No Fad, Big Data Is Big Deal

BOSTON — When he was asked at Thursday’s MIT Sloan CFO Summit if Big Data is just a buzzword, a marketing tool vendors use to sell more software to CFOs, Justin Borgman, the founder and chief executive officer of Hadapt, a data-analysis software vendor, answered honestly: “Yes. It’s an excuse to ...

By Taylor Provost • Nov. 16, 2012

Frothy Growth

Craft beer is often defined by what it’s not. It’s not mass-produced; a craft brewer typically makes less than 6 million barrels of beer a year. (By contrast, Anheuser-Busch shipped 97.9 million barrels in the United States in 2011.) It’s usually not a low-alcohol light lager, like Budweiser or C...

By David Rosenbaum • Nov. 15, 2012

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

A Taste for M&A

Name: Gordon Stetz Position: CFO of McCormick & Co., the spice and flavoring maker. McCormick, a Fortune 1,000 company, brought in sales of $3.7 billion in 2011. Previous Positions: CFO of Europe, Middle East, and Africa at McCormick; VP of finance and administration, U.S. Consumer Products D...

By Marielle Segarra • Nov. 15, 2012

Start Me Up

Among the never-ending stream of books on starting and growing new businesses, one of the most thoughtful and complete to appear in recent months is The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, by Noam Wasserman (Princeton University Press, $35). “If ent...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 15, 2012

Latin America: A Sunnier Outlook

While CFOs in the United States and Europe were increasingly gloomy in the third quarter, and as Asia’s finance chiefs warily watched that region’s slowing growth, a bright spot stood out in the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey: Latin America, and Brazil in parti...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Nov. 15, 2012

An Interest in Pinterest

You may not know it, but your company has probably been “pinned.” That is, someone, somewhere, has taken a liking (or disliking) to its products or services and shared images of them on Pinterest, the social-networking website. By one count the third-busiest such site in the United States, after ...

By Taylor Provost • Nov. 15, 2012

Euro-Zone Growth Flounders

If you were looking for a euro-zone recovery in 2013, forget about it, says rating agency Standard & Poor’s. Its previous forecast of 0.3% growth in gross domestic product has been cut to exactly zero. Moreover, 2012 is now looking worse, with euro-zone economic activity expected to contract ...

By Andrew Sawers • Nov. 15, 2012

Office Politics

It’s said to be unwise to discuss sex, religion, or politics with anyone other than close friends. That particularly applies in the workplace, where strong emotions can interfere with productivity. Apparently, however, the top officers of three companies either never heard that truism or decided ...

By David McCann • Nov. 15, 2012

Sandy’s Gone, but the Threats Remain

Hurricane Sandy was an awful, albeit salutary, reminder of the importance of effective IT disaster recovery and business-continuity planning.  Whether or not you think the climate scientists are right, Mother Earth is indisputably volatile and unpredictable. Exceptional events do and will continu...

By Rob Livingstone • Nov. 14, 2012

Transformation of a Salesman

Change is the new normal, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the world’s oldest professions — sales — has changed.A survey conducted in 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and SKK University of more than 400,000 U.S. companies showed a growth in inside sales positions (p...

By David Rosenbaum • Nov. 13, 2012

Under Obama, Tech Future Is Green

During his victory speech in Chicago early Wednesday, President Barack Obama maintained that while the nation may appear to be divided into red and blue, the future needs to be green in order for the country to live up to “its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation...

By Taylor Provost • Nov. 7, 2012

Is Britain the Next Greece?

The great economist John Maynard Keynes is a much-misunderstood man. More than that, Keynes himself didn’t understand how international economies work, and he took far too optimistic a view about the ambitions of those in government. The result? Highly indebted countries are pursuing to their det...

By Andrew Sawers • Nov. 7, 2012

Currency Risks Merit Close Monitoring

Manufacturers and other businesses importing from or selling to countries in Europe and elsewhere all face the risk of fluctuating currency rates. Most agree that the best mitigation for this risk is to lock in contracts and work with foreign-exchange experts rather than try to become one.John Br...

By Caroline McDonald • Nov. 7, 2012

Sandy-Struck Companies Can Seek FEMA Buyouts

Homeowners with homes devastated by superstorm Sandy can take advantage of a decades-old Federal Emergency Management Agency grant program that buys damaged property in flood-ravaged areas. And although corporate executives and business owners may not know it, their companies may be eligible, too...

By Caroline McDonald • Nov. 6, 2012

The Election Will Not Remove Uncertainty

Sometime Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, all the uncertainty will go away, won’t it? CFOs, businesses, and individuals won’t have to worry about whether they’ll be paying more or less in taxes. Obamacare will be settled, one way or the other. A new Administration (or an old one with a new lea...

By David Rosenbaum • Nov. 6, 2012

Five Jobs for the Cloud-Provider CFO

If you’re the CFO of a hardware, software, or IT-services firm, you’re watching your customers and the market react to the growing proliferation of cloud-based services. If you’re a new entrant in the space, you’re faced with a unique opportunity to unseat traditional leaders. If you’re a legacy ...

By Ken Ewell and Dhaval Moogimane • Nov. 5, 2012

Although Toll Rises, Sandy’s “Manageable” for Insurers

Even though Eqecat, a widely cited risk-modeling company, yesterday doubled its postlandfall insured loss estimates for superstorm Sandy from $5 billion–$10 billion to $10 billion–$20 billion, those losses can be handled by the insurance industry, according to an insurance-industry expert.Factors...

By Caroline McDonald • Nov. 2, 2012

Three CFOs Tell How They Found New Revenue

MIAMI — When Kathleen Wolf became Atari International’s CFO in 2011, she joined a company focused on building and selling high-end condos, mainly in Florida and Puerto Rico. About 60% of Atari’s construction business was condo development.As the housing market — and the economy — famously swooned...

By David Rosenbaum • Oct. 31, 2012

The Executive-Succession Train Wreck

MIAMI — Jim Johnston has been a C-suite adviser and an interim CFO for 25 years, and he agreed to present on succession planning at this week’s CFO Playbook for Private Companies conference here. But he’s not comfortable with the term succession planning.“It implies that you have an organized app...

By David McCann • Oct. 30, 2012

Fiscal Cliff Nears, as Does Possible Recession

MIAMI — When the new year dawns, the giant sucking sound emanating from the United States will be the $1 trillion draining from the U.S. economy as a result of federal government spending cuts and tax increases. Although that’s currently a bad dream for CFOs, Congress’s inaction as the “fiscal cl...

By Vincent Ryan • Oct. 30, 2012

CFOs Brace for Monster Storm

MIAMI — At noon, waves were already surging over the seawalls at the southern tip of Manhattan and near Quincy, Massachusetts. Meteorologists were predicting that the flood tide for Hurricane Sandy would exceed those of Hurricane Irene levels and could reach 11 feet. “Don’t be fooled; don’t look ...

By David McCann • Oct. 29, 2012

Hurricane Sandy Creates Property, Supply Chain Concerns

With roads, rails, and air traffic shut down on the East Coast, and water and wind levels rising, most precautions have already been taken by local governments and businesses. But it’s not too late for corporate executives to make last-minute preparations to protect property, supply-chain, and em...

By Caroline McDonald • Oct. 29, 2012

How to Run a Family Business When You’re Not in the Family

MIAMI — When moderator Jim Johnston asked the assembled finance executives at today’s CFO Playbook for Private Companies conference here how many worked for businesses that had been owned by the same family for at least two generations, more than half raised their hand.That’s not surprising. The ...

By David Rosenbaum • Oct. 29, 2012

China’s Instability Offers Opportunities

MIAMI — Don’t give up on China, despite its short-term political and economic difficulties. So said Ted Fishman, author of China, Inc., How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World and former Chicago Mercantile Exchange trader, at the CFO Playbook for Private Companies con...

By Vincent Ryan • Oct. 29, 2012

72 Hours of Technology Hell

New technology brings with it new possibilities. It also brings pain and disappointment.The latest installment in this life lesson involved my recent iPhone upgrade.  After the announcement that a new, improved iPhone was ready, I jumped on the site and placed my order. Shortly thereafter I recei...

By Susan Cramm • Oct. 26, 2012