Corporate Performance Isn’t All about Financial Results

A look into the crystal ball of global sustainability issues for the next few decades highlights some scary trends that will change how companies do business and deploy resources.By 2050, the World Bank predicts, global population will reach 10 billion, oil reserves and fossil fuels will be deple...

By Kristine Brands • April 14, 2014

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending April 11

Honeywell International has promoted vice president of corporate finance Tom Szlosek to the top finance spot. He takes over from Dave Anderson, who is retiring.Social-game developer Zynga has named David Lee CFO and chief accounting officer, replacing Mark Vranesh, who is leaving the firm. Lee jo...

By Joan Urdang • April 11, 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

Operations Nirvana: Profits Soar Far Beyond Sales Growth

Milliken & Company is, in the words of its CFO, Jim McNulty, a “very private company.” That is, it doesn’t share many details with the public. It does, though, share a lot about its manufacturing operations with other manufacturing companies. More on that later.A global textile, chemical and ...

By David McCann • April 11, 2014

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: The Ugly Twins of Finance

You could argue that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two “government-sponsored enterprises” (GSEs) in the mortgage business which received the biggest bail-out of the financial crisis, have paid their debt to society. At any rate, the revenues they have generated for American taxpayers since the Trea...

By Economist Staff • April 10, 2014

Heartbleed Bug Found in Corporate Networking Gear

The encryption bug Heartbleed is no longer just a software problem. Networking equipment manufacturers Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks said late Thursday that some of their routing and switching products contain the security flaw, according to The Wall Street Journal. The products include rout...

By Vincent Ryan • April 10, 2014

Internal Auditor Reports Getting ‘Sanitized’

Reports by internal auditors to board audit committees are often “sanitized” during prior interactions between senior management and internal audit, the audit committee chair of two different companies acknowledged last week.Speaking during a PwC webcast, John Fazio, the audit committee chair of ...

By David Katz • April 9, 2014

Diversely Skilled CFO Rises to the Topps

Baseball cards have been such a big part of so many kids’ lives, for more than six decades, that the Topps brand name is for the most part instantly recognizable.It’s certainly quite familiar to John Mueller, who on Monday became the new CFO at The Topps Company, the maker of sports trading cards...

By David McCann • April 9, 2014

Big Data: A Time to Save, a Time to Delete

CFOs and accountants have heard the call to expand their big data analytical skills. With this newfangled know-how comes the promise to identify workplace efficiencies, evaluate prospective business opportunities and better understand customers. But this rosy perspective focuses only on the upsid...

By Paul Luehr • April 7, 2014

Taxing Issues

The last time CFO magazine conducted its state tax survey, in 2011, the nation’s fiscal condition was very different. The Great Recession had depleted state coffers, and legislatures were looking to companies to pony up more tax dollars. “The states are in a pure ‘money grab’ mode,” one tax direc...

By Edward Teach • April 7, 2014

Will You Meet Your Financial Commitment? Be Sure by Midyear

For any enterprise, being able to accurately assess the probability of meeting financial commitments is a crucial aspect of both short- and long-term planning. It’s no simple task, however, as overconfidence and other behavioral biases can lead even experienced managers to err in their estimates,...

By David McCann • April 4, 2014

Thinking Big

Like Jack’s beanstalk growing furiously to an unknown destination, many organizations begin with the germ of an idea that sprouts rapidly. Astonishing growth occurs seemingly overnight, and all eyes are focused on maintaining the pace. Then, the time arrives for financial controls and rigor, and ...

By Russ Banham • April 2, 2014

When Uncle Sam is Your Customer: Video

CFOs have to sweat the details. Getting the numbers right (and being held responsible for them) is part of the job.Finance chiefs of government contractors like Pact, a $200 million non-governmental organization (NGO), come under closer scrutiny. Pact provides relief and development to the poor a...

By Marielle Segarra • April 1, 2014

Why Low Interest Rates Boost Insurance Prices

If you’re wondering why you’re paying more for casualty insurance and why your insurers are asking so many questions about your company, look no further than rock-bottom interest rates, according to Robert Schimek, the current chief executive of AIG’s property-casualty operations in the Americas ...

By David Katz • March 31, 2014

The Whistleblower’s Trilemma

Responsibility to tell. Responsibility not to. Allegiances to a company, to yourself, to your family, to the public. Any whistleblower, from the CFO down to the front-line operations employee, may feel tugged in a few directions. Looking back, it’s easy to question the choices whistleblowers make...

By Marielle Segarra • March 28, 2014

Fixing Finance: Work in Process

The cost of finance at the typical large company has plummeted. According to the American Productivity & Quality Center’s (APQC) Open Standards Benchmarking database, the top-quartile performers now spend less than 0.62 percent of total revenue to perform their required financial management d...

By Mary C. Driscoll • March 27, 2014

Rift Opens Between Facebook Target and Kickstarter Supporters

Oculus Kickstarter page On Tuesday, Facebook announced its plans to acquire Oculus VR, the creator of a virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift. As Oculus wrote in a statement, the company started “with a vision of delivering incredible, affordable and ubiquitous consumer virtual reality t...

By Marielle Segarra • March 26, 2014

Do Benefit Corporations Have More Freedom?

One way for companies to monetize sustainability: they can change their legal structure to become a benefit corporation, a corporate form that requires for-profit firms to consider society and the environment alongside profit when they make decisions. Proponents say becoming a benefit corporation...

By Marielle Segarra • March 25, 2014

Why Companies Suffer Large, Unexpected Credit Losses

For companies that sell business-to-business products and services, many things can contribute to a company incurring a loss from a bad debt. The most important factor is probably the quality of the organization’s finance and credit management process. But even the best-managed corporate finance ...

By Marc Wagman • March 25, 2014

Avoid Those Rose-Colored Dividends

Although there are numerous dividend-related metrics, including dividend yield and dividend-payout ratio, any thorough discussion of dividend policy should focus heavily on the signaling effects of dividends. Dividend proponents seek a steady stream of regularly increasing dividends per share to ...

By Gregory V. Milano • March 20, 2014

Risks Building for Energy MLPs

Few business sectors have benefited from ultra-low interest rates and a soaring stock market as much as master limited partnerships — publicly traded energy companies that supply the pipelines, storage tanks and other infrastructure around oil and gas production. MLPS are attracting equity capita...

By Vincent Ryan • March 19, 2014

Herbalife: The House of Cards Put

Uncle Sam has gone where Bill Ackman’s fellow billionaires declined to go — and given the activist investor a boost he badly needed. In December 2012 the boss of Pershing Square, a hedge fund, announced a $1 billion bet that Herbalife would go bust, based on his belief that the dietary-supplement...

By Economist Staff • March 14, 2014

Emerging Markets: Emerge, Splurge, Purge

Vodafone’s latest figures appear at first glance to vindicate the most powerful management idea of the past two decades: that firms should expand in fast-growing emerging economies. Sales at the mobile-phone company fell in the rich world while those in the developing world rose smartly. Corporat...

By Economist Staff • March 7, 2014

Dewey & LeBoeuf Execs Accused of Accounting Fraud

Dewey & LeBoeuf executives, including its former chief financial officer, are accused of running a multiyear scheme designed to hide the law firm’s financial struggles from creditors in the years prior to its filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.A gra...

By Vincent Ryan • March 6, 2014

Peer-to-Peer Lending: Banking Without Banks

Savers have never had a worse deal but for most borrowers, credit is scarce and costly. That seeming paradox attracts new businesses free of the bad balance sheets, high costs and dreadful reputations which burden most conventional banks.Foremost among the newcomers are peer-to-peer (P2P) lending...

By Economist Staff • March 5, 2014

Post-Snowden, Security Is No Longer Just a Feature

When Edward Snowden leaked documents about the extent of U.S. government spying, he probably didn’t foresee that he would change the market for enterprise security applications. But in a way he has. According to a report in CIO Journal, a new generation of smartphones and messaging apps are comin...

By Vincent Ryan • March 4, 2014