Ex-Longtop CFO Blamed for ‘Foundation of Lies’

The 2010 and 2011 financial results of Longtop Financial Technologies were a “foundation of lies,” an attorney for union pensioners and investors told jurors in the trial of a securities class action against the Chinese company’s former CFO.Kimberly Justice said in her opening statement, Reuters ...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 21, 2014

Banks Blasted for ‘Risky’ Commodity Dealings

A two-year U.S. Senate investigation has concluded that the three largest Wall Street banks have recently engaged in “many billions of dollars of risky physical commodity activities,” causing a dangerous erosion of the traditional line between banking and commerce and exposing themselves to “sign...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 20, 2014

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

Past-Due Payments Signal Slower 4Q GDP Growth

Citing trends in the quantity and dollar value of past due payments to U.S. businesses, trade credit insurance provider Euler Hermes is predicting that GDP growth will slow to about 3% in this year’s fourth quarter.So far this year, Euler Hermes said in a new report, there has been no improvement...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 19, 2014

The Companies That Pay the Slowest

Why would a business customer take 212 days to pay you? There may be a lot of reasons, but in the case of very large companies coveted as customers by all kinds of businesses, the answer may just be, “because they can.”Analyzing data provided by S&P Capital IQ, CFO found 45 publicly held U.S....

By Vincent Ryan • Nov. 19, 2014

CEO Pay Exceeds Taxes Paid by Big Firms

Seven of the 30 largest U.S. corporations paid their CEOs more in compensation than they paid the IRS in federal income tax last year, reflecting “deep flaws” in the corporate tax system, a new report says.According to “Fleecing Uncle Sam,” a report published Tuesday by the Institute for Policy S...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 19, 2014

Corporate Tax Is Smallest Source of U.S. Tax Revenue, Study Finds

The smallest source of U.S. tax revenue in 2011 was the corporate income tax, from with federal, state and local governments collecting about 10% of total tax revenue, according to a study issued last week by the Tax Foundation.That’s slightly higher than the Organisation for Economic Co-operatio...

By David Katz • Nov. 17, 2014

Hertz Board Finds $87M in Accounting Errors

An accounting review by the board of Hertz has found that the troubled rental car company overstated GAAP net income by $87 million for the three years from 2011 to 2013, according to a regulatory filing.Hertz had disclosed in June that the board’s audit committee had uncovered discrepancies in t...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 14, 2014

Buffett Saves $1B in Taxes With Duracell Deal

Warren Buffett may be calling for higher personal taxes on wealthy individuals like himself, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying to reduce the tax bill for Berkshire Hathaway.For the third time this year, the “Oracle of Omaha” has structured an acquisition so that he avoids capital gains taxe...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 14, 2014

Consumers Have ‘Lost Control’ of Their Private Data

Americans have a striking lack of confidence that government or corporations can be trusted with their personal information, according to a new survey.The Pew Research Center’s study of privacy concerns, which polled 607 U.S. adults, uncovered widespread feelings of communications insecurity amon...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 13, 2014

Cloudy, With a Chance of Margin

Online shopping could be a bright spot in a generally murky retail landscape this holiday season.In a new report, Standard & Poor’s predicts that U.S. retail sales in the all-important November-December shopping season will be only modestly better than they were in 2013, with general merchand...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 12, 2014

Auditor Independence Is the CFO’s Responsibility, Too

Here’s a situation many finance chiefs have faced: I am the CFO of a publicly traded company. As my team and I were preparing a draft of the 10-K and the company’s annual earnings release, I received a call from our lead audit partner informing me that an auditor independence violation occurred.I...

By Jay Bornstein and Steve Blowers • Nov. 12, 2014

IRS Scanning 10-Ks for Tax Data, Report Finds

When CFOs and accounting standard-setters refer to the “users” of corporate 10-Ks, they usually mean investors, research analysts and rival companies. But new research suggests that another kind of user has been taking a keen interest in their companies’ annual reports: the Internal Revenue Servi...

By David Katz • Nov. 12, 2014

Document Leak Exposes Secret Luxembourg Tax Deals

A leak of 28,000 documents from Luxembourg has revealed that Pepsi, IKEA, AIG, Coach, Deutsche Bank, Abbott Laboratories and nearly 340 other companies secured secret deals from the tiny European nation, allowing them to slash their global tax bills while doing little or no business there.While t...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 7, 2014

Lame Duck Congress Likely to Pass Tax Extenders

A panel of Congressional staffers was unanimously optimistic Thursday morning that the lame-duck Congress would pass a package of “extenders,” including ones that would preserve tax breaks for research and development investments and purchases of equipment.Dave Camp, chairman, U.S. House Ways and...

By David Katz • Nov. 6, 2014

Flight Risk

This is the third story in a four-part series on cash management. The first story, The Value of Cash, looked at how to value $1 of surplus balance-sheet cash. How to Segment Surplus Cash, the second story, examined approaches to categorizing cash to enable longer term investment. Loosening Withou...

By Vincent Ryan • Nov. 6, 2014

How to Get Your Company Acquired

This year, mergers and acquisitions have made headlines, as large corporations and private equity firms use record amounts of cash to gobble up targeted firms. And companies of all kinds, private, public or institutionally held, are looking for ways to quickly enter new markets or acquire key pos...

By David Goldenberg and Conrad Everhard • Nov. 6, 2014

SEC Fines 10 Firms for Failing to Make 8-K Disclosures

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday accused 10 companies of failing to make required disclosures about financing arrangements that diluted their stock.The deals that were not reported in 8-K filings included unregistered sales of stock and financing agreements. In addition, t...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 5, 2014

Top U.S. Firms Too Opaque, Says Watchdog

Some of the largest U.S. public companies including Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, Google and Walt Disney are keeping too much private, according to a survey of the transparency of corporate disclosures.In a report published Wednesday, anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International rated 124 co...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 5, 2014

GOP Sees Corporate Tax Cut With Control of Senate

If Republicans add control of the Senate in Tuesday’s mid-term elections to their dominance of the House, the GOP’s legislative agenda could include lowering the 35% corporate tax rate and enhancing the president’s ability to make trade agreements, lawmakers told the Associated Press.Leading Repu...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 4, 2014

Bio-Rad to Pay $55M to Settle Bribery Allegations

Bio-Rad Laboratories, a global supplier of life science research and clinical diagnostic products, has agreed to pay $55 million to settle federal allegations relating to the bribery of foreign officials in Russia, Vietnam and Thailand to win contracts.The U.S. Department of Justice and the Secur...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 3, 2014

Have Non-GAAP Metrics Come of Age?

In a gradual shift from decades of skepticism about corporate financial metrics that depart from generally accepted accounting principles, regulators have come to see non-GAAP measurements in a more positive light. And nowhere has their use become more routine than in initial public offerings, a ...

By David Katz • Nov. 3, 2014

Expense Line for Big Data Grows

Senior executives at U.S. firms are betting big on big data — projecting much higher spending on collecting and analyzing high-tech information over the next three years and increasingly hiring chief data officers to oversee that work, according to a new survey.The Big Data Executive Survey 2014 ...

By Will Bunch • Nov. 3, 2014

Accounting Error Forces Resignation of REIT’s CFO

Brian S. Block has resigned as CFO of American Realty Capital Properties, one of the nation’s largest real-estate empires, after an internal investigation found the company had made an accounting mistake and executives chose not to correct it, according to a regulatory filing.Brian S. Block Ameri...

By Matthew Heller • Nov. 3, 2014

Chicago Bank Largest to Fail in 2014

The National Republic Bank of Chicago has become the country’s 16th — and largest — bank to fail this year, and industry observers wondered what took regulators so long to close it.The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday closed the $954.4 million-asset National Republic, appointin...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Oct. 31, 2014

Predicting the Financial Viability of SaaS Vendors

As CFO of a pre-IPO software as a service (SaaS) company, I frequently have conversations with finance groups at customer and prospect organizations that want to make sure that our company will be around for the long term.Mark Verbeck, CFO, Coupa Software It’s a reasonable conversation to have si...

By Mark Verbeck • Oct. 31, 2014