Job Cuts Hit 15-Month High

While many employers continue to slowly add to their payrolls, others are trimming their workforces considerably. Payroll processor ADP reported on Wednesday that private sector U.S. employment rose by 179,000 jobs in May. What ADP didn’t say was that, according to outplacement consultancy Challe...

By Vincent Ryan • June 5, 2014

Hotlines, Not Audits, Catch Crooked Employees

In the recent past, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has described where companies should concentrate their monitoring for employee fraud. In finance departments, for example, a majority of instances of misappropriation of funds or assets occur in the procurement, payment and expense ...

By Vincent Ryan • June 5, 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

Intuit CFO: A Difficult Message Calls for Special Delivery

In the world of corporate finance, bad news can hit at any time. As much as we are trained to prepare, there will always be difficult situations that need to be addressed, and as CFO, it’s usually my job to be the bearer of bad news to the CEO, the board of directors and investors. While it’s nev...

By Neil Williams • June 4, 2014

Unique Pension Strategy Posed: Sell Stocks, Buy Call Options

An asset-management firm focused on defined-benefit (DB) pension plans is making, to say the least, an unusual recommendation: that plan sponsors replace equities with call options in their portfolios.The strategy will help lock in recent market gains, according to Donald Andrews, head of liabili...

By David McCann • June 3, 2014

Mickelson Saga Shines Spotlight on Sponsorships

Et tu, Phil? The FBI and the SEC are investigating good-guy golfer Phil Mickelson for possibly violating insider-trading laws. Say it ain’t so!Phil Mickelson: not the happiest of times. Aside from golf fans and convicted insider-trading felons like Martha Stewart, the story may be of interest to ...

By David McCann • June 3, 2014

Don’t Pay for Data You Can’t Use

Quite a few years ago I came across a quote (the source of which I can’t now track down) that read, “The information revolution is over. Information won.” Back then we were only dealing with the emergence of e-commerce and the recognition that there was value in the “information exhaust” from bus...

By John Parkinson • June 2, 2014

The Perils of Silos in Risk Management

Silos, or autonomous units, can exist in most organizations. It’s no surprise that risk management can be divided into “siloed” functions, and it’s commonly done. Among their advantages: Silos can enable risk management specialization by business unit. For example, in a siloed structure the finan...

By John Bugalla and Kristina Narvaez • May 29, 2014

The Return of Moderation: Sea of Tranquility

A decade ago, the business cycle was an endangered species. Recessions in the rich world had become rare, shallow and short; inflation was predictably low and boring. Economists dubbed this the “Great Moderation” and gave credit for it to deft macroeconomic management by central banks. Such talk,...

By Economist Staff • May 28, 2014

The Virtues of Fact-Based Decision Making

Corporate executives sometimes describe decisions by saying, “it’s not financial, it’s strategic.”  This reflects a misunderstanding of both finance and strategy, since a corporate decision will only turn out to be strategic if, in fact, it is financially beneficial.  Even expenditures that are d...

By Gregory V. Milano • May 27, 2014

The Cost of Failing to Optimize Your Teams

Is teamwork among your assets? It’s not recorded in formal financial statements, but teams are vital in achieving strategic and financial goals. Business strategies increasingly depend on creating the right combination of interdependent performance from many people in many different jobs. Yet, ty...

By John Boudreau • May 27, 2014

When the Chain Breaks

Three years ago, Mother Nature struck Asia with a savage one-two punch: a devastating earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, followed a few months later by catastrophic flooding in Thailand. The deadly disasters had a ripple effect on American supply chains, disrupting the flow of componen...

By Edward Teach • May 23, 2014

Securitization: The Sequel

To some people, securitization is a dirty word. Small wonder, given its role in the meltdown of the financial system six years ago. The technique made it easy to spin dross into fool’s gold, say critics, pointing to the issuance of billions of dollars of worthless mortgage-backed securities. Nowa...

By Vincent Ryan • May 22, 2014

10 Cognitive Biases that Can Trip Up Finance

Because CFOs are not actually superhuman, but just people like everyone else, they too are subject to a lengthy list of cognitive biases that influence our decisions and actions. In the corporate finance context, these biases, if unchecked, can have devastating consequences for company performanc...

By David McCann • May 22, 2014

On the Eve of Disruption

Finance can still learn a lot from the theories first advanced 17 years ago in Clayton Christensen’s now classic business book, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Christensen, who coined the phrase “disruptive technologies,” showed how such technologies coul...

By Keith Button • May 21, 2014

Double Duty

For McDonald’s, operational execution and efficiency are just as important as crisp French fries and thick milkshakes. The franchise giant sources, prepares, preserves, packages, and ships fast food to 35,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries, serving some 70 million customers a day. Surely ...

By David McCann • May 21, 2014

Ex-Deloitte Risk Chief Borrowed Casino Client’s Chips: SEC

James T. Adams, a former chief risk officer at Deloitte LLP, has settled charges issued Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he “repeatedly accepted tens of thousands of dollars in casino markers while he was the advisory partner on subsidiary Deloitte & Touche’s audit of a ...

By David Katz • May 21, 2014

Three Steps to Data Security

Quick, what do Target, Sony, and Neiman Marcus have in common? Yes, all are globally recognized brands. But lately these companies share a less enviable characteristic: they’ve all experienced large-scale data breaches, resulting in damaged reputations and millions of dollars in costs and forgone...

By Katherine Teitler • May 21, 2014

Speed Trap

It’s true what they say: Some things never change. But such stability isn’t always an occasion for sentimentality. In the case of senior financial executives, there’s little comfort to be found in the fact that they are chasing the same technological improvements as they were, say, 5 years ago. O...

By Josh Hyatt and David W. Owens • May 21, 2014

The Internet of Things: Data Goldmine and Social Nightmare

Verizon’s business focused on “The Internet of Things,” called “connected solutions,” is growing at more than 100 percent a year, according to a Verizon executive quoted in CIO Journal on Tuesday. The business unit sells solutions that collect and analyze data from remote locations. An oil-field ...

By Vincent Ryan • May 20, 2014

Weak Capex, Low Productivity Growth Linked

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before,” according to Franz Kafka. By that measure, U.S. businesses seem to be failing at getting their workers to be more productive.Worker productivity growth — the increase in output per hour worked — has averaged less tha...

By Vincent Ryan • May 16, 2014

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending May 16

Greif, the industrial packaging manufacturer, has hired Larry Hilsheimer to run finance. He comes from Scotts Miracle-Gro, where he’d been finance chief for a year before being replaced a month ago by longtime Scotts executive Randy Coleman. Scotts CEO Jim Hagedon discussed the moves during the c...

By David McCann • May 16, 2014

Companies Underestimate Pensions Outlays, Study Finds

While S&P 500 companies expect to pay in $16 billion less to their defined-benefit pension plans in 2014 than they did last year  — delivering a cash-flow boost of more than 5 percent at 44 of the companies — they should be careful about partying hard on those expected cash gains, according t...

By David Katz • May 15, 2014

Foreign Complications

For every company that thrives in a foreign market, probably five companies stumble.  The complexities of entering a foreign market can result in many strategic mistakes and missteps. Even businesses that eventually “win” in a geographic region can teeter on the edge for years. Wal-Mart, for exam...

By Vincent Ryan • May 13, 2014

Mastering the Soft Skills

Some years ago, CFO published a story on the “essential skills” that a finance chief needs to be effective — in particular, the skills that go beyond core corporate finance and accounting training. Little has changed since 2007, when the article first appeared. The abilities the story describes a...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 12, 2014

Treasury Proposal Would Thwart Corporate Inversions

Law firms and bankers are advising U.S. corporations that if they are going to do an M&A transaction that uses a corporate inversion, they better do it soon.In its newsletter for corporate board members, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP said “there is now a new urgency for U.S. corporati...

By Vincent Ryan • May 8, 2014