E-commerce: Click and Pay

The past few years have brought little relief for pinched state finances. But on March 22nd 75 senators, including majorities of both parties, approved an amendment to a proposed federal budget which, if enacted, would allow states to collect taxes on sales by internet retailers based in other st...

By Economist Staff • April 3, 2013

SEC Blesses Social Media Disclosures

Don’t tweet tidbits about your company’s first-quarter earnings just yet.The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that companies can use social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to disclose key information in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD). But invest...

By Taylor Provost • April 3, 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

Wait Continues for Lease Accounting Clarity

CFOs of companies that lease equipment or retail space may have to wait a little longer for more clarity on how their staffs should account for leases on their balance sheets. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently extended the launch of its revised exposure draft on lease accou...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 2, 2013

Short on Profits, Long on Growth, Market Cap

What happens to a software company that, after 15 years in business, has never seen a net profit?Here’s one answer: its market capitalization swells to 15 times its annual revenue as, over a three-year period, its stock price grows at more than twice the rate of any other software company in the ...

By David McCann • March 29, 2013

Special Report: Renewing Your Insurance

The market for property-casualty and workers’ compensation insurance “seems to be hardening” the CFO of a manufacturer that takes in $50 million to $100 million in sales a year reported at the end of February. “Insurers are exiting some of my markets and pricing is going up. We are working to ren...

By David Katz • March 27, 2013

Audit Standards Might Get a Makeover

Auditing standards could soon get a whole new look and a clearer framework if the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board chooses to enact its own new proposal after a period of public comment. The plan calls for reorganizing existing standards into a single, integrated, numbered system.Four-di...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 27, 2013

Internal Audit Shines Brighter with Boards

Internal audit is moving closer to the board of directors, a sign that the function is becoming more independent and objective, and free of the potential for improper influence from the CFO.Two surveys released this week confirm the trend. An Institute of Internal Auditors’s (IIA) survey of 554 c...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 22, 2013

The Best Medicines

Few if any industries have as much uncertainty in their product-development processes as the pharmaceutical industry does. It takes 10 to 15 years, on average, for a new compound to end up as a commercial drug on the pharmacist’s shelf. And only a few compounds complete that journey; the vast maj...

By Edward Teach • March 21, 2013

Forecasting Comes of Age

When Arby’s first opened its doors in 1964 in Boardman, Ohio, it had only roast-beef sandwiches and “Texas-size” iced tea to keep track of. But more than 3,000 stores and countless turkey and chicken combo meals later, the fast-food chain relies on its forecasting to keep one step ahead of the ma...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 21, 2013

The Story of Numbers

Numbers don’t lie. But do they always tell the complete truth?Even the most committed financial executives are now inclined to believe that numbers, no matter how neatly presented in everything from financial statements to annual reports, often aren’t as telling as they could be. What they need t...

By David W. Owens • March 21, 2013

A Well-Oiled Machine

When Baker Hughes asked Peter Ragauss to become its chief financial officer in 2006, the company’s audit committee warned him that internal controls at the oil-field-services company were haphazard at best. In fact, a few years earlier, the Department of Justice had come knocking about bribery an...

By Russ Banham • March 21, 2013

A Deceptive Calm

Finance chiefs might be forgiven for being complacent about the state of their companies’ directors-and-officers (D&O) liability coverage. After all, the past year saw a lull in merger-and-acquisition activity, and that was accompanied by a decline in federal class-action lawsuits. Overall, t...

By David Katz and Caroline McDonald • March 21, 2013

The XBRL Factor

Few CFOs can enjoy the process of filing their companies’ financials using eXtensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL. But many have concluded it is a job best done in-house, according to a recent study by Financial Executives Research Foundation. Surveying 416 finance executives from small,...

By Taylor Provost • March 21, 2013

Cyber-Attack Order Raises Questions

During his annual State of the Union address in February, President Barack Obama acknowledged “the real and growing threat” of cyber attacks on American infrastructure and announced that he had signed an executive order to strengthen cyber defenses and promote the sharing of information related t...

By Taylor Provost • March 21, 2013

Top Risks Reflect Unsure Business Environment

The top two risks identified by executives send the message that they are more concerned with what they don’t know regarding economic conditions and regulations than with what they do know, even about significant operational risks, according to an author of the study “Executive Perspectives on To...

By Caroline McDonald • March 15, 2013

Former JPMorgan CFO Misled Investors: Senators

In a long grilling of Douglas Braunstein on Friday, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) accused the former JPMorgan Chase CFO of misleading investors about the bank’s mounting losses in derivatives trading and cloaking what became a big threat to the bank’s financial stability.In a way unlike the questioni...

By Vincent Ryan • March 15, 2013

Are Your Growth Investments Effective?

Alongside all the hoopla about the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaking through the 2007 peak last week is the worry that we may be approaching another peak (and subsequently another fall).  How are America’s companies performing and how are they being valued?  Brokerage analysts expect about th...

By Gregory V. Milano • March 14, 2013

Restatements by Accelerated Filers Shoot Up

One might think that accelerated filers, already recognized by the Securities and Exchange Commission as especially trustworthy, would file fewer financial restatements than their nonaccelerated counterparts. Well, think again.In 2012 there were 21% more restatements by accelerated filers — those...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 13, 2013

Third Wave of Exec-Pay Suits Roils

A third wave of shareholder lawsuits over companies’ executive-compensation programs has come ashore.In the past six months, the boards or officers of 10 companies have been targeted by derivative shareholder lawsuits alleging that executives were awarded stock-based compensation in excess of the...

By David McCann • March 13, 2013

CPAs Express Wide Optimism Gap

A big gap between the optimism that CFOs, controllers, and chief executive officers with CPAs feel about their own firm and how upbeat they are about the U.S. economy has persisted for at least a year, according to an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’s (AICPA) survey in February...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 11, 2013

Dog Breath Goes Viral

I have two big dogs. Tails wagging, they rush to greet me whenever I come home. Hey! Dave’s here! Like it’s never happened before. And as they frisk about me, mouths open, tongues hanging, it often becomes hard for me to breathe because, like most dogs, they have serious dog breath: A complex, ga...

By David Rosenbaum • March 11, 2013

Inside the Sequester: “Everything’s Ground to a Halt”

Since last Friday, when President Obama signed the order mandating $85.4 billion in immediate across-the-board spending cuts (the famous sequester), with almost half that amount hitting the Department of Defense budget, the Dow has hit an all-time high. A survey released today by the American Ins...

By David Rosenbaum • March 7, 2013

Firm Offsets Tax Hike with Raises for All

When companies lay off workers, regardless of whether the executives who made the decision are gut-wrenched or unmoved, it is easily justified as the responsible thing to do for the business. Ironically, if no company laid off workers, the resulting minuscule unemployment rate would almost surely...

By David McCann • March 6, 2013

How One CFO Used Cash to Survive the Downturn

ORLANDO—Not many firms can suffer a two-thirds drop in sales during the recession and live to talk about it. But luxury-home builder Toll Brothers is not just living, it’s thriving.In 2005 Toll Brothers reported full-year net income of $806.1 million. Fast-forward to the depths of the recession i...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 5, 2013

CFOs Shifting from Risk to Growth

Miriam Connole thought preparing budgets for a large insurance company was tough enough, considering all the unforeseen risks that can come into play. But then she became CFO of Burford Capital, a London-based start-up that provides seed money for litigation services.Calling it a lumpy business, ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 4, 2013