C-Suite Looking for More in Risk Management

Finance chiefs want more out of their risk managers than mere property-casualty insurance buying, even though risk managers themselves place a high value on their knowledge of insurance coverage, experts say.Yet while corporate risk managers have long been identified as mere policy purchasers, th...

By Caroline McDonald • June 21, 2012

Going Digital

Digital business initiatives involving big data, cloud computing, and social media are becoming a strategic priority for many companies, according to McKinsey & Co. More than half of nearly 1,500 C-level executives surveyed by the consultancy in April said both big data and digital marketing ...

By Marielle Segarra • June 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

Facebook Users, Meet Timeline

In March, Facebook forced all business users to adopt Timeline, its new page layout. The change may cause companies to put more effort into maintaining their Facebook business pages, but the new design may also help them increase customer engagement, experts say.The switch to Timeline has already...

By Bonnie Evans • June 15, 2012

Before You Sign That Cloud Contract

When a business moves to the cloud, it hands off its servers, its networks, and even its data to its provider. All that it has left is a contract. Given this, CFOs need to ensure that their cloud contracts are comprehensive, balanced, and enforceable, preferably in legal jurisdictions that suit t...

By Rob Livingstone • June 15, 2012

CFOs See Growth Ahead

Like doctors standing over a slowly improving patient, senior finance officers in the United States remain guardedly optimistic that the country will realize at least moderate economic growth this year, according to a recent global survey.Seventy-eight percent of U.S.-based CFOs foresee economic ...

By Josh Hyatt • June 15, 2012

Driving Lessons

Name: Ed GoldfingerPosition: CFO of ZipcarPrevious Positions: CFO of Spotfire, a business-intelligence and analytics software company; CFO of the Latin American beverage business at Pepsi-Cola International; senior manager in the audit practice at KPMG.Notable For: Being finance chief of the larg...

By Marielle Segarra • June 15, 2012

U.S. Deal-Making Chills

May was another slow month for mergers and acquisitions in North America. As of May 29, there were 254 deals with a total disclosed value of $88.3 billion for the month, according to data from Mergermarket. That’s a drop from May 2011 of 40% by deal count and 22% by dollar volume.CFOs were clearl...

By Vincent Ryan • June 15, 2012

Do Mergers Add Value After All?

For years, debate has raged over the value of mergers and acquisitions. Studies have tended to find that M&A is a surefire way to destroy shareholder value in acquiring firms. Yet, companies keep making acquisitions to grow market share, expand geographically, and diversify into other industr...

By Andrew Sawers • June 15, 2012

An Emerging Concern

Like many CFOs, Kevin Gordon is preoccupied with risk. The finance chief of Quintiles, a company that provides services to pharmaceutical and medical-device companies, says risk management is on his mind “every minute of the day.”Gordon is particularly concerned about emerging risks — the kind th...

By Sarah Johnson • June 15, 2012

Hawaiian’s Big Growth Gamble

Last week Hawaiian Airlines launched its first, and currently the only, daily nonstop flights from New York’s JFK Airport to Honolulu, growing its overall capacity nearly 25%. Starting a new air route, admits Hawaiian CFO Scott Topping, is “always a risk.” That’s especially true in difficult econ...

By David Rosenbaum • June 14, 2012

IT Outsourcing: What You Don’t Know Can Cost You

For many companies, operationalizing the management of IT-outsourcing contracts is becoming increasingly complex. While there’s no question that outsourcing can help fill gaps in IT  services, confusion about negotiated terms and conditions, a lack of transparency, and inadequate integration betw...

By Sunny Gupta • June 13, 2012

PE Firms Hunting for Health-Care, Services Deals

Private-equity firms are picky investors this year, but services and health-care companies are on their radar screens for potential takeovers and greater portfolio exposure. Both industries, PE firms say, will provide superior value in the current economic climate.The second-quarter Rothstein Kas...

By Vincent Ryan • June 13, 2012

The Risks that Lurk in the Cloud

While the lure of financial savings has quickly driven the use of cloud-computing service in the corporate sphere, not many senior executives have really examined the risks of using the cloud or how to deal with them. Adding to the problem is that it has been hard to identify exposures and obtain...

By Caroline McDonald • June 13, 2012

The Euro and the Euros: a Football Story

A top-flight international sporting event often takes peoples’ mind off the trials and tribulations they deal with every other day. In the case of the current football championship, Euro 2012, also known as the Euros, it probably won’t help at all.Sixteen national teams are taking part in the fou...

By Andrew Sawers • June 13, 2012

Health Insurers: We’ll Continue with Reforms, Regardless

[Editor’s note: this article, including the headline and sub-heading, have been updated from the original version because of additional announcements by insurers.]Just over two weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), three larg...

By David McCann • June 11, 2012

Facebook: The Sound of a Bubble Bursting?

In 1999 I was working at CIO magazine and chatting with Amar Goel, a former captain of the Harvard golf team. In 1995 Goel had founded Chipshot.com in his dorm room. It was an online business that sold golf equipment and allowed people to buy customized clubs by entering data about their physique...

By David Rosenbaum • May 30, 2012

European Crisis Chills U.S. Deal Making

If companies were spending gobs of money on acquisitions, or private-equity firms were making much headway on their mountains of committed capital, the deal counts and dollar volumes of mergers and acquisitions would be way up over last year. But they are not.May was another slow month for M&...

By Vincent Ryan • May 29, 2012

Unusual Suspects Show Up in Profit Ranking

The EVA Momentum ranking clearly debunks the notion that industry is destiny.  The top 25 companies in the ranking, which charts the profitability performance of companies in the Russell 3000 index, include ones from 19 different industries, ranging from likely winners in industries such as biote...

By Al Ehrbar • May 23, 2012

Wave of Consumer Spending Expected to Ebb

Will the consumer buoy the U.S. economy and corporate profits or drag them into the doldrums? The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee, economists, and CFOs are all trying to gauge whether the cyclical pickup in consumer spending will continue.Consumer credit and outlays rose in the fi...

By Vincent Ryan • May 17, 2012

You Can’t Ignore Timeline (Facebook Won’t Let You)

Facebook made the adoption of its Timeline content and layout mandatory on March 30 for all business pages. (Members posting personal profiles still have the option of using the old format.) The new design added a horizontal photo banner, a space for customizable apps, free analytic tools (Facebo...

By Bonnie Evans • May 15, 2012

How Crocs Regained Its Footing

Five years ago, everything was looking up for Crocs Inc. The casual-footwear company, which started selling its signature plastic clogs in 2002, had hit $100 million in sales by 2005. Its initial public offering the following year was the largest-ever U.S. footwear IPO, raising $208 million, and ...

By Edward Teach • May 15, 2012

Same Bump, Different Year

Nineteen venture-backed companies went public during the first quarter of this year, raising $1.5 billion and reflecting the highest number of such initial public offerings in the first quarter since 2007, according to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and business-data provider Tho...

By Sarah Johnson • May 15, 2012

Reining In Buyout Loans

Federal banking regulators want banks to tighten up the underwriting of leveraged loans, which are often used by private-equity firms in buyout transactions. They are recommending more-frequent stress-testing of such loans and want banks to delve deeper into whether the financial sponsors would i...

By Vincent Ryan • May 15, 2012

Offshore Suppliers: Beware of Hidden Costs

Rising wages abroad are a driving force behind more than a trend where a third of large U.S. manufacturers are considering whether to return production to the United States, according to The Boston Consulting Group. That shift in thinking, though, is not solely the result of rising wages in China...

By Shawn Casemore • May 14, 2012

The Burdens of Crowdfunding

What kinds of start-up and early-stage ventures will sell shares in their companies over the Internet?They probably won’t be the average pitch on Kickstarter, a self-styled “funding platform for creative projects”: the musician trying to fund his idea for a concept album, for instance, or the app...

By Vincent Ryan • May 9, 2012