Venture-Capital Returns Rebound

One day after LinkedIn’s smashing debut on the New York Stock Exchange, which left the social-networking company with a market value of $8.9 billion, venture capitalists are practically jumping up and down in hopes that one of their investments might be next to have a big payday. Initially valued...

By Alix Stuart • May 20, 2011

Socially Challenged

Social media strategies are rapidly gaining favor in Corporate America. Platforms like Facebook, blogs, and community Websites play an increasingly important role in a variety of functions ranging from marketing to customer support.Yet there’s a considerable gap in social media use between big co...

By Alix Stuart • May 19, 2011

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

Socially Challenged

Social media strategies are rapidly gaining favor in Corporate America. Platforms like Facebook, blogs, and community Websites play an increasingly important role in a variety of functions ranging from marketing to customer support.Yet there’s a considerable gap in social media use between big co...

By Alix Stuart • May 19, 2011

Does Growth Require Cash?

Chuck Mulford dates the birth of his brainchild, a just-launched metric he calls the Free Cash Profile, to a conversation he had about 20 years ago with the chief executive officer of a very small company called Information Resource Engineering. Mulford, a Georgia Tech accounting professor whose ...

By David Katz • May 18, 2011

5 Tips for Talking to Investors

A young company looking for outside funding won’t get very far without a well-crafted pitch. And pitching to investors doesn’t just mean showing them a raft of numbers; it also requires skillful storytelling. “The biggest challenge is distilling [the pitch] down to something that’s irresistibly c...

By Marielle Segarra • May 13, 2011

Bottom-Lining the Buzz

Add yet another metric to your watch list. A company’s daily tally of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and YouTube views could predict its stock performance, according to preliminary research.Arthur O’Connor, a Pace University doctoral student, recently compared the popularity of three major bra...

By Sarah Johnson • May 1, 2011

Bottom-Lining the Buzz

Add yet another metric to your watch list. A company’s daily tally of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and YouTube views could predict its stock performance, according to preliminary research.Arthur O’Connor, a Pace University doctoral student, recently compared the popularity of three major bra...

By Sarah Johnson • May 1, 2011

Sustainable Gain?

The recession has derailed many once-popular business trends, and you might think that high on that list would be “sustainability.” After all, it’s hard to even define it, let alone spell out a clear business case for funding it. But a new study by MIT’s Sloan Management Review, in conjunction wi...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 1, 2011

States Show Their Claws

In 2009, CFO Mark Poncin found himself in a situation many CFOs now face. Three years earlier, his company, boat-builder Chris-Craft Corp., struck a deal with North Carolina. If Chris-Craft created a certain number of jobs over the course of the year, the state would grant it more than $50,000. I...

By Marielle Segarra • May 1, 2011

Bye-Bye Budgets?

“Budgets aren’t what they used to be,” one CFO told us for this month’s cover story. At a growing number of companies, in fact, budgets have ceased to be at all.Consider it the recession’s silver lining: the same volatility that has made running a business so challenging over the past three years...

By Scott Leibs • May 1, 2011

Let It Roll

It is a staple of financial advice, regularly offered by everyone from Suze Orman to your parents: if you want to keep your finances on track, make a budget and stick to it. After all, that’s what big companies do, right?Not necessarily. For a growing number of businesses, that pearl of fiscal wi...

By Russ Banham • May 1, 2011

Are You Reinvesting Enough?

Faced with new, desirable investment opportunities, the CFO of a client company of ours recently chose not to cut her substantial share-repurchase program to fund the investments. Instead, she decided to finance the new outlay by slashing investments in two other businesses, both of which were gr...

By Gregory V. Milano • May 1, 2011

States Show Their Claws

In 2009, CFO Mark Poncin found himself in a situation many CFOs now face. Three years earlier, his company, boat-builder Chris-Craft Corp., struck a deal with North Carolina. If Chris-Craft created a certain number of jobs over the course of the year, the state would grant it more than $50,000. I...

By Marielle Segarra • May 1, 2011

Bye-Bye Budgets?

“Budgets aren’t what they used to be,” one CFO told us for this month’s cover story. At a growing number of companies, in fact, budgets have ceased to be at all.Consider it the recession’s silver lining: the same volatility that has made running a business so challenging over the past three years...

By Scott Leibs • May 1, 2011

Too Big to Succeed?

In economics classes, students typically learn that a company can drive down its average cost of production by expanding. The ability to spread fixed cost across a larger base of business is supposed to result in better financial performance. We often hear companies wax eloquently about such bene...

By Gregory V. Milano • April 29, 2011

Midsize Companies See Growth Ahead

Growth dominates the agendas of midsize companies, a new survey by Deloitte indicates. About 80% of respondents see their company’s revenues and profits growing this year, and nearly 70% plan to hire, according to the survey of 527 top managers at U.S.-based firms with between $50 million and $1 ...

By Alix Stuart • April 26, 2011

For Start-ups, Another Source of Cash

Last year Velico Medical Systems, an aging Beverly, Massachusetts-based start-up with no products and no revenue, needed some money. The company had been “in perpetual funding mode,” CFO Tom Fitzgerald told a gathering on Tuesday hosted by The Capital Network, a Boston-area networking group. It h...

By Alix Stuart • April 12, 2011

No Need for Smooth Moves

It turns out the effort that many finance chiefs have made over the years to show consistent earnings growth may have been for naught. According to a new study by McKinsey & Co., there is no evidence that smooth earnings produce higher returns for shareholders. Indeed, says Tim Koller, a McKi...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 1, 2011

Spring Fever?

Although CFOs are still cautious, their optimism has grown since last quarter, climbing back to 2007 levels, according to the most recent Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey.Now in its 60th consecutive quarter, the survey also finds finance chiefs expecting to increase ear...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 1, 2011

Grab Your Partner(s)

Like flailing swimmers clutching life preservers, companies reached for customers, suppliers, and any other third parties they thought could help keep them afloat during the recession.Now, with the economy’s choppy waters calming down, those same companies are finding that a partnership strategy ...

By Josh Hyatt • April 1, 2011

Spring Fever?

Although CFOs are still cautious, their optimism has grown since last quarter, climbing back to 2007 levels, according to the most recent Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey.Now in its 60th consecutive quarter, the survey also finds finance chiefs expecting to increase ear...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 1, 2011

Missing: Public Companies

Another sign of the difficulty small firms are having in accessing capital: the number of publicly traded companies in the United States continues to fall, according to new data supplied by Grant Thornton. At the end of February, there were 5,091 companies listed on major U.S. exchanges, a 2% dro...

By Alix Stuart • March 22, 2011

Springtime for the Economy?

CFOs’ optimism about the economy has climbed back to 2007 levels, according to the most recent Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, now in its 60th consecutive quarter. Finance chiefs also expect a double-digit jump in earnings and plan to boost spending in several key cat...

By Kate O'Sullivan • March 9, 2011

IFRS Outlook: Hurry Up and Wait

While the prospect of moving to a single set of global financial reporting standards is very much at the top of CFOs’ minds, most of them work for companies that haven’t begun to grapple with the challenges of accounting convergence, the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook...

By David Katz • March 9, 2011

Springtime for the Economy?

CFOs’ optimism about the economy has climbed back to 2007 levels, according to the most recent Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, now in its 60th consecutive quarter. Finance chiefs also expect a double-digit jump in earnings and plan to boost spending in several key cat...

By Kate O'Sullivan • March 9, 2011