Health-Plan Rebates Could Come at a Cost

Sponsors of fully insured health-benefits plans could be getting rebates this year from the insurance companies that underwrite their plans. At the same time, the cost of such plans may rise, which could push some plan sponsors to evaluate switching to a self-insured plan.Under the Affordable Car...

By David McCann • Feb. 1, 2012

Global Positioning

As finance chiefs help their companies search for growth opportunities, more and more often they find themselves looking outside the United States rather than at home. While the domestic market remains plagued by a seemingly endless slow-growth recovery, not to mention the fierce competition ende...

By Michelle Celarier • Feb. 1, 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

Have $1 Billion, Will Spend

As companies invest more money in customers — both to win them and to analyze their preferences and behaviors — Alliance Data Systems (ADS) is positioned to reap the rewards. Based in Dallas, the affinity-card and customer-loyalty program provider outperformed the generally sluggish economy last ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Feb. 1, 2012

Making M&A Safer

Before Michael Hagedorn, finance chief at $12.1 billion banking firm UMB Financial, pulls the trigger on a deal, he tests it using at least three sets of assumptions — optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic. Sometimes he uses five. Why? “So that management knows [just] how bad this thing could get ...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 1, 2012

Proceeding with Caution

Even as the global economy continues to be volatile, U.S. CFOs are slightly more optimistic than they were three months ago. The latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook survey finds that the CFO optimism index has moved up to 53 (on a scale of 1-100) from 47 last quarter. Howe...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Feb. 1, 2012

Five Ways to Reduce and Manage Fuel Surcharges

Few businesses have the opportunity to apply a fluctuating surcharge to cover fluctuations in cost and protect profit margins. That has, however, become the norm for the transportation industry, from motor carriers to air carriers to couriers.At present fuel prices have stabilized, but with the r...

By Shawn Casemore • Jan. 30, 2012

Thailand Flooding Leaks into the New Year

The disastrous floods in Thailand continue to affect companies’ supply chains and their ability to fill customers’ demands, and it will affect their financial performance in other ways as well. This week, half a year after the floods began, companies in the technology sector revealed that the imp...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 26, 2012

Teaming Up on Innovation

Chances are your employees have some ideas about how to make the business better. Some of them might be brilliant; others abysmal. But few companies are able to effectively corral the ideas and separate the wheat from the chaff, meaning many so-called growth strategies are simply the product of p...

By Alix Stuart • Jan. 25, 2012

When Disaster Thunders Through the Cloud

Cloud computing — and the cloud-computing business model — is maturing at a rapid pace with new solutions, systems, and a seemingly never-ending conga line of vendors offering compelling reasons (and deals) for why you should move to the cloud, however they define it. For those CFOs who have ente...

By Rob Livingstone • Jan. 24, 2012

M&A Dollar Volumes Drop 80%

Excepting Apache’s $2.85 billion purchase today and a handful of other transactions, it’s been a horrid start for mergers and acquisitions. While some single-digit billion-dollar deals have closed this year, there have been no blockbusters. And the total volume of deals has fallen drastically fro...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 23, 2012

What CIOs Want From CFOs

If you’re like me, you’re perfect. Everyone who works for and with you respects you and admires your judgment, your approach, and the decisions you make. So my advice to you is: keep doing exactly what you’re doing. And you can skip the following advice CIOs have for their CFOs, and their suggest...

By Martha Heller • Jan. 23, 2012

Schwab Throws Wrinkle into 401(k) Market

For the past year, buzz in the 401(k) arena has been all about the new disclosures regarding plans’ administration fees that plan participants will start receiving this year. Experts expect that more than a few participants will panic, given new awareness of how much their plans cost to run.Amid ...

By David McCann • Jan. 20, 2012

Damn the Economy: Company Profitability Full Speed Ahead

The limping economy and last year’s lackluster stock market have masked a stunning fact about corporate profitability:  It is the best it has been in at least 15 years, and possibly the best ever. The aggregate EVA margin (economic profit as a percentage of sales) of the 1,702 companies in the CF...

By Al Ehrbar • Jan. 17, 2012

M&A: Running on Energy

Merger and acquisition activity may be off to a slow start this year, but there’s plenty of energy in the market for takeovers — the kind of energy that heats homes and powers cars. In fact, the energy sector is the only industry with any semblance of a deal-making trend in North America to start...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 10, 2012

Up at Bat

Hillerich & Bradsby is the unassuming name behind a powerful American brand: baseball’s Louisville Slugger. With about 70% of Major League Baseball players using the company’s customized wooden bats and hundreds more athletes using its other products, including Bionic gloves and Powerbilt gol...

By Alix Stuart • Jan. 5, 2012

The 2012 To-Do List for Acquirers

Perhaps even more than usual, it’s tough to forecast what kind of year it will be for mergers and acquisitions. Globally, 2011 was the busiest year for M&A since 2008, according to mergermarket. Activity from private-equity buyouts strengthened, with the value of deals climbing 15.3% and the ...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 5, 2012

IPO Outlook 2012: Tempered

There are a lot of ways the capital markets could improve in 2012, but becoming a hotbed for new equity issuers is not likely one of them, at least according to a recent survey of about 100 investment bankers.As of last month, only half are predicting an increase in initial public offerings in 20...

By Alix Stuart • Jan. 3, 2012

Best of 2011: Growth Companies

This year, CFO inaugurated its growth companies beat to focus on the companies that give hope to the country’s economic future: those that are increasing sales, staffing up, and moving into new markets with enthusiasm. Since chaos tends to accelerate approximately as fast as revenues – or perhaps...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Dec. 29, 2011

QuickBooks Today and Tomorrow

Having problems with QuickBooks? Neil Williams wants to hear about them. As CFO of Intuit, the company that owns QuickBooks (among other product lines), Williams says one of his main missions is to stay close to customers and understand their frustrations. To that end, he and other senior executi...

By David Rosenbaum and Alix Stuart • Dec. 21, 2011

New Outlook for the New Year?

CFOs are slightly more optimistic than they were three months ago, despite the ongoing European debt crisis and continued uncertain demand at home. According to the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, finance executives rate their optimism about the U.S. economy at...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Dec. 15, 2011

Do You Need to Pack In Your Employees?

Your company is growing. Actually, “growing” is a pretty tepid word for what’s going on. You doubled your head count this year, and expect the same number of new folks on board next year. Where are you going to put them?One answer: pack ’em in. Tear down the cubicles. Open space is “in.”Start-up ...

By David McCann • Dec. 13, 2011

Contending with a Product Boom at Chobani

In the 1990s, high-tech companies yearned to get to a point in the technology adoption life cycle called “just ship.” Based on the models of Silicon Valley consultant Geoffrey Moore, the just ship phase was when the buying population of a product exploded and it was all the company could do to ge...

By Vincent Ryan and David McCann • Dec. 9, 2011

On the Fast Track: NineSigma

Innovation — as in, Where’s the money coming from next? — is an inescapable topic for most CFOs today. That includes Bill Chorba, CFO of NineSigma. He has one advantage, however: innovation is his company’s core product.NineSigma, an 11-year-old privately held firm with less than $50 million in a...

By Alix Stuart • Dec. 8, 2011

7 Easy (and Cheap) Ways to Develop Employees

Michael Lehman, former CFO of Sun Microsystems, has always placed a high priority on supporting employee development. Bolstered by big-company resources and ambitious rotation programs at Sun, his philosophy has helped propel at least eight of his former employees into large-company CFO roles, an...

By Alix Stuart • Dec. 7, 2011

Think Twice Before Growing That Product Line

Growth companies may view the development of a robust product line as the ticket to financial success, but in doing so they may be contributing to a flourishing societal malaise and actually acting to deter potential customers from buying their wares.People in developed countries have long accept...

By David McCann • Dec. 6, 2011