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

Special Report: 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 • Jan. 29, 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

The Pros and Cons of ESOPs

Many baby boomers who own businesses face the challenge of what to do with them as they look toward retirement. Sometimes they are in a position of conflict, weighing their need for liquidity against the desire to leave a legacy of perpetuation for the business.An employee stock ownership plan (E...

By George D. Shaw • Jan. 28, 2013

Today’s CFO: Which Profile Best Suits Your Company?

Most readers are well aware that the role of the CFO generally has broadened over the past decade. Beyond the core responsibilities of financial reporting, audit and compliance, planning, treasury, and capital structure, many CFOs are playing a stronger role in corporate portfolio management and ...

By Ankur Agrawal and John Goldie • Jan. 28, 2013

Not-So-Happy Anniversary, XBRL

When the Securities and Exchange Commission mandated the tagging of financial filings with eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), its stated intent was to help investors and analysts access corporate data more easily, and standardize filings so that they could be compared across companies...

By Taylor Provost • Jan. 25, 2013

If Mergers Pick up, Can Lawsuits Be Far Behind?

The lull in mergers and acquisitions over the past year has been accompanied by a similar lull in corporate conversations about the lawsuit risks that directors and officers face. Tamped down by infrequent M&A activity, litigation has waned, leading to a marked disinterest in D&O coverage...

By Caroline McDonald and David Katz • Jan. 25, 2013

Apple to Boldly Go into Earnings Guidance

In a change from its traditional way of reporting earnings guidance, Apple plans to revise its approach to include a range of numbers rather than just a single figure: an approach its CFO believes could more accurately forecast what the company’s actual profits will be.On its earnings call after ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Jan. 24, 2013

Cleaning Up Balance Sheets, One Repo at a Time

A new proposal by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) should eliminate the accounting allowances that made it easy for Lehman Brothers and MF Global to mislabel short-term loans, otherwise referred to as repurchase agreements, or “repos.”FASB’s policing could thwart other firms from p...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Jan. 18, 2013

Businesses Boost Budgets for Online 10-Ks

More and more companies are moving toward online 10-K formats and printing fewer copies to cut costs. In fact, electronic annual-report budgets have grown 31% since 2010 and 44% since 2008, while budgets for printed annual reports have plummeted during the past decade, a survey released last week...

By Taylor Provost • Jan. 17, 2013

The Envelope, Please: The 2012 Capital-Deployment Awards

A year ago, I published the inaugural Fortuna Capital-Deployment Awards based on the success or failure of different capital-deployment strategies in 2011.  The awards are different from others in that they don’t recognize individual company achievements but instead identify the success or failur...

By Gregory V. Milano • Jan. 17, 2013

United Airlines Sued for Alleged Tax Scam

The Illinois Regional Transportation Authority is alleging in a lawsuit that a United Airlines fuel-purchasing unit used a “sham” office outside Chicago to sidestep taxes on jet fuel, Bloomberg reported today.In a complaint filed Monday in state court in Chicago, the IRTA charged the unit used an...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Jan. 15, 2013

Many CFOs Moving to Insource XBRL

Not many CFOs may actually enjoy the process of filing their company’s financials by way of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). But many have concluded it’s a job best done within the walls of one’s own company, according to a recent study by the Financial Executives Research Foundatio...

By Taylor Provost • Jan. 14, 2013

Storms, Debt Roil Real Estate CFOs

CFOs of real estate development companies have always worn several hats and wished they had more hands. But after tackling superstorm Sandy and reinventing their finance functions after a big real estate downturn, a panel of them at a New York State Society of CPAs conference last week said that ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Jan. 14, 2013

Minority Interest Muddies Cash Flow

CFOs need a new list of best practices for the way their company reports the dividends paid to noncontrolling investors on their cash-flow statements, a leading accounting expert says. That’s because under the current mixed bag of options for reporting such payouts, companies have a bewildering r...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Jan. 10, 2013

How Much Can Your Company Afford to Lose?

Organizations of every ilk have been nudged by credit-rating agencies, pushed by regulators, and told by various accounting, audit, and consulting firms to adopt enterprise risk management (ERM). But can ERM make a noticeable impact on companies’ value or growth?Perhaps if organizations would ins...

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

The Top 10 Stories of 2012

It’s health care, stupid. As the economy was for voters during the Clinton era, so was Obamacare and its fallout by far the most pressing matter on the mind of CFO’s audience this year. From April 4 through December 19 of this now fast-fading year, in fact, fully 3 out of the 10 most popular stor...

By David Katz • Dec. 28, 2012

FASB Wants Firms to Forecast Loan Losses

The latest Financial Accounting Standards Board’s exposure draft on accounting for credit losses could bring sweeping changes to the way CFOs, accounting heads, and finance directors at banks and other financial institutions account for credit losses on their firms’ balance sheets.A FASB exposure...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 20, 2012

What CFOs Must Do Following a Merger

Well before the ink is dry on any acquisition document, the astute CFO will know that one size does not fit all when it comes to delivering on the expected value of the transaction. But one element is true in all cases: proactive planning for a smooth close and first 100 days is the first step.Th...

By Keats Aiken and Steven Miller • Dec. 20, 2012

The Case for a Shareholder Value Focus

It seems that every few years someone, often from academia, passionately asserts that some form of stakeholder value should be the preferable corporate focus over shareholder value. The most recent example comes from Cornell law professor Lynn Stout, whose book, The Shareholder Value Myth: How Pu...

By Gregory V. Milano • Dec. 19, 2012

SEC Charges TheStreet, Former CFO with Accounting Fraud

On Tuesday the Securities and Exchange Commission charged online financial-media company TheStreet; one of its former CFOs; and two executives of a former subsidiary, Promotions.com, with accounting fraud.According to the complaints filed in federal court in Manhattan, TheStreet misstated its fin...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 18, 2012

Going Management’s Way

Who should determine whether a public company can remain in business as a going concern — the company’s management or its auditor? The Financial Accounting Standards Board ruled in November that management should, and that it will still be up to the auditor to decide the appropriateness of the as...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 15, 2012

Look Homeward, Accounting

For years, corporations have been using shared-services centers to centralize transaction processing and make it more efficient, while eliminating the cost of duplicated functions at the business-unit level. Many companies have offshored those centers; others have outsourced shared services to ex...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 15, 2012

In Praise of Centralization

As the former director of customer financial operations (order-to-cash processes) at several large businesses, and a consultant for several publicly and privately held companies, I have to take the statement “Companies with decentralized order-to-cash processes are more likely to report high leve...

By CFO Readers • Dec. 15, 2012

All Eyes on Foreign Earnings

Microsoft used it to defer $14.2 billion in taxes last year. Hewlett-Packard and others used it to keep more cash in foreign holdings than they had in the United States. But although U.S. accounting rules allow it, some senators are calling for its elimination.“It” is an accounting calculation ca...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 15, 2012

SEC Stands Pat as Global Accounting Forges Ahead

Although the Securities and Exchange Commission has signaled that convergence of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) may not be the its highest priority, the rest of the world’s standards-setters aren’t standing still. Indee...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 14, 2012