Getting Your Seat at the Strategy Table

Corporate finance has long had a diverse, if predominantly backward-looking, charter: track revenues and expenses against the budget, manage the balance sheet, build the income statement, and report results. Today, finance is being asked to play an increasingly important forward-looking role in f...

By Randy Myers • Aug. 3, 2004

Consumers Confident, Economy Sluggish

Consumer confidence is rising, according to two reports issued last week, but a slowdown in the shopping habits of Americans is dragging on the performance of the U.S. economy, according to government data released Friday.The University of Michigan’s consumer-confidence index inched up from 95.6 ...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 2, 2004

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

Cloudy or Clear?

When managers at Leica Microsystems get a call from their treasurer, Burkhard Straub, they know it’s serious. Ever since he joined the 540m ($662 million) German high-tech optical device maker three years ago, business unit heads have had to submit rolling monthly cash flow forecasts covering thr...

By Jason Karaian • July 28, 2004

Is the Real Estate Boom Sustainable?

The June run-up in sales of existing homes, to a record 6,950,000 annualized units, may have rekindled concerns that a real estate bubble may be ready to burst, but don’t look for housing prices to drop just yet, according to Moody’s Investors Service.Home sales last month were 17.4 percent highe...

By Ed Zwirn • July 28, 2004

Consumer Confidence Continues to Rise

Consumers are more confident about the economy than at any time in the past four years, according to the Conference Board.The private forecasting group announced Tuesday that its consumer confidence index, which increased sharply in June, posted further gains in July. The index, which is based on...

By Ed Zwirn • July 28, 2004

Edgy Optimism at Fast-Growing Companies

Chief executive officers at fast-growing companies are cautiously optimistic about prospects for the economy.Nearly three-quarters of these CEOs expect the economy to continue expanding for at least the next two to three years — yet two-thirds are using a planning cycle of one year or less.These ...

By Stephen Taub • July 22, 2004

International Standards Causing a Stir

More than 27 percent of U.K.-listed companies expect “their key performance indicators,” including earnings per share, will be “negatively affected” by new accounting rules that go into effect in 2005, reported Bloomberg. The wire service cited a study by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in...

By Stephen Taub • July 9, 2004

Deploying CRM Analytics Software

First developed in the early 1990s by Siebel Systems as a management tool for sales personnel, customer relationship management (CRM) technology has since morphed to include campaign-management applications, call-center software, and customer self-service programs.Despite years of declining inter...

By John Goff • July 6, 2004

Inflated Expectations

How much further will the Federal Reserve have to raise rates? This week it added some flesh to America’s skeletal interest rates when it raised them by a quarter of a point, to 1.25%. The market predicts that rates will gradually rise to 4% or thereabouts by the end of next year. The economy is ...

By Economist Staff • July 2, 2004

Prices Start to Creep Up

Economists looking back on this period might well end up saying that this is the point at which a surge of inflation started.Indeed, citing a need to pass on price increases in energy and other raw materials, a growing number of companies have begun to raise prices. Such hikes help explain why th...

By Stephen Taub • June 24, 2004

Where the CFO Would Like to Be

Many CFOs wish they were someplace else — namely, the corner office, if not as the full-time inhabitant then at least as a frequent visitor. That is, they’d like to spend more time advising the CEO on long-term strategy and less time analyzing costs, metrics, and the like.So says a survey by CFO ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 22, 2004

In the Shadows

Have you ever paid cash to a builder for the odd home improvement? Or perhaps bought fruit from a street vendor who lacked the required hygiene certificate? Maybe you have employed a maid or a nanny, and have never got round to filing all that paperwork for social security?If so, then depending o...

By Economist Staff • June 18, 2004

Mental Shortcuts Lead to Costly Errors

Can we be counted on to make sound decisions under uncertainty? Are our judgments always rational? Do we invariably make choices in our best interests, based on a full understanding of trade-offs and probabilities? Are we truly, in short, the homo economicus assumed by many economic models?Or are...

By Edward Teach • June 17, 2004

The Meter System

The computer industry has a certain genius for turning its own excesses and errors into new business opportunities. Computer code written with no regard for a new millennium? What an opportunity for Y2K remedial work. The Internet as a playground for hackers and identity thieves? Let us show you ...

By Norm Alster • June 16, 2004

How to Establish Compensation Targets

“We’ve seen the ruination of many firms” as a result of compensation practices that encourage earnings management, says Michael Jensen, a renowned finance professor at Harvard Business School and a principal at Monitor Group, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And while the incentive ...

By Ronald Fink • June 4, 2004

When Do Companies Outgrow Their Spreadsheets?

Pressured by senior management and boards of directors to produce more detailed budgets, forecasts, and performance data, while seeking a longer term view of the financial horizon, many finance executives at midsize companies are reevaluating their reliance on spreadsheets for planning, budgeting...

By Russ Banham and Sam Knox • June 1, 2004

Curbed Enthusiasm

High fuel costs and the potential for higher interest rates have taken some of the shine off the gleaming view of the economy held by CFOs. While finance executives are still overwhelmingly positive, expectations have fallen a few notches from last quarter. According to this quarter’s survey, 70 ...

By Joseph McCafferty • June 1, 2004

When Worlds Collide

Fior time immemorial, China has furnished foreign yarn-spinners with tales of epic battles. Now, as capitalism takes hold, a literature is emerging devoted to the conflicts of business. Books such as China Dream by Joe Studwell, and the newly released Mr. China by Tim Clissold—former CFO of Asimc...

By Yang Jian • May 28, 2004

Food for Thought: The Big Mac Index

How fast is the world economy growing? How important is China as an engine of growth? How much richer is the average person in America than in China? The answers to these huge questions depend crucially on how you convert the value of output in different countries into a common currency. Converti...

By Economist Staff • May 28, 2004

Techs and the City

It is the nature—and, one should add, the responsibility—of the C-level executive to think conceptually, to deal in strategic visions and grand designs. Niggling details may fall to others, but, by God, real leaders revel in Big Ideas.Why am I overselling this? Because the particular Big Idea up ...

By Scott Leibs • May 26, 2004

Deep Six for Six Sigma?

The relevance of Six Sigma, the corporate efficiency program made famous by General Electric, is being questioned by none other than one of its creators.Jay Desai, who helped implement Six Sigma at the conglomerate, said in a recent Reuters story that when companies must demonstrate change throug...

By Stephen Taub • May 18, 2004

Managing for Improved Corporate Performance

What does it mean for a company to perform well? Any definition must revolve around the notion of results that meet or exceed the expectations of shareholders. Yet when top managers speak with us privately, they often suggest that the gap between these expectations and management’s baseline earni...

By The McKinsey Quarterly • May 17, 2004

CFOs Still See Room to Cut Costs

Despite three years of downsizing and belt-tightening throughout Corporate America, 85 percent of CFOs reported that cutting costs is still their highest priority, according to a new Booz Allen Hamilton report.In fact, just 3 percent of the 156 finance executives surveyed by the consultancy belie...

By Stephen Taub • May 11, 2004

Don’t Laugh at Gilded Butterflies

The Gillette company’s website flashes out a message to the e-visitor: “Innovation is Gillette”, it claims. There are few big companies that would not like to make a similar claim; for they think innovation is a bit like Botox — inject it in the right corporate places and improvements are bound t...

By Economist Staff • April 23, 2004

The Great Divide

A CIO recently complained to an executive recruiter that his company’s CFO was making his life a living hell. “The CIO came on board to effect change,” says Kevin M. Rosenberg, a managing partner with BridgeGate, an executive recruitment firm in Irvine, California, “but he is constantly being pum...

By Laton McCartney • April 21, 2004