We’re Still in a Recession, Cash Flow Says

The standard criteria used to gauge the length of recessions, the ones used by the National Bureau of Economic Research, include GDP, employment and income. Viewed according to the NBER’s measurements, our most recent recession — at 18 months, the longest in post-World War II history — ended in J...

By David Katz • Jan. 22, 2014

Global Banks Struggle to Report Counterparty Risk

If you thought banks had their act together with regard to assessing counterparty risk in the derivatives markets, you would be wrong. According to a report from the Senior Supervisors Group (SSG),  a global watchdog headed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Sarah Dahlgren, large banks are...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 21, 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

Low Taxes Buttress GE Earnings

Disappointing its investors with a smaller rise in its profit margins than it had predicted, GE nevertheless helped its 2013 results with 2013 tax gain of about $1 billion, The Financial Times (registration required) reported Friday.The tax advantage stemmed from GE’s flotation of a majority stak...

By David Katz • Jan. 17, 2014

U.K. Auditors Seek Financial Reporting Triage

Imagine a world where an enforcement agency – the Securities and Exchange Commission, say – starts encouraging corporations to omit disclosures of non-material information from their financial statements. Further, the regulator makes a solemn vow not to punish companies that omit such disclosures...

By David Katz • Jan. 16, 2014

Obama Selects New Head of SBA

On Wednesday, President Obama nominated Maria Contreras-Sweet, the executive chairwoman and founder of a ProAmérica Bank, as the new head of the Small Business Administration. ProAmérica Bank focuses on small and midsize businesses in Latino neighborhoods.President Barack Obama announces the nomi...

By Marielle Segarra • Jan. 16, 2014

Should You Deep-Six the Open Floor Plan?

Chances are that your company has an open floor plan for its office space. Around 70 percent of offices do, according to recent research. Problem is, research is piling up indicating that, because of greater distractions, open floor plans are productivity killers. They were meant to foster collab...

By David McCann • Jan. 15, 2014

Ugh! It’s Budget Approval Time

Most companies use the calendar year as their fiscal year and have recently been through an often tortuous, bottoms-up internal budgeting process. Management is now preparing to seek approval from the board of directors. Ugh!Gregory V. Milano From the outside, budgeting appears to be a straightfo...

By Gregory V. Milano • Jan. 15, 2014

Small Businesses May Benefit From Patent Troll Hunt

Just over two years after patent reform legislation passed Congress, new reforms may once again be coming down the pipe. Under the America Invents Act, which went into effect in 2011, the United States shifted from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file system, and it also allowed companies to pay ...

By Marielle Segarra • Jan. 14, 2014

Ups and Downs of CFO Marijuana Careers

On Proformative on Friday, Chris Shumate, a corporate accountant with Redline Contract Services, launched a provocative string of CFO career questions prompted by Alissa Ponchione’s article on the nation’s suddenly growing (pardon the pun) marijuana business.The risks of jumping into a finance ca...

By David Katz • Jan. 13, 2014

Securitization: Back From the Dead

If you asked regulators in 2008 which financial instrument they most wished had never been invented, odds were that they angrily splurted a three-letter acronym linked to securitizzation. The practice of bundling up income streams such as credit-card and car-loan repayments, repackaging them as s...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 10, 2014

Ex-Diamond Foods CFO ‘Did Nothing Wrong,’ Lawyer Says

Unlike his former boss and company, Steven Neil, ex-CFO of San Francisco-based snack maker Diamond Foods, will go to court to battle Securities and Exchange Commission fraud and earnings-management charges, Neil’s attorney told CFO today.Neil “hasn’t settled because he did nothing wrong. He follo...

By David Katz • Jan. 9, 2014

Entrepreneurs, Investors High on the Pot Business

With Colorado, Washington and other states loosening up marijuana laws, investors and entrepreneurs are rushing in to take advantage, dubbing the phenomenon the “green rush.” But amid the excitement, CFOs of pot-related businesses will have to navigate a tricky landscape of banking issues, taxes ...

By Alissa Ponchione • Jan. 8, 2014

Decision Time: Deductible Repair or Capital Improvement?

After nearly a decade of review, the Internal Revenue Service finally released new repair and capitalization regulations last fall, and they could have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line for 2014. What do they affect? As of January 1, businesses must use new guidelines to determine t...

By Scott B. Kaplowitch • Jan. 8, 2014

The Hidden Perils of Supply Chain Innovation

Disruptions in the global supply chain can have a significant financial effect on any company. Outsourcing, lean manufacturing and just-in-time inventory, of course, have long been considered to be remarkable innovations in reducing an organization’s production costs and allowing it to focus on i...

By John Bugalla and Kristina Narvaez • Jan. 7, 2014

FX Volatility Has Only Moderate Impact

A stroke of good fortune or smarter FX management? In the third quarter of 2013, new data shows, many U.S. multinational companies either managed foreign-exchange risk better or saw FX volatility work in their favor. Regardless, according to the latest currency impact analysis by FiREapps, U.S. m...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 7, 2014

No More Mr. Nice Guys: SEC Sharpens Talons for 2014

A casual observer of Securities and Exchange Commission trends could be forgiven for concluding that the SEC has lost interest in pursuing enforcement of financial reporting regulations. In fact, the commission is intent on bringing record numbers of such cases and has some new tools and resource...

By Nicolas Morgan and Jennifer Feldman • Jan. 2, 2014

How to Be the CFO of a Private-Equity-Owned Firm

Private equity firms have a reputation. Like most investors, they want to make money. When they buy a company, they often cut costs, lay off employees and hire new managers. So when you’re the CFO, and a private equity firm buys your company, what should you expect?The answer may depend on the he...

By Marielle Segarra • Jan. 2, 2014

Playing Defense

There are cyclical industries, and there’s the defense industry. In wartime, billions of additional dollars flow to defense contractors from the U.S. government, and in peacetime, Congress tightens the money spigot. It’s a cycle that all contractors are used to, except this time around there’s an...

By Russ Banham • Dec. 31, 2013

Why Congress Must Unshackle the R&D Tax Credit

On December 31, 2013, the U.S. Federal Research and Development (R&D) Tax Credit sunsets. Again.This time of year, every year, CFOs of Fortune 500, middle-market and small businesses wonder whether the U.S. R&D credit that they count on and budget for will be around for the next year. Exe...

By Mitchell S. Kopelman • Dec. 23, 2013

SEC Gives Small Companies a Big Break

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday released proposed rules for Regulation A+, an updated version of Regulation A. The change would allow private offerings to remain exempt from securities registration requirements if they raise less than $50 million in any 12-month period. Under ...

By Marielle Segarra • Dec. 20, 2013

Four Ways High Share Price Companies Can Boost Value

Admittedly, few CEOs or CFOs ever admit their share price is too high — at least not out loud.  Given all the time these executives spend generating investor interest in their stock, it would be very hard for them to ever see, much less say, it is overvalued.  It would be like a Chevy salesman te...

By Gregory V. Milano • Dec. 19, 2013

Why You Shouldn’t Buy a New ERP System

A pharmaceutical company was convinced that it needed either to replace its current enterprise-resource planning (ERP) system with a totally different software package or install the major upgrade that the current vendor was pushing.  Why?• Dozens of spreadsheets, and manual workarounds had sprun...

By Adam Pollak, Chris Payne, and Bruce Myers • Dec. 18, 2013

Raising the Standard For Compliance

If an investment in a company’s compliance system is really successful, then a company will have nothing to show for it — at least in the form of fines, litigation or adverse publicity. The absence of such events suggests that the process is working as it should, routinely identifying risks assoc...

By Josh Hyatt • Dec. 17, 2013

Calling the Latino Market

The Hispanic population in the United States is exploding. There were an estimated 53 million Latinos in the United States in 2012, and the Census Bureau expects that number to more than double by 2050. The group’s purchasing power was $1.2 trillion in 2012, according to the Selig Center for Econ...

By Marielle Segarra • Dec. 17, 2013

The Volcker Rule: More Questions Than Answers

The 37 words inserted into the 848-page Dodd-Frank law overhauling the regulation of America’s financial institutions seemed innocent enough. Lawmakers wanted regulators to come up with strictures that would prevent banks from gambling with deposits insured by the federal government. The resultin...

By Economist Staff • Dec. 16, 2013