A Piece of the P-E

Think of private equity as a can of Red Bull for your personal portfolio. But there’s a catch: you have to wait 2 to 10 years for the rush to kick in.Actually, there are several catches, including high entrance costs, complex record-keeping, and a curious mix of volatility (high) and risk (surpri...

By Marie Leone • June 1, 2007

View from Europe: Global Bribery

When news broke this spring that the Securities and Exchange Commission had launched an informal investigation into the bribery scandals plaguing Siemens, CFOs in Europe gave a collective shudder. Combined with the announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice also had the German electronics a...

By Janet Kersnar • June 1, 2007

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

Did Hawk Fly Too High?

Hawk Corp. said the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a formal investigation into the auto-parts maker’s compliance with section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley ActAccording to a filing issued Wednesday by Hawk, the SEC is apparently exploring whether or not various stock transactions mig...

By Stephen Taub • May 30, 2007

Going Twice…

The top end of the auction world can be a rarefied place. Giving an investor presentation in New York in March, William Sheridan, the finance chief at auction house Sotheby’s, described how one of the company’s principal assets, and a significant barrier to entry for competitors, is “unparalleled...

By Tony McAuley • May 17, 2007

Employers Hit for Misclassifying Workers

A growing number of larger companies are incorrectly calling some of their employees “independent contractors” and saving as much as 30 percent in payroll costs by doing so, according to employee advocates testifying at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Tuesday. Misclassifying some of t...

By Sarah Johnson • May 8, 2007

The Bright Side of Bubbles

The American economy is forever blowing bubbles. Housing seems to be the investment bubble du jour, coming on the heels of the Internet bubble, which popped seven years ago. The two are linked: as the dot-com economy slowed, Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan steadily lowered the feder...

By Edward Teach • May 1, 2007

Long-term Thinking

Spend enough time sorting through the intricacies of long-term-care insurance and you may decide that John Maynard Keynes’s famous axiom, “In the long run, we are all dead,” is positively comforting. While almost no one would dispute that longevity is good, it comes at a price: as baby boomers in...

By Marie Leone • May 1, 2007

Finance vs. Marketing

Companies are still struggling to measure their returns on marketing investments, and two recent studies shed some light on why. For one thing, marketing and finance disagree as to how well current programs to measure the ROI of expenses such as advertising and direct mail actually perform. At ma...

By Joseph McCafferty • May 1, 2007

A Sense of Things to Come

The military uses for wireless technology are persuasive. For example, pilots can fly above a war zone and drop thousands of small wireless sensors, the size of a small pebble and costing a dollar apiece, over the terrain. As soon as they settle the devices start communicating with each other, we...

By Economist Staff • April 30, 2007

How to Dance with Angels

Serial entrepreneur Sam Yagan considered financing his third start-up company with venture capital, but passed. Instead, he secured $6 million in funding for his free online dating Website, OkCupid, from five angel investors. One of his primary motives for eschewing VC money was that he wanted th...

By Theresa Sullivan Barger • April 27, 2007

Could Small Biz Get Another Sarbox Reprieve?

More than 6,000 public companies face a serious dilemma about their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance: Should they use the current version of Section 404 now in reviewing internal controls over their financial reporting? Or should they wait until the Securities and Exchange Commission and Public Company ...

By Sarah Johnson • April 19, 2007

Survey: CFOs’ Confidence Up

CFOs are confident that their companies will do better this year, according to a recent survey from audit firm Grant Thornton. Sixty percent of 134 CFOs said their firms’ financial prospects will improve in 2007. That’s an improvement over last fall, when the audit firm last surveyed finance chie...

By Sarah Johnson • April 13, 2007

Six Sigma in Shenzhen

When Jack Welch embraced Lean/Six Sigma in 1990s, it made perfect sense. GE has long been a company that values perfection and self-improvement, and LSS, as the process is known at GE, is the ultimate perfectionist’s tool.Three years ago, LSS jumped from GE’s manufacturing operations to GE Money,...

By Don Durfee • April 13, 2007

Sun Microsystems: Expanding Its Universe

Michael Lehman, the finance chief of Sun Microsystems, a high-end computer-maker that rose and fell with the dotcom boom of the 1990s, recalls a typical customer visit from about a year ago. A delegation from America’s navy, a big client, sat down in Sun’s Silicon Valley offices. The admiral’s fi...

By Economist Staff • April 12, 2007

Midmarket Companies So-so on Prospects

Despite robust market activity last year, not all executives at “middle market” companies are sanguine about the prospects for the year ahead, according to a new report.Investment bank DAK Group and Columbia Business School surveyed 703 owners and senior managers at privately held companies with ...

By Alan Rappeport • April 10, 2007

Looks Like Cheese, Smells Like Fraud

Two former executives of now-defunct cheese manufacturer Suprema Specialties have been convicted by a federal jury of booking millions of dollars in phony sales to defraud the company’s lenders and investors.Co-founder, former chairman, and former chief executive officer Mark Cocchiola, as well a...

By Stephen Taub and Dave Cook • April 3, 2007

Investing in Oils

Twenty-five years ago as a nearly broke graduate student, Walter Manninen gazed upon a dreamy vision of four courtesans and knew he had to have them. So the aspiring banker borrowed $2,000 and purchased a 1914 Theresa Bernstein oil painting entitled Lilies of the Field.Thus began a lifelong love ...

By Alix Stuart • April 1, 2007

View from China: Shanghai Confidential

A colorful embezzlement scandal has toppled political and business leaders in Shanghai and elsewhere in China as the country launches a major drive to stop white-collar crime. For CFOs of multinational corporations, the drama has played out at arm’s length. But a highly publicized series of sting...

By Wu Chen • April 1, 2007

Business Outlook Survey

It’s springtime and finance executives are ready to sow a few seeds. With renewed confidence in the economy, companies report that they are investing in their businesses — ramping up hiring plans and increasing projections for capital spending.According to the most recent Duke University/CFO Busi...

By Joseph McCafferty • April 1, 2007

Dream Factory

Anyone working in the Indian film industry probably knows a GaneshGaitonde. The antihero of Sacred Games, the new bestseller fromnovelist Vikram Chandra, is the head of the Mumbai mafia whosefondness for Hindi movies gets him into film financing with strings attached.Eventually, Gaitonde arm-twis...

By Abe De Ramos • March 28, 2007

Six Stigma?

When Robert Nardelli was ousted as CEO of Home Depot, one unusual side effect was the attention paid to his advocacy of the Six Sigma process-improvement methodology. Consultancies, particularly those with competing approaches, were quick to offer opinions, surveys, and research intended to show ...

By Laura DeMars • March 28, 2007

John Noble, Best Buy International

Relaxed is the corporate mode of Best Buy, the U.S. electronics retail giant withU.S.$11 billion in sales and 940 stores in North America. John Noble is no exception. Dressed in a yellowturtleneck sweater, jeans, and sneakers, the CFO of Best Buy’s new international division exudes astately calm ...

By Tom Leander • March 22, 2007

Manager, Offshore Thyself

Ask fans at the cricket World Cup, which starts in the West Indies on March 11th, where Wisden Group, the sport’s best-known publisher, is headquartered and most would guess London. Its heritage and brand are quintessentially English. Britain is still its biggest source of earnings. But its futur...

By Economist Staff • March 8, 2007

Return of the Phantom

Given its long and illustrious history, you would expect visiting the headquarters of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in the English countryside to be like stepping into a museum. But there’s only one classic model on display at the building, a 1928 Phantom I Sedanca de Ville, originally supplied to the D...

By Jason Karaian • March 5, 2007

On or Off?

What exactly is an offshore financial centre? At its broadest, it is any financial centre that takes in a large chunk of foreign funds — in other words, almost every financial capital in the world. Much of the business conducted in places such as New York, London or Hong Kong is from outside Amer...

By Joanne Ramos • March 1, 2007