In 2003, Shaw Industries, a Berkshire Hathaway company that produces and distributes carpeting and flooring, was determining the prices of its myriad products largely by relying on the intuition of its sales staff. Management had set a long-established ladder of pricing for salespeople to refer t...

By Taylor Provost • March 29, 2013

Seven Keys to Successful IT Outsourcing

When my executive-search firm is asked to recruit a new CIO, we always ask the senior leadership team what went wrong with the old one. High among the litany of complaints are the following:  Our IT outsourcing relationship is a mess. We’re not getting the service we need. No one is managing the ...

By Martha Heller • March 28, 2013

Familiarity Breeds Higher Prices

When multiple vendors compete for your business, you can expect to see aggressive pricing. But with your existing suppliers, competitive sourcing is not always an option, and without that you may be paying an above-market premium. This is not an easy problem to address. True competition would req...

By Scott Drobes • March 27, 2013

How CFOs Should Prepare for the Coming Demand Spike

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM), a not-for-profit industry research and educational association, recently reported that as of February 2013, U.S. manufacturing activity expanded at its fastest monthly rate since June 2011.  While several factors have contributed to this growth, the upti...

By David Savier • March 22, 2013

Get Ready for SEPA

For many treasury departments, this could be the year of SEPA, whether they like it or not. That’s because they will have to accelerate efforts to make their European operations compliant with the new 32-nation Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), slated to go into effect next year. Even though the ...

By Andrew Sawers • March 21, 2013

Eyes on the Price

If Silver Lake Partners and Michael Dell pull off their leveraged buyout of Dell at a 25% premium, they will be getting a bargain, at least as merger-and-acquisition premiums go. In merger deals involving nonfinancial public companies in 2012, the average premium paid was nearly 41%, according to...

By Vincent Ryan • March 21, 2013

Can You Keep a Secret?

The conventional way to protect intellectual property is to patent it. This gives an inventor legal protection for his idea: if others want to use it, they must pay him. The snag is that he must publish his idea, making it easy for someone in a less lawful country to steal it.So a lot of companie...

By Economist Staff • March 20, 2013

Waiting for the Crowd’s Cash

When President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act on April 5, 2012, he called it a “game-changing” bill.The game needed changing. After the Great Recession, access to capital became a huge problem for small business, as the percentage of loans under $1 million that banks approve...

By David Rosenbaum • March 19, 2013

The White Stuff

After acrimonious debates over Barack Obama’s appointments to head the Treasury, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense, there was little energy left in the Senate this week for a fight over who should head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency that oversees U.S...

By Economist Staff • March 18, 2013

Three Ways CFOs Can Drive Innovation, Growth

The need to innovate is never more important than during an extended period of slow economic growth, such as the one we’re in now. The decisions that go with it are some of the toughest a CFO will encounter.Where should capital be deployed to best position the organization for growth without tak...

By Frank Friedman • March 14, 2013

Taxi Wars!

Tiffany “Topcab” Mitchell, who co-owns and manages Top Cab & City Cab, Boston’s largest taxi fleet, with more than 500 cars, began getting phone calls almost every day last year from entrepreneurs pitching mobile apps for hailing cabs. Call it e-hailing.Students from Harvard, MIT, and Babson ...

By David Rosenbaum • March 13, 2013

CFO Optimism Blooms

CFOs are shaking off the winter doldrums, feeling much better than they were in December when worries about the fiscal cliff overshadowed the last Duke University/CFO magazine Global Business Outlook Survey and put a damper on expectations. Now it seems CFOs are looking forward to the year ahead,...

By Kate O'Sullivan • March 13, 2013

Cloudmageddon

In a recent report, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, the U.S. National Intelligence Council writes that cloud computing will “provide global access and pervasive services” that will challenge organizations, governments, and society as a whole to “capture the benefits of new IT technologies...

By Rob Livingstone • March 12, 2013

Federal-Contractor CFOs Brace for Sequestration

Across the country, federal contractors are swallowing. Hard. It’s the day they hoped would never come.The debate as to whether and how much sequestration could damage the economy is in full force. But there’s not much debate that many of the contractors have trouble at their door or that their C...

By David McCann • March 1, 2013

Sequestration: Growth Juice for Alternative Lenders?

Frantic talks continue today in Washington to head off the now-famous sequestration mandating some $85 billion in blanket federal-spending cuts scheduled to begin at midnight Friday. But there are some people who may be less than upset about the inability of Democrats and Republicans in Congress ...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 28, 2013

Waiting for the Chop

When Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress agreed on January 1 to let a payroll tax cut expire and tax rates rise on the rich, they rolled the dice with the economy. They in effect bet that America’s recovery was solid enough to withstand higher taxes and spending cuts, including a “seques...

By Economist Staff • Feb. 28, 2013

Yahoo Boss to Employees: Get Back to Work!

Friday will be Employee Appreciation Day.  It was established as an annual event in 1995 by Recognition Professionals International, in collaboration with Workman Publishing. To celebrate the day, RPI suggests that employers ask employees to “write down six ways you’d like to be rewarded,” while ...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 27, 2013

Asset-Based Loans: Not Your Father’s Pawn Shop

A Canadian businessman had a chance to buy a franchise. To raise cash, he borrowed from friends and relatives, and invested a chunk of his own savings. That covered his initial costs, but to get the business running the way he wanted it to, he needed to invest another $50,000–$100,000. That money...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 26, 2013