Belief in Wellness Savings May Require Leap of Faith, but They’re Real

Can wellness programs be cost-effective? It depends on what you value.Let’s start with what everyone who can access the Internet can find out: there are quite a number of independent articles, analyses, and white papers that say wellness programs have a positive ROI. Most range in the $1.50 to $3...

By Mike Tinney • June 3, 2015

Did KPMG Auditors Drop the Ball on FIFA?

The corruption scandal at FIFA is raising questions about the oversight of KPMG, the auditor for worldwide soccer’s governing body.MarketWatch reports that KPMG was not only responsible for auditing the multibillion-dollar umbrella FIFA organization in Switzerland, but also audits member associat...

By Matthew Heller • June 3, 2015

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

Disney, Time Warner Cable CFOs Step Down

The CFOs of two major media companies are moving on, with Jay Rasulo leaving Walt Disney Co. after 29 years with the firm and Arthur “Artie” Minson stepping down at Time Warner Cable.Rasulo’s departure had been expected after he was passed over in February for the job of chief operating officer. ...

By Matthew Heller • June 2, 2015

Microsoft Sues IRS Over Hiring of Attorney Boies

In the latest legal salvo over an Internal Revenue Service audit, Microsoft has sued the agency seeking information about its hiring of an old nemesis — high-profile attorney David Boies.The IRS is currently conducting an examination of Microsoft’s federal income tax returns for the tax years end...

By Matthew Heller • June 2, 2015

Ex-WaMu Execs Seeking $23M in Golden Parachutes

A Washington judge may decide as early as this week whether two former Washington Mutual executives who were accused of taking gambles that led to the biggest bank failure in U.S. history are entitled to $23.1 million in “golden parachute” payments.Former Chief Operating Officer Stephen Rotella a...

By Matthew Heller • June 1, 2015

Law Firm’s Demise Blamed on Accounting Gimmicks

The former CFO and two other former top executives at Dewey & LeBouef LLP schemed for years to conceal the true condition of the now-defunct law firm’s finances with accounting gimmicks, a prosecutor told a Manhattan jury.As The Wall Street Journal reports, the Manhattan District Attorney’s O...

By Matthew Heller • May 28, 2015

EU to Propose Single System for Computing Tax

The European Commission is planning to crack down on international tax avoidance by proposing that companies operating in the European Union follow a single set of rules to calculate taxable profits.The EU’s executive arm is set to detail proposed tax measures on June 17 but according to Reuters,...

By Matthew Heller • May 28, 2015

Excel Tip: ‘Find and Replace’ Problems

User question: The Excel Find and Replace dialog drives me crazy. I always have to go to the Options button to specify that it should look in Values. In the figure below, the mouse pointer is showing the value that Excel says is not actually there. Why can’t Excel find a number?Mr. Excel: Psst, E...

By Bill Jelen • May 28, 2015

CFO Banks Face Time with Customers

What do you do if you’re the CFO of a company whose potential customers fundamentally don’t understand your product? You make like a salesperson and explain it to them.Q2 Holdings, which provides an integrated platform of financial services for regional and community banks and credit unions, went...

By David McCann • May 28, 2015

Jawbone Accuses Fitbit of Stealing Trade Secrets

Just three weeks after announcing an initial public offering, Fitbit is facing a lawsuit that alleges the maker of fitness-tracking wristbands stole employees from its chief rival to gain access to trade secrets.In a complaint filed Wednesday in San Francisco, Jawbone, which makes the Up line of ...

By Matthew Heller • May 28, 2015

Charter Buys Time Warner and Bright House Networks

Charter Communications plans to buy Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, with the hopes that the blockbuster three-way deal will be approved by regulators — who earlier this month rejected Comcast’s deal for Time Warner.“With our larger reach, we will be able to accelerate the deployment ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 26, 2015

Deutsche Bank to Pay $55M for Hiding Losses

Deutsche Bank will pay $55 million to settle allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it purposely did not disclose more than $1.5 billion in losses during late 2008 and early 2009, at the height of the financial crisis.The SEC said that the Frankfurt-based company had unde...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 26, 2015

Pentagon Watchdog Approved Flawed Audit

Pentagon officials knew there were problems with the work of the outside accounting firm hired to do an audit of the U.S. Marine Corps but still issued a clean audit opinion, according to Reuters.The Marine Corps provided Grant Thornton LLP with its financial statement for the year ended Sept. 30...

By Matthew Heller • May 22, 2015

How to View Variance Analysis in These Slow-Growth Times

Thomas E. Conine, Jr. — just “Tom,” to us — can stir up a good mix of the theoretical and the practical, when it comes to finance.As to the former, he’s a professor of finance at Fairfield University. As to the latter, he’s the president of a company himself, called TRI Corporation. And TRI bring...

By David McCann • May 22, 2015

CVS Buying Omnicare for Specialty Pharmacy Business

CVS is buying Omnicare to dramatically boost its prescription business for assisted-living and long-term care facilities.The Woonsocket, R.I. company Thursday said that it would pay $98 per share in cash for Cincinnati-based Omnicare, for a total enterprise value of roughly $12.7 billion, which i...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 21, 2015

Nasdaq Goes Digital With Bitcoin’s Ledger

Taking a leap into the digital age, the Nasdaq stock exchange has announced plans to use the publicly available real-time ledger of all bitcoin transactions with its private markets platform.The ledger, known as “blockchain,” enables speedier, cheaper and more auditable transactions. Nasdaq’s pre...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 20, 2015

St. Louis Fed Confirms Hacker Attack on Website

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has confirmed that hackers attacked its website in April, causing users to be redirected to a rogue web pages set up by the attackers.According to the Krebs on Security blog, which first reported the hack earlier this week, the cybercrooks were apparently try...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 20, 2015

Five Banks to Pay $5.6B Over Rate-Rigging

Five major banks have agreed to pay about $5.6 billion in fines to settle allegations that they manipulated foreign currency exchange and interest rates.As part of the settlements,  four of the banks — Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and The Royal Bank of Scotland — were expected to plead gui...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • May 20, 2015

SOX Compliance Getting More Costly

Nearly 13 years after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the money and time spent to comply with its disclosure requirements continue to increase for companies, according to a new survey.Sixty-seven percent of the 460 audit executives and professionals polled by the global consulting firm Pro...

By Matthew Heller • May 20, 2015

Why Capital Expenditures Need More CFO Attention

It’s no secret that cost overruns and delays run rampant in large capital projects. Research points the finger at decision biases, which often play an important role in skewing the forecasting of costs and timing as projects are being planned. But a lack of internal discipline, in both the propos...

By Ryan Davies and Ashish Chandarana • May 19, 2015

10 Most Popular Excel Tips and Tricks

We review a list of 10 of the most popular excel tips and tricks by “Mr. Excel,” Bill Jelen.Moving Data from PDF to ExcelConverting a PDF “data dump” into Excel or Access is made easier with a third-party tool.Forecasting Seasonal Data with ExcelProduction forecasting with Excel usually entails u...

By Alexander Johnson • May 19, 2015

Gucci Owner Launches New Suit Against Alibaba

The Paris-based owner of Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and other fashion brands has renewed a legal attack on Alibaba, accusing the Chinese e-commerce giant of allowing its online platforms to be used to sell counterfeit products.Kering SA had dropped a previous trademark infringement suit to try to...

By Matthew Heller • May 18, 2015

How to Get Customers to Respond to Invoices on Time

Asking customers to pay past due or soon due invoices can be similar to asking a small child to do something. The responses fall into five general categories: “I will do it,” “I can’t do it,” “I won’t do it,” “I don’t want to do it,” “You can’t make me do it.”Todd McDaniel The first and probably ...

By Todd McDaniel • May 18, 2015

Finance Chief Tells Why Lexmark Bought Kofax

On May 11, The Wall Street Journal published an article headlined “Lexmark Considered Inversion Before Kofax Deal” that took David Reeder aback.David Reeder The story presented the facts accurately, according to Reeder, the CFO of Lexmark, a company that makes printers and develops content-manage...

By David Katz • May 18, 2015

High Performance

Enterprise performance management systems — not to be confused with enterprise resource planning systems, but closely wedded to the latter in more and more companies — are becoming more useful than ever, thanks to advances in technology and a wider choice of products. EPM software is increasingly...

By Keith Button • May 14, 2015