Buyout Loans to Get Closer Scrutiny

Federal banking regulators want banks to tighten up the underwriting of loans used by many private-equity firms in buyout transactions. They are recommending more frequent stress testing of such specialized loans and want banks to delve deeper into whether the financial sponsor would inject capit...

By Vincent Ryan • March 27, 2012

Meet the Chinese Consumer of 2020

Most large consumer-facing companies realize that they will need China to power their growth in the next decade. But to keep pace, these companies will also need to understand the economic, societal, and demographic changes shaping the profiles of consumers and the way they spend. This is no easy...

By Yuval Atsmon and Max Magni • March 21, 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

Tech Giants Revive Acquisition Market

Technology firms unleashed some of their capital in the past week and a half, injecting some life into an otherwise sluggish merger-and-acquisition climate. Big — but not earth-shattering — deals by Cisco Systems, Dell, and Amazon reversed what had been a dismal beginning to March.Acquisitions ar...

By Vincent Ryan • March 20, 2012

The Future Is Special-ized

Some of you may have read UCLA Professor Jared Diamond’s 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. In it, Diamond answers a question from Yali, his aboriginal New Guinean friend. The question (and I’m paraphrasing) is: “Why do you guys have all the stuff?” That is, why did civiliz...

By Timothy Chou • March 16, 2012

Five Costly Health-Care Compliance Slips

Smaller companies without a substantial, experienced human-resources team may risk overlooking some fundamental requirements for complying with health-care-related laws and regulations. The firms might get away with such an oversight for a while, but could be subject to significant fines if they’...

By David McCann • March 14, 2012

Why CFOs Are Skeptical About Sustainability

To a great extent — and unfortunately — “sustainability” is a quality that exists in the mind of the beholder.Earlier this month, Apple posted a report on its website announcing that the company had created or supported 514,000 jobs in the United States, portraying itself as adhering to one of th...

By David Katz • March 13, 2012

Europe’s Slowdown Won’t Halt U.S. Growth: Economists

Thanks to a vastly lower risk of near-term financial chaos in Europe and an uptick in hiring in the United States, many CFOs and economists are getting a tad more cheery about business prospects for 2012.About 54% of CFOs responding to the Duke/CFO Global Outlook Survey released on Tuesday said t...

By Vincent Ryan • March 9, 2012

Choosing a Cloud Application: A Hornets’ Nest of Complexity

As cloud computing is still very much at the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle (and very much on the mind of CFOs), it’s worth examining how cloud computing can add both complexity and cost to what should be a relatively standard process: selecting an enterprise IT system in a midsize organization. ...

By Rob Livingstone • March 6, 2012

A $20 Million Bet on Cloud Services

Cloud Sherpas, a company that helps businesses deploy Google business applications, and GlobalOne, a Salesforce systems integrator and consultancy, announced today that they would merge under the Cloud Sherpas name.In effect, the deal creates a cloud-services integrator and consultancy with exper...

By David Rosenbaum • March 6, 2012

For CFOs, Happy Days Are Here Again

Finance executives’ level of optimism about the U.S. economy is back to normal at last, after falling off dramatically during the recession, according to the latest Duke University/CFO magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, released today.On average, CFOs rate their optimism at 59 on a 100-poin...

By Kate O'Sullivan • March 6, 2012

Still Hiring the Same Old Way?

In the latest Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey, more than a quarter of the responding CFOs said they increased accounting staff in the past two years. In fact, the biggest growth in jobs right now seems to be occurring in the professional and business-services sector. But chance...

By David Rosenbaum • March 2, 2012

Not Made in America

For the past two decades, Tennessee-based Storm Copper Components has sourced the raw copper bars and sheets that go into its products solely from U.S. suppliers. That strategy has worked well, says CFO Vince Schreiber, because the heavy materials are expensive and slow to transport, and customer...

By Alix Stuart • March 1, 2012

Capital vs. Confidence

Last September, Centennial Bank announced that the U.S. Treasury Department had granted it $1.8 million through the Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF). Jim Basey, Centennial chairman and CEO, says the Greenwood, Colorado-based bank was glad to take the capital, for several reasons. It came with a...

By Alix Stuart • March 1, 2012

An Acquirer’s To-Do List for 2012

No one knows how the rest of the year will go for mergers and acquisitions, but 2012 indisputably got off to a slow start. The slump in deal volume that began in the fourth quarter of 2011 continued through January, as the European debt crisis rattled markets. According to data provided to CFO by...

By Vincent Ryan • March 1, 2012

Social Media and the Coming Supply-Chain Revolution

We have all witnessed the effective assimilation of social media into marketing and human-resources strategies. However, very few companies have integrated the modern communications tools into their supply chains, even though there are a number of good reasons to do so.That will probably change o...

By Shawn Casemore • Feb. 29, 2012

PE Managers Predict Two Years of Healthy Returns

Despite a challenging capital-raising environment and growing worries about new government regulations, private equity firms are guardedly optimistic about fund returns and see strong investing opportunities in specific U.S. vertical industries. Those views stem from the results of a new quarterl...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 27, 2012

Stripping M&A of Emotion and Intuition

How the United States can grow the economy and the workforce without overleveraging its future is the burning issue occupying political and economic pundits, affecting financial markets, and shaping a vigorous election debate. At the corporate level, chief financial officers are faced with a simi...

By Tim Collier • Feb. 24, 2012

Inside a Cyber Attack

No one likes being awakened in the middle of the night. It’s never good news. And it wasn’t good news shortly after midnight on July 21, 2011, when Yola president and chief operating officer Trevor Harries-Jones was yanked from sleep by the phone ringing in his San Francisco bedroom.Yola is a glo...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 16, 2012

The Games Businesses Play

Immediately beneath the carousel on its home page advertising Samsung tablets, televisions, and phones, you’ll find an invitation to join “Samsung Nation.” Beneath that is a leader board with Kevin Brown, a “Level 6 Legend” and a business owner in Massachusetts, on top with 39,925 points (as of F...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 14, 2012

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in Your Public Cloud’s Data Center?

As a CFO, why should you be concerned about your cloud provider’s data center? Isn’t not having to think about the data center — about all those boxes and wires, vents and air conditioners, landlords and leases, staff and security, access and uptime — one of the reasons you moved to the cloud in ...

By Rob Livingstone • Feb. 14, 2012

Seller Resistance Choking Deal Flow

Small and slow. Except for a couple of large tender offers, merger-and-acquisition activity in North America was slumberous last week. Most of the deals that did get announced were on the diminutive side — below $100 million.Evan Greebel, a partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman, says he is seeing ple...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 13, 2012

In the Swing of Things

Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in just a few days, but at Hillerich & Bradsby, manufacturer of the iconic Louisville Slugger baseball bat, new CFO Lawrence Writer has been on the field since November.In a sense, Writer will serve as the corporate equivalent of a player-coach,...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2012

Forging Ahead: How to Get Innovation Right

Companies often declare that “innovation” is a top priority and spend hours in conferences and meetings discussing it, to little effect. That’s because many businesses don’t know what innovation really means — or what challenges it presents, says Steve Faktor, author of Econovation, former vice p...

By Marielle Segarra • Feb. 1, 2012

Squint if You Have To

What does an embattled, post-downturn company do when it looks up and sees distressingly few growth prospects? It puts on its rosiest-tinted glasses and looks again.A recent study of 184 senior finance executives conducted by CFO Research Services in conjunction with IBM suggests that companies f...

By Matt Surka • Feb. 1, 2012

Who’s Out There?

In 1775, when Boston silversmith Paul Revere famously rode northwest to alert the countryside that British troops were on the move, Boston tanner William Dawes, bearing the same message, rode not so famously southwest.When the British arrived in Lexington and Concord, they did not meet many milit...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 1, 2012