Some Employee Costs Set to Rise, Say Finance Chiefs

This past winter might have been brutal and unrelenting, but apparently it hasn’t dampened CFO optimism.A new report by Grant Thornton indicates that 51 percent of CFOs feel the economy will improve in the next six months. That same number is similarly hopeful about their sector’s financial prosp...

By Iris Dorbian • July 10, 2014

‘Inappropriate Relationship’ Sinks Ernst & Young Audit

Despite perfectly clean financial reporting, a company might find itself forced to have its financial reports re-audited if the company and its auditor have violated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s auditor-independence rules.That, apparently, is one takeaway from a series of events that ...

By David Katz • July 10, 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

Millions of Transactions Mean Cash Complexity

KAR Auction Services may touch more cash in a year’s time than any company you’ve never heard of. We’re talking about $27 billion. Only $2 billion of it is KAR’s revenue, but the company generates some nice float from the rest.KAR is a holding company for three businesses. One, ADESA, is a used-c...

By David McCann • July 9, 2014

FCPA Probes Zeroing in on the C-Suite

The first six months of 2014 have seen an unusually large number of cases brought against corporations and individuals under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to a new update. And while Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Justice investigators haven’t stinted on s...

By David Katz • July 9, 2014

PCAOB Bars Ex-PwC Partner for Lax Revenue Audit

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has barred a former PriceWaterhouseCoopers partner from associating with a CPA firm for failing to dig into “indications of improperly recognized revenue” in PwC‘s 2007 audit of ArthroCare Corp.The board found that the former PwC auditor, Randall A. S...

By David Katz • July 7, 2014

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending July 3

Todd Vogensen has been promoted to the top finance spot at retailer Chico’s FAS. Vogensen, who succeeds Pamela Knous, started at the firm as vice president of planning and strategy in 2009 and most recently was senior vice president, finance.Retailer Tile Shop Holdings has selected Kirk Geadelman...

By Joan Urdang • July 3, 2014

A Global Affliction

When we reported the first-quarter results of the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey earlier this year, we noted that the optimism of U.S. CFOs was tempered by uncertainty about the economy. Pulling back for a global view — the survey compiled responses from 871 finance l...

By David W. Owens • June 30, 2014

Discovery Planet

The sun never sets on Discovery Communications’ empire. Every day, more than 2.5 billion subscribers in 220 countries and territories can switch on their televisions and watch a program from one of Discovery’s more than 200 television networks, led by the flagship Discovery Channel, TLC, Investig...

By Edward Teach • June 30, 2014

Why Big Projects Go Bad

Big projects more often fail because of poor evaluation than poor execution. But many organizations focus on improving only the latter. As a result, they don’t identify the projects that pose the greatest risks of delay, budget overruns, missed market opportunities or, sometimes, irreparable dama...

By Ronald Bisaccia • June 26, 2014

When Should You Give Investors Their Money Back?

The economic goal of every business leader is to create value for shareholders; it’s what you are paid to do. If you don’t expect to earn returns that exceed the cost of capital borne by shareholders, you ought to return their money so they can find value elsewhere.Anyone entrusted with the respo...

By Thomas E. Conine Jr. • June 25, 2014

How Captives Can Cut Supply-Chain, Cyber Insurance Costs

CFOs of corporations that have already set up captive insurance companies or are thinking about setting one up should ponder the benefits of self-insuring cyber perils and supply-chain business-interruption (BI) risks via a captive to supplement   commercial insurance coverage.Indeed, the financi...

By Jeffrey C. Joy • June 24, 2014

Are Bankers Overcharging for FX Transactions?

The Justice Department and other countries’ financial regulators are investigating sales practices in the foreign-exchange (FX) market as part of a probe into allegations that the world’s biggest banks defrauded their FX clients. According to a Bloomberg News story, the DoJ is interviewing dealer...

By Vincent Ryan • June 23, 2014

High Court Ruling in Halliburton Case Helps Corporates, Lawyers Say

While today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in the closely watched Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund case didn’t go as far as some corporate advocates had hoped, it does provide corporations that are defending themselves against shareholder class-action suits with a new way to foil the certific...

By David Katz • June 23, 2014

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending June 20

Cable operators Charter Communications and Comcast jointly named Matthew Siegel the chief financial officer of “SpinCo,” the new company that will be spun off from Comcast after the merger with Time Warner Cable. Siegel is currently the treasurer of Time Warner Cable and will serve in that positi...

By Vincent Ryan • June 20, 2014

Using Big Data to Make Better Pricing Decisions

It’s hard to overstate the importance of getting pricing right. On average, a 1 percent price increase translates into an 8.7 percent increase in operating profits (assuming no loss of volume, of course). Yet we estimate that up to 30 percent of the thousands of pricing decisions companies make e...

By Georg Winkler, Dieter Kiewell, and Walter Baker • June 19, 2014

‘We Eat Our Own Cooking,’ Software CFO Says

Just as it is with the players on a major league baseball team, keeping track of all the companies that Infor has acquired over the last two years is tough without a scorecard.During that period, the company, a privately held, New York City-based software-as-a service (SAAS) vendor, has seemed he...

By David Katz • June 19, 2014

CFO Conflict of Interest Part of SEC Case Against Hedge Fund

A CFO with a conflict of interest was at the heart of a tax scheme that ultimately led to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s first enforcement action under its new authority to protect whistleblowers against retaliation by employers.In charges issued yesterday, the SEC alleged that an Alban...

By David Katz • June 17, 2014

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending June 13

Moving up: Christopher Smith, The Hartford CFO Christopher Swift has been promoted to CEO at The Hartford Financial Services Group, succeeding Liam McGee. The promotion takes effect on July 1 for Swift, who came to the firm in 2010 from American International Group (AIG). In an October 2013 artic...

By Joan Urdang • June 13, 2014

Disney CFO: Part Sheriff Woody, Part Scrooge McDuck

It almost seems as if a career at The Walt Disney Co. was preordained for Jay Rasulo before he even entered the business world.Jay Rasulo, CFO, The Walt Disney Co. While making his way through college at Columbia University and graduate school at the University of Chicago, where he earned a maste...

By David McCann • June 13, 2014

Big Data: Where the Money Is

Before 2009, an app built by Anil Jain, an enterprising physician and IT chief, was used only to get queries by Cleveland Clinic researchers about drugs and medical devices answered much faster than they had been before.Dubbed “MyResearch,” the application was a search engine that let authorized ...

By David Katz • June 12, 2014

Ailing Credit Unions Draw Attention of TARP Watchdog

Now that U.S. banks have repaid more than 96 percent of the funds invested in them as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the special inspector general for TARP has a new target: credit unions. Like other financial institutions, credit unions took money from the Treasury Department during ...

By Vincent Ryan • June 10, 2014

For Ford, Finance Transformation Is a Way of Life

Bob Shanks, CFO of Ford Motor Co., doesn’t generally use the word “transformation” to describe the ongoing reshaping of the company’s finance department. Two things about that: Most others probably would call it such, even though in some ways it’s markedly unlike the garden-variety transformation...

By David McCann • June 10, 2014

Drug Prices: Costly Cures

Drug-company executives, investment analysts, doctors and academics swarmed into Chicago between May 30 and June 3 for the year’s biggest meeting on cancer. Treatments for cancer account for more than 30 percent of pharmaceutical firms’ early-stage research and are being revolutionized.This would...

By Economist Staff • June 9, 2014

Eight Keys for Implementing Tax-Provision Software

Mounting regulatory complexity and shortened close cycles are putting pressure on resource-strapped tax departments. Increased auditor and SEC scrutiny, as well as tax-department turnover, further heighten the strain.One potential response: turning to tax-provision software and thereby forgoing t...

By Cindy Frank and Joanne Rogers • June 9, 2014

How To Avoid a Failed Reshoring Project

Rising costs in China and shifting global economic forces are pressuring companies to reevaluate their global manufacturing strategies and consider localizing their operations. We’ve all heard the latest buzzwords: “reshoring,” “onshoring,” nearshoring and others. Some companies have started the ...

By Rosemary Coates • June 9, 2014