The Shape of Things to Come

Much of the recent talk about an economic recovery concerns what shape it will take — literally. Will the plunge and rebound conform to the “V” shape that described the 1973–74 recession, be akin to the “U”-shaped recovery seen after the 1981–82 recession, or sputter into the dreaded “W” — twin r...

By Russ Banham • March 1, 2010

Crowd Control

In 2003 Motorola rolled out a system through which employees could propose ideas for products or anything else that might boost the company’s value. By one measure it was an unqualified success: it produced 10,000 ideas over the next four years.But the volume of submissions to the system, called ...

By David McCann • Feb. 10, 2010

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

Knowing Failure When You See It

As conditioned as they are to a tight focus on success, corporate finance executives might be better off if they paid more heed to failure.In fact, one of the most important roles finance can play is defining the criteria for abandoning investments, according to David Axson, a business consultant...

By David McCann • Feb. 8, 2010

All the Right Data

What do kinesiology, a wine connoisseur’s palate, and employee smiles have in common? Answer: companies have analyzed data about these intangible factors to improve operating results, says Jeanne Harris, an executive research fellow at the Accenture Institute of High Performance. In addition, sen...

By Marie Leone • Feb. 2, 2010

A Force to Be Reckoned With

Which stakeholders will have the biggest impact on your company over the next few years? It may come as a surprise, but in a recent survey of nearly 1,200 executives worldwide, McKinsey & Co. found that government comes in second on that list, well behind customers but ahead of employees, inv...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2010

The New Normal: A Spot Check

As businesses slowly emerge from the worst of the Great Recession, they are assessing the damage and looking ahead to better times. A December survey conducted by CFO Research Services, in conjunction with American Express, examined finance executives’ views on managing in the new business enviro...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2010

The Long and Grinding Road

Optimism continues to increase among finance executives, but don’t pop the champagne corks just yet. This quarter’s Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, which polled 567 finance chiefs in the United States, found that 48% are more optimistic about the economy than they wer...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Feb. 1, 2010

Best of 2009: Budgeting and Planning

Budgeting and planning was a frustrating — if not completely futile — exercise for finance chiefs in 2009, as volatility on many fronts made this critical task more difficult than ever. Annual and quarterly forecasting became weekly, and CFOs found themselves managing a wide range of possible sce...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Dec. 29, 2009

Baby Steps

The economic recovery is shaping up to be a jobless one, judging by the response of finance chiefs to this quarter’s Duke University/CFO magazine Global Business Outlook Survey. While CFOs say they will increase capital expenditures and technology spending in the next 12 months — the first positi...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Dec. 16, 2009

Balance-Sheet Blues

Leasing is one convergence project that some U.S. finance executives are eyeing very warily. All signs are that a revamped global standard, expected in 2011, would require companies to capitalize assets that have traditionally fallen under the operating-lease classification, and hence could be re...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 1, 2009

Convergence vs. Conversion

Recent comments by top Securities and Exchange Commission officials, including chairperson Mary Schapiro, have refueled the already-intense debate about whether the United States should adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Amid criticism that such a move would benefit only th...

By Marie Leone • Dec. 1, 2009

Unhappy Holidays

Consumer spending is the main engine of the U.S. economy, accounting for more than two-thirds of gross domestic product (GDP). But for the past two years, the engine has been sputtering. Much of its fuel, in the form of steady paychecks and easy credit, has evaporated. And many of its parts are a...

By Edward Teach • Dec. 1, 2009

Price Fixing

Call it the year of the fire sale: Squeezed by an historic recession, U.S. companies have slashed prices more deeply and cut deals more often than at any time in the past 50 years. Microsoft reduced the price of software leasing by 26%, PepsiCo created new low-price beverages and snacks, and sola...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 1, 2009

CPAs Emit Faint Glimmer of Hope

The optimism of high-level accountants, including CFOs, has been inching up. Although perhaps centimeters would offer a more appropriate measurement of how they’ve changed their outlook compared with the first half of the year.Some financial leaders are seeing signs of revenue and profit growth —...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 18, 2009

Will Small Biz Get Sarbox Impunity?

The House Financial Services Committee has passed a bill that would exempt just over half of all publicly traded companies from the contentious internal-control provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that requires an auditor opinion.The proposed exemption has a long way to go before smaller companie...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 4, 2009

Companies Play Credit Catch-Up

It’s payback time. After months of stretching out their payables, companies are starting to catch up on their debt with their suppliers, according to the National Association of Credit Management.In turn, trade creditors have begun to see improvements in their collections during the past two mont...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 3, 2009

Senators Eye New Juice for Small Companies

Lawmakers are working on a new lifeline for small business, whose tiny portion of the federal stimulus package passed earlier this year will otherwise soon run out.Federal officials had initially estimated that funding for enhancements to two programs designed to spur bank lending to small compan...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 6, 2009

Deadline for Small Co. 404 Audit Reports: June 15

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that starting in nine months, it will require the smallest public companies to provide the auditor assessments of internal controls over financial reporting that are required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.Under Section 404 of Sarbox, pub...

By David Katz • Oct. 2, 2009

Auditor-Small Issuer Controls Spats Seen

Auditors and companies could soon clash on the issue of whether companies have the proper systems in place to avoid significant errors in their financial statements, Greg Wilson, deputy director of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s inspections division, recently warned audit firms n...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 1, 2009

Looking Up

In mid-September, Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke told an audience at the Brookings Institution that “the recession is very likely over at this point.” He may well be right, judging from the growing optimism of respondents to the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Out...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 1, 2009

The New Calculus of Offshoring

Even before Ajit Singh made a formal announcement about his company’s offshoring plans, employees knew what he would say. “The more I talked,” recalls the CEO of Bioimagene, a maker of computer-aided diagnostic tools, “the more I think they could see my rationale.”True, some voiced concern about ...

By Josh Hyatt • Oct. 1, 2009

Failure to Launch?

American economic history brims with big-name companies that can trace their beginnings to a recession. Coors was founded during the recession of 1873. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard cobbled together the prototypical garage start-up at the end of the Great Depression. Bill Gates, undeterred by sta...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 1, 2009

Stiglitz: GDP Blinded Us to the Crisis

One of the reasons the global financial crisis took the world by surprise may be that our measurement system failed. That is, market participants and government officials were not focused on the right set of statistical indicators, claims a report from a panel of top economists led by Nobel Prize...

By Marie Leone • Sept. 29, 2009

Curbing Fleet Costs

Paula Morisey doesn’t just have a company car, she has about 6,000. As fleet manager for Xerox, Morisey spends most of her time trying to ensure that the vehicles — mostly service vans filled with copier and printer parts — are operating as efficiently as possible, in all senses of the word effic...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 24, 2009

CFOs Put on a Happy Face

Optimism is growing among the CFO ranks as finance executives see an end to the Great Recession. Fifty-eight percent of finance execs say they are more optimistic about the economy than they were last quarter, and 48% say they are more optimistic about their own companies than they were three mon...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Sept. 15, 2009