How to Weather the Down Cycle

Layoffs. Plant closings. Earning shortfalls. Lowered growth projections. The signs of a slowing economy are all around us.What should companies do in order to adjust to this new environment? Absolutely nothing, if they had been running their business correctly all along, insists Stanley B. Frieze...

By Ed Zwirn • Jan. 29, 2001

Exclusive: Will Devine be Divine?

The car business may look like it’s on shaky ground right now. Bottom lines are suffering and plants are getting shut down. But, General Motors’ new CFO John Devine says he’s seen this picture before. In 1988, his bosses at Ford Motor Co. sent him to run the company’s First Nationwide savings ban...

By Joseph Radigan • Jan. 23, 2001

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

Back to Basics

Now that the bull-run party could be coming to an end, and corporate America is bracing for an economic slowdown, many companies are getting back to blocking and tackling. They are focusing on the basics, like quality control, customer service, and good old- fashioned cost-cutting. Six Sigma, a m...

By Lisa Yoon • Jan. 3, 2001

Consumers Prefer Service Over Price

Consumers making purchases prefer good customer service more than low prices and fast shopping when asked about the ideal shopping experience, according to a new study from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and KPMG LLP. About 40 percent of the 2,120 consumers polled nationwide said ...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 29, 2000

2001 Economic Forecast

‘Tis the season to hear forecasts. And at last week’s luncheon sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, three distinguished economic and financial experts looked into their crystal balls and offered economic predictions for 2001 before a crowded Waldorf Astoria confer...

By Jennifer Caplan • Dec. 14, 2000

Ship-Shape: Our Seventh Annual Cost Management Survey

There are tightly run ships, and then there is Apache Corp.For every dollar of operating revenue it generated in 1999, this $2 billion (revenue) Houston oil and gas exploration and production company spent a mere 33.1 cents on operating costs, including selling, general, and administrative (SG&am...

By Randy Myers • Dec. 1, 2000

Nortel Sees the Light

When Frank Dunn joined Nortel Networks Corp. as a management trainee out of college in 1976, the company was still known as Northern Electric. It had revenues of $1.1 billion and sold most of the circuit switches, transmission gear, and phones it manufactured to parent Bell Canada Enterprises (BC...

By A CFO Interview • Dec. 1, 2000

Building Better Budgets

From VisiCalc to Lotus 1-2-3 to Microsoft Excel, the electronic spreadsheet has earned a special place in the hearts of finance folk. But when budget time rolls around, that affection can be strained — especially at larger companies, where spreadsheets from many users must be combined. “Spreadshe...

By Tim Reason • Dec. 1, 2000

Taming a Bully

How do you compete in a market that professes to be competitive, even though it’s still dominated by a bully? You start by negotiating with international bodies, like the World Trade Organization, as the U.S. has begun doing in the case of Mexico’s telecommunications market. You try to get the co...

By Michelle Gabrielle • Nov. 28, 2000

Transformation of Budgeting and Planning Processes

Andrew Stoneman knew he faced a big challenge. In April 1999, he joined Jones Lang LaSalle, or JLL (www.joneslanglasalle.com) as its European finance director just weeks after Jones Lang Wootton of the US and LaSalle Partners of the UK, two property-services and investment-management firms, final...

By Cliff Saran • Nov. 1, 2000

Veteran’s Day

Carly Fiorina didn’t bring a bevy of lieutenants with her when she headed west to Hewlett-Packard Co. from Lucent Technologies Corp. in July 1999. In the finance area, she counted on CFO Robert Wayman, entering his fourth decade at HP, to reinforce her message that the transformation she envision...

By A CFO Interview • Nov. 1, 2000

The Class of 2000

Every class has its standouts. In the case of the CFO Excellence Awards, there are 11 in the Class of 2000. Hailing from companies as diverse as Oracle, Merck, and Capital One, this year’s winners are truly at the top of their profession. Each one has broken through the traditional boundaries of ...

By A CFO Interview • Oct. 3, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Mark Swartz

Tyco International Ltd. was supposed to be the next Cendant. Or the next Sunbeam, perhaps, or Waste Management. Go ahead, pick your favorite corporate behemoth recently brought to its knees for aggressive accounting practices. Because that’s what was supposed to happen to Tyco after allegations s...

By Stephen Barr • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Steven Shindler

When Steven Shindler joined Nextel Communications Inc. in 1996, he knew he had a lot to learn. The wireless company, based in Reston, Virginia, was racing to build its technology, management team, and, above all, coffers. And while Shindler, a 10-year banking veteran, had lent to the wireless ind...

By Ian Springsteel • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Judy C. Lewent

When it comes to helping build revenues, the CFO’s job is challenged by the growth strategy that the CEO establishes. At Merck & Co., that means focusing far more on internal growth than most of its pharmaceuticals competitors do, as well as undertaking joint ventures rather than acquisitions...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: David Willey

As the youngster in the credit-card game a few years ago, Capital One was at a decided disadvantage. The Richmond, Virginia-based bank, born in 1995 as a spin-off of Signet Bank, had no demonstrated ability to weather a recession. It also had an undiversified and cyclical asset base, which would ...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Jeffrey O. Henley

On any given day at Oracle Corp.’s Redwood Shores, California, headquarters, you can count on seeing customers in Jeff Henley’s office. Oracle’s CFO meets with as many as three a day, giving each an hour of his time. Henley calculates that he spends more than 50 percent of his day talking with cu...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Paul J. Liska

In this era of go-go growth, shrinking to greatness might seem a relic of recessionary times. But at The St. Paul Cos., competing in the rate-squeezed property/casualty insurance industry, downsizing has become a modern necessity. It has also led to a bevy of benefits: increased net income, a jum...

By Ian Springsteel • Oct. 1, 2000

Who Really Profits?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in a global economy, international operations are a key indicator of a company’s strength. It is also universally acknowledged that reliable information on the profitability of these operations is almost impossible for outsiders to obtain.The Templeton ...

By Nikos Valance • Oct. 1, 2000

Getting Current Online

With around $1.5 trillion swap-ping hands every day, the foreign exchange market is a natural to enter the online exchange arena. However, while banks are racing to form Internet currency trading venturesmost notably FX Alliance LLC, owned by 13 major international banks; and Atriax, owned by Cit...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Kim Patmore

After 30 years as a senior accounting associate at Western Union, now a division of First Data Corp., Pam Kotowski was ready to retire. “Every day, I recorded journal entries, pulled down the back reports, and did the transfer to treasury. It was very predictable,” she says. “I was pretty much bu...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Richard Kelson

In the fall of 1997, storm clouds suddenly darkened the horizon for Alcoa Inc. Aluminum prices, a leading indicator of Alcoa’s earnings, plunged 12 percent during one 60-day period. The Asian crisis weakened demand, and Alcoa’s stock began to lag the industrial averages that it had beaten the pre...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Larry Carter

Larry Carter won’t stop to declare victory. Sometime in the past year, Cisco Systems Inc.’s finance organization–arguably the most efficient in the world–achieved its much- touted aim of a “virtual close.” On any given workday, the San Jose, California-based Internet networking company can now pr...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 1, 2000

2000 Excellence Awards: Joseph Martin

Joe Martin had just decided to help with the semiconductor industry’s first leveraged buyout when some peers had a question for him. “They said, ‘Are you out of your mind?'” recalls Martin, now the CFO of Fairchild Semiconductor International, the entity that emerged from the LBO of several forme...

By George Donnelly • Oct. 1, 2000

Revenue Strategies: Testing the Pricing

Although Alan Greenspan and the Feds have done a good job of keeping the lid on inþation, higher basic costs are forcing chief financial officers to consider boosting prices. CFOs expect to raise the prices of their companies’ products 3.5 percent during the next year, up from an expected 2.2 per...

By Tom Woodruff • Sept. 9, 2000