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

Moving Pieces

It was as if America had swallowed Sweden. Since George Bush signed into law a one-off tax amnesty in 2004 that slashed corporate-tax rates from 35 percent to just over 5 percent, American companies have repatriated close to $350 billion in previously untaxed foreign profits, according to estimat...

By Joanne Ramos • Feb. 27, 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

What It Takes to Succeed

The Jersey cow, a small, honey-brown bovine that is prized by farmers for the abundance of buttery, high-fat milk it produces, is one of the fastest-growing breeds in the world. From its origins in Jersey, a rocky island 14 miles (22km) off of the western coast of France, it now wanders fields in...

By Joanne Ramos • Feb. 23, 2007

Places in the Sun

If the deal over North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme holds, Kim Jong Il may be able to indulge his penchant for fine wines and Hollywood blockbusters again. Banks around the world had severed ties with North Korea after America last September blacklisted a Macau bank accused of doing business...

By Joanne Ramos • Feb. 23, 2007

Kerry Eyes Fed Pool for Sickest Workers

With an eye towards making it more attractive for small businesses to provide health insurance benefits, Sen. John Kerry plans to introduce a bill to create a federal reinsurance pool to help employers pay for the care of seriously ill employees.Under Kerry’s proposal, which he touted during his ...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 14, 2007

WPP 2.0

If Nick Grouf wanted to impress his new financial backers, he probably outdid himself. At a meeting late last year with top executives from WPP, the global marketing services titan that had taken a stake in Grouf ‘s Los Angeles-based startup ad agency, Spot Runner, the young entrepreneur wanted t...

By Janet Kersnar • Feb. 12, 2007

Should It Be Harder to Buy American?

Members of the House Financial Services Committee have reintroduced a bill that would tighten the process that foreign companies must undergo when planning to acquire a U.S. company. The committee plans to consider amendments next week, one year after the Bush Administration was criticized for al...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 7, 2007

Executive Comp Splits Minimum Wage Camps

Since the 110th session Congress began with the Democrats in charge, legislators’ push to raise the minimum wage has been moving quickly. But the Senate’s insistence that the $2.10 wage hike be bundled with tax credits for small businesses could slow progress toward the increase.That’s because th...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 6, 2007

The Other Facts of Life

Jim McConnell had a dilemma: He wanted to share his wealth with his children, but he didn’t want the money to lead them astray or sap their will to succeed on their own.He’s far from alone. Currently, about 2.7 million Americans have at least $1 million in financial assets, according to the World...

By Chuck Jaffe • Feb. 1, 2007

Super Bowl ROI

Place your bets on the Super Bowl outcome now: Will post-game chatter center around Peyton Manning’s arm and the Chicago Bears’ defense? Or will office water-coolers be abuzz about who’s a better advertising pitchman—beer-stealing crabs or Britney Spears’ ex-husband? It may be too early to tell w...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 1, 2007

Water for Profit

When most CFOs think about liquidity, they’re calculating how fast they can turn assets into cash. But Aqua America finance chief David Smeltzer is just as likely to be concerned about how smoothly water is flowing through the 10,000 miles of pipes his company owns. As the largest among a handful...

By Alix Stuart • Feb. 1, 2007

View from Europe: Global Warming’s Cost

Gordon Boyd doesn’t see eye to eye with a lot of other CFOs. That’s because the finance chief of Drax, a UK power generator, is a fan of the European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). The two-year-old mandatory program aims to mitigate global warming as cheaply as possible by imposing strict...

By Janet Kersnar • Feb. 1, 2007

Planning for the Best

Does your finance organization focus on budgeting and planning, or cost management? While the two are not mutually exclusive — the best firms focus on both — emphasizing one over the other could have a dramatic impact on the overall effectiveness of the function.A new study by the American Produc...

By Joseph McCafferty • Feb. 1, 2007

The Great Unbundling

Globalisation is a big word but an old idea, most economists will say, with a jaded air. The phenomenon has kept the profession’s number-crunchers busy, counting the spoils and how they are divided. But it has left the blackboard theorists with relatively little to do. They are confident their tr...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 31, 2007

Travel Expenses, Down to Earth

For Matthew Hackett, “power traveler” is hardly a glamourous label. A Waltham, Massachusetts-based business designer with the Global Consulting Oracle Practice of Computer Science Corp. (CSC), he spends 80 to 90 percent of his working hours on the road.“I’ve been caught in situations where I’m no...

By Esther Shein • Jan. 29, 2007

Links Still Missing

Scorecard systems that help track performance have been around for years. So why do companies still use them incorrectly?A new survey sponsored by a group of 10 organizations and associations confirms what might seem intuitive: scorecards are not static instruments. It all comes down to whether o...

By Laura DeMars • Jan. 29, 2007

Without Tax Relief, Wage Hike Stalls

Efforts to increase the minimum wage stalled in the Senate on Wednesday, as Republicans renewed attempts to tie the increase to tax credits for smaller businesses.The “clean” version of the bill, already passed by the House of Representatives, has just one goal: to raise the minimum hourly wage f...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 24, 2007

Paying for College, Again and Again

This article is part of an expanded web version of “Tuition Magicians”, which appears in the January edition of CFO magazine.With the cost of a college education soaring, more grandparents are volunteering to help pay for their grandchildren’s college tuitions. In fact, a widely-referenced survey...

By Marie Leone • Jan. 16, 2007

Cultural Revolution

Separating truth from propaganda in China has always been hard, not least when it comes to numbers. Accountants, of all people, were seen as such a threat that during the 1960s they were packed off to re-education camps, dooming the profession for decades afterward. Even in kindlier times, busine...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 11, 2007

Small Businesses Weigh In on Wage Hike

Two senators got the ball rolling on pushing a minimum-wage increase bill through Congress this year by introducing legislation linking a tax credit for small businesses to the hike. Lawmakers are tying the issues together in order to put an end to the drawn-out battle in Congress to get a minimu...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 11, 2007

House Supports Higher Minimum Wage

The House of Representatives passed a minimum wage bill that would lift the pay floor from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour in three increments over two years and two months, according to CNNMoney.com.The bill, introduced by Rep. George Miller (D.-California), passed by a vote of 315 to 116 yeste...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 11, 2007

CEO Confidence Rises from Five-Year Low

Chief executive officers are more optimistic about the prospects for the U.S. economy than they were three months ago, according to the latest quarterly survey by the Conference Board.Though the Conference Board’s index stands at just 50, reflecting a balance between positive and negative respons...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 10, 2007

Small-business Optimism Declines

Optimism among small-business owners has dropped sharply, according to the latest monthly survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.The NFIB’s Index of Small-Business Optimism fell to a level it hadn’t seen since last summer, due to a sharp drop in job creation plans as well as a ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 9, 2007

The Global Gusher

When Thailand’s introduction of capital controls sent its stockmarket plunging a few days before Christmas, you could have been forgiven for thinking, “Here we go again”. It is almost ten years since the start of the Asian financial crisis, when capital flight on a huge scale caused financial mar...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 5, 2007

Blinded by the Light

What leads to high business performance? Consultants and journalists have advanced many answers to this question, both in print and from the lectern. But most of those answers are little more than educated guesses. In fact, most of them are probably bunk.That, in a nutshell, is the message of a p...

By Edward Teach • Jan. 4, 2007