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

Get IT Right — Or Get Left Behind

It’s not what you have; it’s what you do with it.Yes, information technology sharpens a company’s competitive edge — but only if management learns how to master it for maximum impact.So say finance executives responding to a survey by CFO Research on the investment outlook for new technology tool...

By David W. Owens • Dec. 12, 2013

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

Which Employees Should Get Incentives?

As my multitudinous Twitter followers can attest, CFO has launched a holiday cubicle decorating contest. The winner, to be determined by a panel of partial judges (everybody at the company votes), receives a $200 American Express gift card. I like crafts and love the idea of brightening up our of...

By Marielle Segarra • Dec. 12, 2013

Aided by Data Analytics, Internal Auditors Dig Deep

Internal auditors are becoming more aware of the power of data analytics and how it can help them find anomalies and highlight trends. Indeed, by incorporating data-analytics tools into their auditing practice, internal auditors are able to manage risk continuously and in real time, according to ...

By Alissa Ponchione • Dec. 11, 2013

Internal Auditors Take on Third Parties

With companies outsourcing more responsibilities to third parties, the risks associated with outside firms are also increasing. While chief risk officers are often called upon to manage  those risks, however, it is internal auditors who are responsible for setting up processes to identify third-p...

By Alissa Ponchione • Dec. 9, 2013

Shock of Recognition

Like a lot of CFOs, Neal Fenwick of Acco Brands, a $1.8 billion global supplier of branded office products, generally likes to defer taking an expense as long as possible. That will become more difficult under a new revenue-recognition standard slated for release by U.S. and global accounting sta...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 6, 2013

Taxing Their Patience

When Ben Gardier, CFO of National Laser Institute, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company offering medical aesthetics training, thinks of 2014’s challenges, he says one new tax has been hurting his business: the medical-device tax. That’s because the tax, which went into effect in January, is not only...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 6, 2013

Finance Teams Exploiting Mobile Apps

Chris Kenny is always busy. In his role as vice president of operations at Chambers Gasket & Manufacturing, he has little downtime. In three hours or so before speaking with CFO, he had returned from a West Coast business trip and subsequently proposed to his girlfriend, all while staying in ...

By Alissa Ponchione • Dec. 4, 2013

Why We Loathe Reports

Producing reports has, from time to time, been the bane of my existence, almost as bad as consuming reports produced for me by others. I am often reminded of a design heuristic I learned many years ago: “No one knows what they want until you give them what they ask for.” It has always seemed that...

By John Parkinson • Dec. 4, 2013

Five Year-End Global Tax Tips

As 2013 draws to a close, CFOs, tax directors and controllers should take a last look at their global structure and international operations.  The following are five key questions they should be asking before year-end to surface potential tax risks and opportunities.Do I know what my people are d...

By Greg Alwood and Adam Steinberger • Dec. 3, 2013

401(k)s: Time For a Checkup

The end of the year is open-enrollment time for many 401(k) plans, with employees carefully weighing their investment choices and deferral rates. These are no small decisions; poor choices made today can result in a less prosperous future, as 401(k)s have become the primary retirement vehicle for...

By Edward Teach • Dec. 3, 2013

Wonderful While It Lasted

Bankers have a rough time of it in Hollywood on the whole. But in 1946 “It’s a Wonderful Life” depicted the Platonic ideal of a small-town bank, with managers and customers who knew each other, and tried to help each other through tough times. Most banks pay lip service to such goals, but fall la...

By Economist Staff • Dec. 2, 2013

Using Big Data to Capture Risk Volatility

Companies have traditionally measured their exposure to risks through total cost of risk (TCOR) calculations. Definitions vary, but TCOR represent the sum of these larger elements: the insurance premiums a corporation spends, the cost of the losses it retains, and other items such as administrati...

By Dave Heppen and Claude Yoder • Dec. 2, 2013

How Risk Analytics Can Chart Corporate Choices

Risk-analytics techniques make it possible to measure, quantify and even predict risks with more certainty.In the past, companies relied heavily on the leaders at the business-unit level to monitor, assess and report risks to their senior management teams. In today’s world of multiple data source...

By John Bugalla and Kristina Narvaez • Dec. 2, 2013

Special Report: The New Analytics of Risk

Traditionally, companies depended on business-unit leaders “to monitor, assess and report risks to their senior management teams,” write John Bugalla and Kristina Narvaez, the authors of a birds-eye view on new uses of risk analytics and risk modeling in this Special Report. But in recent years, ...

By David Katz • Dec. 2, 2013

What It’s Like to Be a Nonprofit CFO: Video

Being finance chief at a nonprofit may be rewarding, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and saving the environment. Ask Sarah Gillman, CFO at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Gillman, former CFO at Save the Children and vice president for budget and financial planning at the Wildlife Co...

By David Katz and Marielle Segarra • Nov. 27, 2013

Optimism’s New Address: Europe

The results of the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey marked a geographical shift in economic optimism. While the rest of the world’s upbeat outlook tipped downward from the second quarter, European finance executives’ optimism grew. As a result, European economic ...

By David W. Owens • Nov. 27, 2013

To Understand HR Standards, Look to GAAP and FASB

John Boudreau In finance and accounting, “practice standards” (like GAAP) serve a different purpose from “decision standards” like those for financial reporting, with very different requirements.Independent auditors opine as to whether the companies’ financial statements “present fairly, in all m...

By John Boudreau • Nov. 26, 2013

Bank CFO Pay Continues Post-Crisis Ascent

For a group that heads up finance in a sector that needed the biggest government bailout in U.S. history five years ago, CFOs of commercial banks and thrifts were paid handsomely last year.Median CFO total compensation at banks and thrifts rose to $291,384 in 2012, up more than 34 percent from $2...

By Vincent Ryan • Nov. 20, 2013

Can U.S. Regulators Control Bitcoin?

Law-enforcement officials aired their concerns Monday about the ease of money laundering and drug trafficking using virtual currencies like Bitcoin, but said ultimately virtual currencies were a legal means of exchange that could be a source of innovation in payment systems.Jennifer Shasky Calver...

By Alissa Ponchione • Nov. 19, 2013

Checks Ceding Ground to Electronic Payments

A 7 percent increase in four years is hardly what you would call lightning-fast innovation, but companies are gradually giving up paper checks and making more of their disbursements and collections via electronic means.The typical company now makes about 50 percent of its business-to-business pay...

By Vincent Ryan • Nov. 19, 2013

The Freelance Finance Chief

Amy Clayman never planned to become a part-time finance chief. For more than 14 years, she held full-time finance jobs, including four years she spent as treasurer and corporate controller at JBA International, an ERP software and consulting firm.Amy Clayman, principal at Financial Fluency; freel...

By Marielle Segarra • Nov. 14, 2013

Why CFOs Must Become Chiefs of XBRL

CFOs often view eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) as a bothersome step in the disclosure process that merely allows them to fulfill a regulatory requirement. But finance chiefs should want to have their tags and detailed footnotes correct, and for reasons beyond just checking the box ...

By John Truzzolino • Nov. 14, 2013

Cities on the Brink

Prior to its incorporation in 1850, Stockton, Calif., was known as Fat City, and later Mudville. Prophetically, its financial fortunes followed this progression in names from boom to bust. Stockton filed for bankruptcy in 2012, and until Detroit went bankrupt earlier this year, it had the dubious...

By Russ Banham • Nov. 13, 2013

The Price Is a Blight

When central banks adopted “quantitative easing” (printing money to buy financial assets) and other unorthodox means to buoy economies holed by the financial crisis, many feared that the result would be out-of-control inflation. Asset prices have certainly soared. But consumer prices have not. In...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 12, 2013