Still Hiring the Same Old Way?

In the latest Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey, more than a quarter of the responding CFOs said they increased accounting staff in the past two years. In fact, the biggest growth in jobs right now seems to be occurring in the professional and business-services sector. But chance...

By David Rosenbaum • March 2, 2012

An Acquirer’s To-Do List for 2012

No one knows how the rest of the year will go for mergers and acquisitions, but 2012 indisputably got off to a slow start. The slump in deal volume that began in the fourth quarter of 2011 continued through January, as the European debt crisis rattled markets. According to data provided to CFO by...

By Vincent Ryan • March 1, 2012

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

Capital vs. Confidence

Last September, Centennial Bank announced that the U.S. Treasury Department had granted it $1.8 million through the Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF). Jim Basey, Centennial chairman and CEO, says the Greenwood, Colorado-based bank was glad to take the capital, for several reasons. It came with a...

By Alix Stuart • March 1, 2012

Not Made in America

For the past two decades, Tennessee-based Storm Copper Components has sourced the raw copper bars and sheets that go into its products solely from U.S. suppliers. That strategy has worked well, says CFO Vince Schreiber, because the heavy materials are expensive and slow to transport, and customer...

By Alix Stuart • March 1, 2012

Social Media and the Coming Supply-Chain Revolution

We have all witnessed the effective assimilation of social media into marketing and human-resources strategies. However, very few companies have integrated the modern communications tools into their supply chains, even though there are a number of good reasons to do so.That will probably change o...

By Shawn Casemore • Feb. 29, 2012

PE Managers Predict Two Years of Healthy Returns

Despite a challenging capital-raising environment and growing worries about new government regulations, private equity firms are guardedly optimistic about fund returns and see strong investing opportunities in specific U.S. vertical industries. Those views stem from the results of a new quarterl...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 27, 2012

Stripping M&A of Emotion and Intuition

How the United States can grow the economy and the workforce without overleveraging its future is the burning issue occupying political and economic pundits, affecting financial markets, and shaping a vigorous election debate. At the corporate level, chief financial officers are faced with a simi...

By Tim Collier • Feb. 24, 2012

Inside a Cyber Attack

No one likes being awakened in the middle of the night. It’s never good news. And it wasn’t good news shortly after midnight on July 21, 2011, when Yola president and chief operating officer Trevor Harries-Jones was yanked from sleep by the phone ringing in his San Francisco bedroom.Yola is a glo...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 16, 2012

The Games Businesses Play

Immediately beneath the carousel on its home page advertising Samsung tablets, televisions, and phones, you’ll find an invitation to join “Samsung Nation.” Beneath that is a leader board with Kevin Brown, a “Level 6 Legend” and a business owner in Massachusetts, on top with 39,925 points (as of F...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 14, 2012

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in Your Public Cloud’s Data Center?

As a CFO, why should you be concerned about your cloud provider’s data center? Isn’t not having to think about the data center — about all those boxes and wires, vents and air conditioners, landlords and leases, staff and security, access and uptime — one of the reasons you moved to the cloud in ...

By Rob Livingstone • Feb. 14, 2012

Seller Resistance Choking Deal Flow

Small and slow. Except for a couple of large tender offers, merger-and-acquisition activity in North America was slumberous last week. Most of the deals that did get announced were on the diminutive side — below $100 million.Evan Greebel, a partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman, says he is seeing ple...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 13, 2012

In the Swing of Things

Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in just a few days, but at Hillerich & Bradsby, manufacturer of the iconic Louisville Slugger baseball bat, new CFO Lawrence Writer has been on the field since November.In a sense, Writer will serve as the corporate equivalent of a player-coach,...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2012

Proceeding with Caution

Even as the global economy continues to be volatile, U.S. CFOs are slightly more optimistic than they were three months ago. The latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook survey finds that the CFO optimism index has moved up to 53 (on a scale of 1-100) from 47 last quarter. Howe...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Feb. 1, 2012

Making M&A Safer

Before Michael Hagedorn, finance chief at $12.1 billion banking firm UMB Financial, pulls the trigger on a deal, he tests it using at least three sets of assumptions — optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic. Sometimes he uses five. Why? “So that management knows [just] how bad this thing could get ...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 1, 2012

Have $1 Billion, Will Spend

As companies invest more money in customers — both to win them and to analyze their preferences and behaviors — Alliance Data Systems (ADS) is positioned to reap the rewards. Based in Dallas, the affinity-card and customer-loyalty program provider outperformed the generally sluggish economy last ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Feb. 1, 2012

Global Positioning

As finance chiefs help their companies search for growth opportunities, more and more often they find themselves looking outside the United States rather than at home. While the domestic market remains plagued by a seemingly endless slow-growth recovery, not to mention the fierce competition ende...

By Michelle Celarier • Feb. 1, 2012

Health-Plan Rebates Could Come at a Cost

Sponsors of fully insured health-benefits plans could be getting rebates this year from the insurance companies that underwrite their plans. At the same time, the cost of such plans may rise, which could push some plan sponsors to evaluate switching to a self-insured plan.Under the Affordable Car...

By David McCann • Feb. 1, 2012

Who’s Out There?

In 1775, when Boston silversmith Paul Revere famously rode northwest to alert the countryside that British troops were on the move, Boston tanner William Dawes, bearing the same message, rode not so famously southwest.When the British arrived in Lexington and Concord, they did not meet many milit...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 1, 2012

Squint if You Have To

What does an embattled, post-downturn company do when it looks up and sees distressingly few growth prospects? It puts on its rosiest-tinted glasses and looks again.A recent study of 184 senior finance executives conducted by CFO Research Services in conjunction with IBM suggests that companies f...

By Matt Surka • Feb. 1, 2012

Forging Ahead: How to Get Innovation Right

Companies often declare that “innovation” is a top priority and spend hours in conferences and meetings discussing it, to little effect. That’s because many businesses don’t know what innovation really means — or what challenges it presents, says Steve Faktor, author of Econovation, former vice p...

By Marielle Segarra • Feb. 1, 2012

Five Ways to Reduce and Manage Fuel Surcharges

Few businesses have the opportunity to apply a fluctuating surcharge to cover fluctuations in cost and protect profit margins. That has, however, become the norm for the transportation industry, from motor carriers to air carriers to couriers.At present fuel prices have stabilized, but with the r...

By Shawn Casemore • Jan. 30, 2012

Thailand Flooding Leaks into the New Year

The disastrous floods in Thailand continue to affect companies’ supply chains and their ability to fill customers’ demands, and it will affect their financial performance in other ways as well. This week, half a year after the floods began, companies in the technology sector revealed that the imp...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 26, 2012

Teaming Up on Innovation

Chances are your employees have some ideas about how to make the business better. Some of them might be brilliant; others abysmal. But few companies are able to effectively corral the ideas and separate the wheat from the chaff, meaning many so-called growth strategies are simply the product of p...

By Alix Stuart • Jan. 25, 2012

When Disaster Thunders Through the Cloud

Cloud computing — and the cloud-computing business model — is maturing at a rapid pace with new solutions, systems, and a seemingly never-ending conga line of vendors offering compelling reasons (and deals) for why you should move to the cloud, however they define it. For those CFOs who have ente...

By Rob Livingstone • Jan. 24, 2012

M&A Dollar Volumes Drop 80%

Excepting Apache’s $2.85 billion purchase today and a handful of other transactions, it’s been a horrid start for mergers and acquisitions. While some single-digit billion-dollar deals have closed this year, there have been no blockbusters. And the total volume of deals has fallen drastically fro...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 23, 2012