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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Economic Recovery Boosts Pay for CFOs

Top executives are benefiting from the economic recovery, with CEOs of companies in eight industries enjoying a 12.6% hike in compensation in fiscal 2013 and pay for CFOs increasing 8.2% during the same period, according to a new salary study.On average, CEOs and CFOs at the largest companies ($6...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 30, 2014

Pension Funds: Eliminate the Negative

Pity the pension-fund manager. Cash pays close to zero in many developed economies and ten-year Treasury bonds offer a yield of 2.3%. But many managers need much higher returns if they are to pay the benefits they have promised. That forces them to pile into equities, despite the risks of big bea...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 30, 2014

Trouble with the Curve: Performance-Management ROI

When it comes to your employees’ performance, where does your organization spend most of its time? Too often, the answer is, “debating performance management processes or systems.”John Boudreau Should we evaluate performance once a year or more often? Should we rank employees, rate them, or esche...

By John Boudreau • Oct. 29, 2014

Whistleblower Complaints Lead to Stiffer Penalties

Whistleblowers provide valuable information to regulators in corporate fraud enforcement cases but the benefits of their involvement come at a cost of prolonged enforcement efforts, new research concludes.The study, which analyzed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice ...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 29, 2014

Why CFOs Should ‘Own’ Analytics

In the few years since I began using analytics, the view that it might be “just a fad” has shifted to a growing understanding of its potential. There is a role for analytics in virtually every aspect of a business: forecasting financial performance, pricing products and services, strengthening op...

By Frank Friedman • Oct. 29, 2014

Oil Driller to Pay $5M to Settle Bribery Allegations

Oil driller Layne Christensen Co. has agreed to pay about $5.1 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that it handed out more than $1 million in bribes to government officials in five African countries.The SEC said Layne received about $3.9 million in unlawful benef...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 28, 2014

G&A Cost Management, Reimagined

A shift in recent years in the kinds of overhead costs companies are incurring demands a reconsideration of the way such costs are understood and managed, according to the latest work from finance research and advisory firm CEB.Traditionally, companies incurred general and administrative (G&A...

By David McCann • Oct. 28, 2014

Special Report: Loss Control

While having an insurance policy in hand can offer a company the comfort of a reimbursement after a fire or an explosion destroys plant or equipment, it is no more than a drop in the bucket when a massive cyber attack threatens a company’s ability to continue as a going concern.“I don’t even know...

By David Katz • Oct. 27, 2014