A Current Dilemma

Few metrics signal looming danger more sharply than a declining current ratio, yet many industries began the year with current assets outpacing current liabilities by a narrow margin.Seven sectors saw current ratios stumble in 2008, according to REL Consultancy, which compiled the data. Worst hit...

By S.L. Mintz • April 1, 2009

Happy New Year?

CFOs are still searching for the bottom of this economic crisis, yet it seems to be receding ever further from view. Sixty-seven percent of respondents to this quarter’s Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey are less optimistic about the economy than they were last quarter, ...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 1, 2009

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

Spring Forward

In 2008, alternative energy seemed poised to become the next big thing. As oil prices soared, seed money poured into the sector, and some saw a new investment bubble forming. Pundits envisioned a green future where wind farms would generate clean electricity for office buildings and factories, wh...

By Kate O'Sullivan • April 1, 2009

Going Under

World trade, the engine of growth, is sinking at a pace not seen since the second world war. In projections released on Monday March 23rd, the WTO predicts that the volume of global trade, which grew by 6 percent in 2007 and 2 percent last year, will fall by a dramatic 9 percent this year. The dr...

By Economist Staff • March 25, 2009

Squeezed Out

Last August, after 14 years of debate, the Chinese government at last imposed what was informally referred to as its “economic constitution,” a broad anti-monopoly law for a country rife with state-imposed monopolies. In the subsequent months, people have wondered how the law would be applied, an...

By Economist Staff • March 18, 2009

Charging Toward an Electric-car Future

The venture-backed firm Better Place has a vision of how the electric-car business — that most historically stalled of industries — will finally reshape the automobile landscape in the next decade.Two years after the company was born under the guidance of former SAP executive Shai Agassi, Better ...

By Kate Plourd • March 13, 2009

Dead-cat Bounce?

Glimmer of recovery or a dead-cat bounce? Confidence in economic prospects has picked up slightly among chief financial officers around the world-although pessimists still far outnumber optimists. This is according to the latest quarterly poll of over 1,000 CFOs, conducted in late February by Duk...

By Economist Staff • March 11, 2009

Business Outlook Survey: Bottom Dwellers

As they continue to seek the bottom of this economic crisis, CFOs now are expecting to find it further and further in the future. Sixty-seven percent of respondents to this quarter’s Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey are less optimistic about the economy than they were l...

By Kate O'Sullivan • March 4, 2009

Misunderstood

When directors at DHL Express say there’s a close working relationship between finance and marketing at the company, it’s not just a turn of phrase — CFO Oliver Gritz sits in an office right across the hall from George Kerschbaumer, the firm’s head of marketing. The physical proximity is symbolic...

By Tim Burke • March 2, 2009

Lost and Foundering?

The news about the economy hasn’t been good for some time, but in early February it got worse. The Labor Department reported that the United States had shed 598,000 jobs in January, the worst monthly loss in 35 years, for a total of 3.6 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007...

By Edward Teach • March 1, 2009

A Need-to-Go Basis

When the CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three automakers flew to Washington, D.C., on private jets seeking a collective bailout, the resulting scornful guffaws echoed around the country. Suddenly corporate jets, the usual mode of transport for many big-company executives, seemed not only woefully out of s...

By Kate O'Sullivan • March 1, 2009

The Right to Remain Silent?

Reading about the arrest in January of the CFO of Satyam Computer Services — the Indian family-owned outsourcer accused of a $1.4 billion fraud — I recalled a conversation I’d had a year earlier with a finance executive in Hong Kong.Over lunch, the CFO explained his predicament. He’d recently lef...

By Don Durfee • March 1, 2009

Managing in the Fog

“Not to beat around the bush, but the budgeting process at most companies has to be the most ineffective practice in management.” Thus Jack Welch, the former boss of GE, in his book “Winning,” which was published several years ago. Many firms that put their 2009 budgets together at the end of las...

By Economist Staff • Feb. 26, 2009

Obama Puts First Budget on Table

 President Barack Obama on Thursday unveiled his first budget, vowing to enact broad cuts in spending while continuing to hold onto “investment” priorities he touted during the campaign.“No part of my budget will be free from scrutiny or untouched by reform,” Obama said during remarks at the Whit...

By Roll Call Staff • Feb. 26, 2009

The Lapse of Luxury

Could those who produce luxury goods escape the worst of the global economic slump? Not likely. Some had dared to hope so, suggesting that rich consumers may be insulated from the financial turmoil that has engulfed those less well off, or that shoppers’ discretionary spending may go to acquiring...

By Economist Staff • Feb. 24, 2009

More Firms Put Workers in the Crosshairs

As federal unemployment figures continued to surge — with 627,000 new jobless claims reported, and the number of Americans receiving unemployment checks jumping to a record 4.99 million — new corporate layoff announcements this week confirm that the pain will only worsen.Goodyear Tire & Rubbe...

By Roy Harris • Feb. 20, 2009

The Collapse of Manufacturing

$0.00, not counting fuel and handling: that is the cheapest quote right now if you want to ship a container from southern China to Europe. Back in the summer of 2007 the shipper would have charged $1,400. Half-empty freighters are just one sign of a worldwide collapse in manufacturing. In Germany...

By Economist Staff • Feb. 20, 2009

Exec-level CPA Hopes Dim for Early Rebound

Already-pessimistic executive-level CPAs appear to be sharply reducing their expectations for an early recovery from the current economic downturn, a new survey says. Now, 41 percent look for the turnaround in next year’s first half, with 20 percent not expecting it until the 2010 second half.The...

By Roy Harris • Feb. 19, 2009

Macy’s Plans to Cut 7,000 Jobs

Along with a hefty dividend cut and plans to redeem debt, Macy’s, Inc. announced today that it would eliminate about 7,000 positions, or about 4 percent of the company’s total current workforce. Nearly 40 percent of executive jobs are being eliminated. The retailer also reported that some of the ...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 2, 2009

Buying American

In 1929 Willis Hawley and Reed Smoot, two protectionist Republicans in Congress, sponsored a bill to raise tariffs to the highest levels America had ever seen. And in the midst of economic distress, the protectionists won. The result was a round of reciprocal tariff hikes elsewhere, and a disastr...

By Economist Staff • Feb. 2, 2009

Top Ten Concerns of CFOs

Where do you turn for information on the fast-changing financial crisis? Siebe van Elsloo hopes it is to a newspaper, a magazine or the journals at the local library. In fact, any publication will do. For the CFO of Royal Swets & Zeitlinger, a Dutch subscription-services company, the greater ...

By Jason Karaian • Feb. 2, 2009

Farewell to Finance Jobs

Although the fallout from the Satyam scandal, in which the Indian outsourcing giant admitted to massive fraud, has yet to be fully understood, one study found that U.S. firms plan to embrace offshoring to a remarkable degree. A survey of 200 companies by The Hackett Group indicates that companies...

By Sarah Johnson and Alix Stuart • Feb. 1, 2009

You Oughta Plea in Pictures

In 2007, as a major U.S. publishing company contemplated going public, it realized it had a problem: no one had ever heard of it. Despite broad market penetration and an impressive breadth to its product line, the company feared that its anonymity would have a devastating effect on its offering p...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2009

Finance Keeps Cranking Away

With recession starting to slice into sales of his firm’s flagship software suite, Adobe Systems CFO Mark Garrett looked for ways to cut costs. In the end, Adobe trimmed capital investment, combined departments, and reluctantly laid off about 600 employees, around 8 percent of its workforce. No d...

By Nelson Wang • Feb. 1, 2009

Sound Familiar?

So much for Chinese exceptionalism. The financial crisis continues to ripple across the economy, leaving many CFOs here shaken, particularly those who until very recently thought the country would emerge unscathed. The slowdown has been dramatic, particularly in the final two months of last year....

By Wu Chen • Feb. 1, 2009