Are We There Yet?

Prepare the bulls: CFOs are feeling better about the outlook for the U.S. economy. While few are ready to declare the downturn over just yet, most are increasingly optimistic. In fact, finance chiefs are more hopeful about economic prospects over the next year than they have been since December 2...

By Joseph McCafferty • Sept. 1, 2003

MVPs of MVA

Like the wicked queen in the tale of Snow White, analysts are forever trying to identify the fairest of them all — the strongest, most innovative, and fastest-growing companies. Finance executives, in turn, are constantly seeking a metric that communicates a company’s financial condition in a way...

By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2003

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

Try, Try Again

At first glance, May’s merger between OM of Sweden and Hex of Finland wasn’t the most eye-catching deal. After all, even combined, the two Nordic stock exchanges will still be small fry relative to the trading volume that the heavyweights — Euronext, London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Deutsche Borse...

By Ian Rowley • July 1, 2003

Filling the Void

Who says lightning never strikes twice?When Bertelsmann, the 18 billion euros German media giant, accepted a 1.05 billion euros bid for BertelsmannSpringer from Candover and Cinven in May, it was the second time in four month the two private equity houses had joined forces to acquire a publishing...

By Ian Rowley • July 1, 2003

Rolling Budgets, with a Twist

From his office in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Bruce Borquist uses the Internet to collect daily budget changes tied to hyperinflation in El Salvador, on-again, off-again irrigation projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and hospital reconstruction in Nepal. Borquist, the CFO of Intern...

By Marie Leone • June 3, 2003

How to Improve Performance Management

State-of-the-art software systems can help finance become a more efficient collector and analyst of data, well-equipped to model and test the impact of changes both within and external to the organization — and able to share that power with other parts of the enterprise. These systems allow budge...

By Randy Myers • June 1, 2003

Minority Revolt

NatSteel’s offer looks generous in the extreme. At a time when SARS-stricken companies in Asia have put a lid on spending, the Singapore engineering group plans to double its announced dividend payout. The sum its majority owners want to distribute to public shareholders is US$240 million, equal ...

By Abe De Ramos • June 1, 2003

Economy: Reloaded?

Now that the war in Iraq is over, will the economy bounce back soon? Plenty of finance chiefs think so. In fact, CFOs are generally more hopeful about the short-term prospects for the U.S. economy than they have been in a year.According to our quarterly Global Confidence Survey of finance executi...

By Joseph McCafferty • June 1, 2003

Liquor and Liquidity

For foreign creditors struggling with Asia’s tortuous debt restructurings, events last month at Korean liquor maker Jinro could well offer something to cheer about. On May 14, the Seoul District Court ruled in favour of a petition filed by US investment bank Goldman Sachs and appointed a receiver...

By Chirs Leahy • June 1, 2003

Reporting for Duty

If you want to know what Ken Lever thinks about shareholder value, look no further than the annual report at Tomkins, the £3.4 billion (€4.7 billion) UK engineering conglomerate where he’s CFO.Since joining Tomkins four years ago, he’s been pumping more and more information into the firm’s annual...

By Ben McLannahan • June 1, 2003

Three Gorges: Dam Expensive

Yichang, a city built on the banks of a murky section of the great Yangtze River, a team of investment bankers from China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) is working round the clock to help Yangtze Electric Power obtain an A-share listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Hard...

By Yang Jian • May 9, 2003

Standing Up to SARS

There’s a certain zest brought on by a crisis that suits Martin Cubbon, group finance chief of Swire Pacific, a Hong Kong — based conglomerate that owns beleaguered airline Cathay Pacific. Even as the deadly Sars virus rampages across Asia, he coolly taps his fingers on his desk and rattles off c...

By Tom Leander and Abe De Ramos • May 1, 2003

Through the Looking Glass

The conduit, that odd species of special purpose entity, is all the rage among the region’s universal banks. Citigroup, HSBC, Standard Chartered, ING, Bank of America and ABN AMRO make wide use of them for the simple reason that conduits allow them to exploit an equally peculiar regulatory loopho...

By Jasper Moiseiwitsch • May 1, 2003

Good News, Bad News

From a fundraising perspective, it’s hard to quibble with Deutsche Telekom’s debut mandatory convertible bond issue. For one thing, the deal raised over E2 billion for the cash-strapped German telecoms giant in a single morning in February. For another, the funds are recognised as equity capital ...

By Ian Rowley • May 1, 2003

How’m I Doing?

Companies expend a lot of effort (and money) in assessing where they are and where they’re going, but even the best don’t think they do it very well. The Hackett Group, which benchmarks best practices at more than 2,000 companies, found that only a third of the companies it classifies as “world-c...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 17, 2003

Boo-hoo Economics

Uncertainty about a potential war in the Middle East is causing much consternation among finance chiefs. In fact, CFOs are gloomier about the short-term economic prospects for the United States than they’ve been since December 2001, when the specter of recession loomed.According to our quarterly ...

By Joseph McCafferty • March 1, 2003

The Five-Year Itch

Next to preparing the annual budget, the exercise that many CFOs dread most is creating a five-year plan. The document can take months to craft, is impossible to get right, and generally becomes obsolete within six months. Why, then, are companies still wedded to it?The answers are varied. Some C...

By Kris Frieswick • Feb. 1, 2003

SSCs: Are They Dinosaurs?

If you want to know why shared service centers (SSCs) keep CFOs awake at night, Ric Piper could probably tell you. Until last October, Piper was group finance director of WS Atkins, an £806 million ($1.328 billion) U.K. engineering consultancy whose SSC in a small town in the west of England was ...

By Janet Kersnar • Feb. 1, 2003

The Downside of Downsizing

Companies thought that recent cost cuts would push them out of the doldrums — or at least boost earnings enough to please shareholders. That hasn’t happened. Is another round of cuts in order?Lawrence Serven, a principal at ButtonwoodLLP.com, a Stamford, Connecticut-based management-consulting fi...

By Lynn Doan • Feb. 1, 2003

Business Intelligence: Mastering Data

Cognos Inc.’s successful bid for rival Adaytum Inc. last December (see “Adaytum: An Addendum,” below) is just one indication that the business-intelligence (BI) software market is heating up. Analysts expect further consolidation as software firms battle in a large ($11 billion, according to IDC ...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2003

The Big Squeeze: Our Ninth Annual Cost Management Survey

It’s not for lack of trying.Faced with continued economic turmoil and uncertain revenue streams, companies everywhere are scrambling to cut costs as much as they can. But because of the speed and ferocity of this particular downturn relative to the free spending of the peak boom years, those effo...

By Lori Calabro • Feb. 1, 2003

Data Data Everywhere

The goal of business intelligence is a simple one: to turn data into information. In theory, that digital alchemy should help managers and employees make quick, well-informed decisions.There’s one hitch, though. Too much information — or the wrong information — can leave employees awash in data.J...

By Russ Banham • Jan. 1, 2003

The Search for Intelligence

Sometimes, getting smarter requires a little dumbing down.Take the case of Deltek Systems, the Herndon, Virginia-based application software provider. A few years back, management at Deltek wanted to improve the way workers made decisions. After looking at several approaches, Deltek executives dec...

By Russ Banham • Jan. 1, 2003

Business Intelligence Software Vendors

Actuate Corp.Actuate Information Delivery PlatformAllen Systems Group Inc.Report.Web, Safari InfoServer, Safari InfoToolAlphaBlox CorpFinancial Planning and Analysis, KPI Dashboards, Sales and Operational Planning and ForecastingAonix Inc.Nomad, UltraQuest ReporterApplix Inc.iTM1Arcplan Inc.Dynas...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Dec. 31, 2002

Travel Savings Start at Home

Companies can cut T&E costs significantly only if demand is managed as rigorously as supply. The savings extracted from rationalizing the supply chain can easily be cancelled out if employees are spending more than they should.The first and most obvious cost-cutting measure is to eliminate un...

By Jennifer Caplan • Dec. 1, 2002