Try Mobile Payment, CFOs Advised

It’s lunch hour in Boston’s financial district and the line at Boloco, a fast-food burrito chain, is long. A few people stand with credit or debit cards in hand, but most are holding their smartphones as they advance toward the register.A cashier glances at a customer with his phone at the ready....

By Taylor Provost • Aug. 13, 2012

Earnings May Shrivel Along With the Corn Stalks

The worst drought to hit the U.S. farm belt since 1956 has companies of many stripes forecasting the potential ripple effects in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Companies linked to agriculture are preparing for lower revenues, tighter margins, and even higher leverage ratios for the r...

By Vincent Ryan • Aug. 10, 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

How to Shore Up the “People” Part of Supply-Chain Performance

Recently, two American Airlines flights came close to colliding over Reagan Washington International Airport. The distance between them was a mere 800 vertical feet (200 less than the regulated allowable distance). Although the cause is under investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration say...

By Shawn Casemore • Aug. 8, 2012

Managing Risks Must Include Taking Them

Baseball great Yogi Berra once said: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” For the practitioners in the art and science of risk management, the fork in the road is at hand. One directional sign says ERM, while the other says GRC. ERM is the acronym for enterprise risk management and GRC i...

By John Bugalla and Kristina Narvaez • Aug. 7, 2012

Muddling Through

Even as the global economy continues to send signals ranging from mixed to downright alarming, U.S. finance chiefs say they still plan to hire at a relatively strong pace, according to the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, released in June. U.S. CFOs say they wil...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Aug. 1, 2012

Hawaiian’s Big Apple Venture

In June, Hawaiian Airlines launched its first daily nonstop flight between New York and Honolulu. That may not seem like much, yet it contributed to Hawaiian growing its overall capacity by nearly 25%. Starting a new air route “is always a risk,” says CFO Scott Topping, especially in uncertain ec...

By David Rosenbaum • Aug. 1, 2012

The Best Is Yet to Come

Do you ever throw down your newspaper or iPad in disgust after reading the latest news about jobs or budget deficits and fret about the inevitable decline of the United States? Stop worrying, advises Daniel Gross, the economics editor of Yahoo Finance. In his new book, Better, Stronger, Faster: T...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Aug. 1, 2012

Private Equity’s Picky Appetite

Private-equity firms have been choosy investors this year, expressing a preference for service and health-care companies for potential takeovers and greater portfolio exposure. According to financial sponsors, both industries will provide superior value in the current economic climate.The second-...

By Vincent Ryan • Aug. 1, 2012

Hands-On Growth

When Wayne Lipschitz was controller of Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, the firm grew from 12 units to more than 20. As controller of The Cheesecake Factory, he helped the chain grow from 19 restaurants to over 40. And during his time there as CFO, the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf chain grew from fewer tha...

By Marielle Segarra • Aug. 1, 2012

Fewer Deals and Exits, But PE’s Mountain of Capital Grows

For two years, conventional wisdom was that private-equity firms would be compelled to resume the burst of deal-making activity they undertook before the financial crisis. PE firms would have to put their growing reserve capital to use or lose it, the theory went. But in the second quarter, their...

By Vincent Ryan • Aug. 1, 2012

Tarnished Reputations Could Hit Banks Hard

Disgraced by scandals, banks may find it harder to win back trust. But with flush corporate clients, lower profit margins, and new competition from outside the industry, their survival may depend on it, experts contend.In addition to the JP Morgan and London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) debacle...

By Caroline McDonald • July 26, 2012

Stories of Demise of Health Coverage Are Exaggerated

About 1 in 11 employers plans to drop employee health-care coverage within three years as the health-care exchanges described in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) become operational, Deloitte said on Wednesday after surveying 560 employers. But that result, which made headlines nationwide, tells only...

By David McCann • July 26, 2012

Solar Storms: What’s the Risk for Companies?

When severe storms caused Amazon to lose power to its Virginia data center for the second time last month, its entire chain of clients, including Netflix, Pininterest, and Instagram, were affected. Instagram, a photo-sharing service, was down for more than 15 hours after the incident. Even with m...

By Caroline McDonald • July 23, 2012

M&A Forecast: Capacity, but No Moxie

Despite having room on their balance sheets, few companies will have the appetite for mergers and acquisitions the rest of this year, according to KPMG’s “M&A Predictor” report, released Thursday. KPMG says the global appetite for M&A deals will continue to be suppressed by a cloudy macro...

By Vincent Ryan • July 19, 2012

Lessons from a CFO Who Loves Start-Ups

I decided to drop in on Pingup, a technology start-up that enables people to text instead of call businesses (“Are you open?” “What’s the special tonight?” “How fast can you dry clean my tux?”), and the businesses to text them back (“Until 6 p.m.” “Peking Duck.” “Twenty-four hours.”), partly beca...

By David Rosenbaum • July 19, 2012

Who Owns Risk Management?

After writing about risk management for more than a decade, I’m well aware of a disconnect often present between risk management and a company’s executives and board. The situation has improved as more companies are focusing on risk — all risks, not just financial — in the wake of a number of nat...

By Caroline McDonald • July 17, 2012

Will Big Companies Drop Health Benefits?

Large employers plan to continue offering health benefits after the health-insurance exchanges provided for under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) begin operating — whether that’s in 2014, as the law currently requires, or later, as seems more likely.At least, that’s what those employers are saying ...

By David McCann • July 12, 2012

Cloud FAQs for CFOs

Q: OK, I’ll bite. As simply as possible, explain the cloud so that I don’t have to go to any more conferences or listen to any more lectures.Once upon a time, if you ran a business and needed electricity, you made it yourself. You had a generator; you bought coal and burned it. Your business wasn...

By David Rosenbaum • July 12, 2012

How to Break Up the Euro

A 150-page report detailing how a breakup of the euro could happen has won a six-digit prize — payable in British pounds. Consultancy Capital Economics and lead author Roger Bootle won the £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize for setting out “how best to manage the orderly exit of one or more member ...

By Andrew Sawers • July 11, 2012

Investing in Interns Can Produce More Than Interim Benefits

Internship programs can be a relatively inexpensive (and sometimes free) way for businesses, especially small-to-midsize ones, to hand off the dirty work they need to get done, such as data entry and filing. But recent high-profile lawsuits from unpaid interns against Hearst and Fox may have busi...

By Bonnie Evans • July 2, 2012

Companies Facing Property Insurance Hikes

While it was expected that insured losses from 2011 natural catastrophes would send property-insurance premiums skyward, increases were only slight. But the upward trend appears to be gathering momentum, especially for organizations with a market capitalization of less than $300 million, accordin...

By Caroline McDonald • July 2, 2012

Stunned CFOs Now Must Focus on Complying with Health-Care Act

CFOs, health-care attorneys, and benefits consultants interviewed today by CFO uniformly expressed surprise, and in some cases shock, at the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the individual-mandate provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).The decision, which left ...

By David McCann • June 28, 2012

Health-Care Ruling Benefits Small Business, Some Say

“It’s moot,” says Pingup CFO Bethe Palmer when asked about the impact on her small technology start-up of today’s Supreme Court decision to uphold the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires businesses with more than 50 employees to provide health insur...

By David Rosenbaum • June 28, 2012

The Global Company’s Challenge

Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.McKinsey Global Institute research suggests that 400 midsi...

By Martin Dewhurst and Jonathan Harris • June 25, 2012

Corporate Lawsuit Apathy Worries D&O Insurer

Company executives with enough insurance coverage may be lulled into a false sense of security when it comes to lawsuits. More than 80% believe a suit is “unlikely,” according to an insurer survey.“It’s a little bit of human nature to say ‘it can’t happen to me because I’m not doing anything wron...

By Caroline McDonald • June 22, 2012