Non-U.S. CFOs Donning Green Eyeshades

This is the third of three articles in a special report looking at those qualities most needed today in accounting and finance staff. Accountants Need to Show Their Softer Side and New Hires: A Skills-and-Demand Balancing Act explore U.S. staffing needs.U.S. CFOs have largely shed their longstand...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Feb. 28, 2013

CFO Presence Can Curb Insurance Prices

When companies negotiate the renewal of their property, liability, and workers’ compensation insurance policies this year, many are likely to encounter tough bargainers on the other side of the table. Hit heavily by Superstorm Sandy and other natural disasters, and facing the lawsuit risks of a r...

By Caroline McDonald • Feb. 26, 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

How to Cut Bribery-Prevention Costs

Most companies operating in the global arena are familiar with the ongoing regulatory enforcement of antibribery and corruption (ABAC) statutes. But confusion still reigns over how best to implement a robust, risk-based compliance program that provides the best possible protection at a cost that ...

By Dennis Haist • Feb. 25, 2013

Dodd-Frank Pay Provision Is a Net Zero

The mixed bag that is the Dodd-Frank Act has many provisions that are extraordinarily sensible and many others that are not. Some are just plain nutty, none more so than the requirement that public companies disclose in their proxy statements the ratio between CEO compensation and workers’ median...

By David McCann • Feb. 25, 2013

“My First Thought Was That I Couldn’t Imagine Doing That”

This is the final article in a three-part series profiling Carol Sawdye, recently named CFO at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Part 1 focused on her move 12 years ago from PwC to become finance chief at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, the world’s biggest law firm. Part 2 followed her to her next j...

By David McCann • Feb. 22, 2013

It All Boils Down to a Gallon of Gas

Way back in 2002, Walsh and Associates, a family business of about 50 employees, moved into a new facility and watched its electric bill skyrocket because of an inefficient heating and air-conditioning system.That, and the increasing cost of electricity and gas, prompted the Midwestern chemical-s...

By Taylor Provost • Feb. 22, 2013

Factors Funding Digital Firms’ Invoices

Remember lonelygirl15? lonelygirl15 appeared on YouTube in June 2006 — and was an instant sensation.  A teenager, resting her chin on her knee, stares into the camera and, calling herself Bree, announces that she’s 16.  After a few giggles, she says her town is “really, really boring.”  She confe...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 21, 2013

Big Companies Fear Offshore Tax Fallout

What’s been keeping tax directors of large multinational corporations up at night recently? The same issue that provided millions of dollars in tax relief a few years before: transfer pricing.Such companies as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have used offshore subsidiaries and company affiliates to ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Feb. 21, 2013

How to Pay Less Tax on a Company Sale

Merger-and-acquisition deal activity in the fourth quarter of 2012 was very strong, with business owners and their CFOs looking to sell their companies in advance of potential tax-rate increases on capital gains. Congratulations to those business owners who exited businesses successfully during 2...

By George D. Shaw • Feb. 20, 2013

Offshore Finance: Storm Survivors

When the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister organization of [The Economist] published the first bound edition of “Tax Havens and Their Uses” in 1975, a queue several blocks long formed outside The Economist bookshop in London. Interest in offshore financial centers (OFCs) kept growing over the...

By Economist Staff • Feb. 19, 2013

Auditor Group Eyes Audit-Committee Disclosures

Along with the CFOs and chief executive officers who must sign off on public-company financials, the audit committee is an essential part of financial reporting. After all, it hires and oversees external auditors. But audit committees are often a missing link in the chain of corporate financial r...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Feb. 14, 2013

The Sum of All Investments

A company is many things.  It is a gathering of people collaborating on various activities necessary to operate the business enterprise.  A company can also be viewed as the range of products or services it delivers, or even as a collection of stores, manufacturing plants, research-and-developmen...

By Gregory V. Milano • Feb. 14, 2013

Why Cyber-attack Order Matters for CFOs

During his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Barack Obama took several moments to acknowledge “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...

By Taylor Provost • Feb. 13, 2013

Why Cost Cutting Isn’t Just for Crises

Business uncertainty continues to pressure global organizations. To be successful in this “new normal” business environment, CFOs must set priorities and continue to focus on the traditional gate-keeping functions of cost reduction and financial controls. But while cost reduction is often a crisi...

By Kristine Brands • Feb. 12, 2013

Internal-Audit Rotation Debate Simmers

A simmering debate in the internal-audit community shows no signs of evaporating. It’s an important topic to many of the field’s practitioners, who perceive the profession’s very credibility and integrity to be at stake.Many of the country’s largest and highest-profile companies include a stint r...

By David McCann • Feb. 12, 2013

Firms Boost Budgets for Online 10-Ks

Companies are increasingly publishing annual reports online and printing fewer copies, according to a recent member survey by the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI). Budgets for electronic 10-Ks have grown 31% since 2010, while those for printed annual reports have plummeted over the pa...

By Taylor Provost • Feb. 7, 2013

Colleges in a Crunch

Everyone knows there is something wrong with a system of higher education that churns out graduates with debt exceeding their grandparents’ mortgages, into an economy offering relatively few decent jobs. It’s no wonder that default rates on student loans were 9.1% as of the beginning of October 2...

By Russ Banham • Feb. 7, 2013

Long Live E-mail

When it comes to discussing her budget with her CFO, e-mail marketing manager Carey Marston Kegel says she has it pretty good. “I’m lucky,” says Kegel, who works for online equestrian-supply retailer SmartPak. “It’s so inexpensive to send e-mail, especially compared with some of the other marketi...

By Taylor Provost • Feb. 7, 2013

Auto Sector Drives Discretionary Spend

In a positive sign for the economy, a new study suggests that consumers are buying nonessential items after the lull triggered by the recent recession. In the auto industry, for instance, companies that make such items as heated seats, thermal cup holders, and all-terrain vehicles are seeing a ri...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Feb. 7, 2013

Growing Their Own Way

Shunned by banks and other traditional sources of financing, midsize companies have finally found investors they’re sure they can rely on: themselves.Even as the economy has begun its cautious climb upward, credit remains tight at lending institutions. Forced to look elsewhere for their fastest a...

By Josh Hyatt • Feb. 7, 2013

FASB Wants Banks to Forecast Loan Losses

The latest exposure draft on accounting for credit losses from the Financial Accounting Standards Board could bring sweeping changes to the way that banks, financial institutions, and other public and private organizations account for credit losses on their balance sheets.The exposure draft, rele...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Feb. 7, 2013

Up to Code

Quick Response codes aren’t exactly Accounting 101. But some say they can help accounting firms attract more business. QR codes are the increasingly ubiquitous matrix bar codes that appear on magazines, toys, and other products, helping shoppers with tasks like locating products when they are sol...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Feb. 7, 2013

Counting the Cost of Liquidity in the Euro Zone

The liquidity crisis in Europe has cast a spotlight on the need to bridge the divide between finance and supply chain management (SCM). More than ever, executives in these two key disciplines need to collaborate on ways to release some of the cash that is locked into supply chains. Reducing inven...

By Alejandro Serrano • Feb. 5, 2013

Property-tax Rules Puzzle Finance Staffs

CFOs and their finance staff have had since March to digest guidance from the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Treasury on how to apply new tax regulations regarding a corporation’s tangible property, including equipment and such things as elevators or desks. But the rules are ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Feb. 1, 2013

Pension Windfall May Surprise Some CFOs

Sponsors of defined-benefit plans may be able to dramatically lower their minimum required contributions, at least in the short term, under a provision buried in a mostly unrelated bill signed into law last July. The opportunity, however, may have escaped the attention of CFOs at some plan-sponso...

By David McCann • Jan. 30, 2013