Five Ways CFOs Can Survive the Fiscal Cliff

The fiscal cliff has businesses and CFOs on edge as they wait to find out what will happen. It’s hard to run a business without knowing what the outcome will be. But while the uncertainty is unsettling, it is a symptom of doing business in turbulent times. Even if Congress provides some answers b...

By Kristine Brands • Dec. 13, 2012

Starbucks Coughs Up More U.K. Tax

With U.K. and European Union lawmakers planning tough new tax measures, Starbucks says it will voluntarily pay an extra $32 million (£20 million, €25 million) to the U.K. government during the next two years.The coffee company, Google, and Amazon all were recently called to testify before a parli...

By Andrew Sawers • Dec. 12, 2012

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

Accountable

Buying Autonomy, a British software company, once seemed like a good idea to Hewlett-Packard (HP). Western investors were once eager to buy into Chinese companies that had secured listings on American exchanges. Neither idea seems so hot now. Both these changes in sentiment raise awkward question...

By Economist Staff • Dec. 11, 2012

It’s High Time for CPAs to Rise to the Cloud

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More accounting firms are turning to cloud technology, a trend that should help them serve their small-business clients better and sharpen their industry-specific expertise, said Geoffrey Moore, speaking to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’s (AICPA) “Digit...

By Taylor Provost • Dec. 7, 2012

Pension Plans Even Worse Off Than Sponsors Thought

Pension-plan sponsors may be in for a rude surprise as they meet with actuaries and go about the annual exercise of valuing plan liabilities over the next few weeks.The majority of sponsors that use the calendar year as their fiscal year will, on December 31, lock in the interest rate used to cal...

By David McCann • Dec. 7, 2012

Wal-Mart: Tip of Bribery Iceberg

Wal-Mart, embroiled in bribery investigations first in Mexico and now India, is hardly alone in its purported involvement in corruption, experts say. In fact, the mammoth retailer is “the tip of the iceberg,” says Charles Pautsch, a partner at law firm Arnstein & Lehr.Pautsch observes that en...

By Caroline McDonald • Dec. 6, 2012

Fiscal Cliff Stalemate Weighs on CPAs

Certified public accountants surveyed in the United States after the Presidential election in November have serious doubts about the ability of Congress to resolve the fiscal cliff and have a dim view of U.S. economic prospects for 2013.The results of the economic outlook survey of the American I...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 6, 2012

“Plain English Works” in MD&A Statements

Excessive financial jargon in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission often clouds intended messages, said speakers at an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants conference this week.The sentiment particularly applies to the Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 6, 2012

Is Accounting Blocking R&D Investments?

In many casual conversations with CFOs across a wide variety of companies and industries, we have heard them say their companies have desirable opportunities to increase their research-and-development (R&D) expenditures. But they’re hesitant to do so because of the negative short-term earning...

By Joseph Theriault and John R. Cryan • Dec. 5, 2012

Internal Auditors Want Larger Budgets for 2013

While many corporate departments are striving to keep a lid on spending in 2013, more than 40% of internal auditors surveyed recently said they plan to increase their budget — the largest proportion aiming to do so since 2008.The Institute of Internal Auditors’ Audit Executive Center survey in No...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Dec. 3, 2012

COSO Users Are Eager for Time Line

Auditors and companies looking to adhere to a proposed internal-control framework for financial reporting were told yesterday at a Baruch College auditing conference not to sweat the actual implementation date when the draft framework is finalized in March 2013.Comparing the new framework from th...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Nov. 30, 2012

MF Global: Anatomy of a Risk-Management Breakdown

The commodities broker MF Global first came to the attention of the risk-management community in February 2008. The firm announced a $141.5 million bad-debt provision resulting from of one of its representatives trading in the wheat-futures market for his personal account that exceeded establishe...

By John Bugalla and James Kallman • Nov. 29, 2012

PCAOB: Not Just Mr. Bad Guy

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is gearing up to find more uses for the information gathered from its inspections, as well as for its analysis of those inspections for its strategic plan for 2012–2016.“My personal goal is to have concrete data and analysis to evidence our ef...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Nov. 28, 2012

New Group Seeks Peace Between Companies and Their Insurers

Normally, the days and weeks following a major catastrophe is a time when corporations and their insurance companies engage in take-no-prisoners battles over how much companies are entitled to under their policies. In that respect, the recently announced formation of a group to represent the ofte...

By Caroline McDonald • Nov. 26, 2012

Finance Execs Find XBRL Useless

While the Securities and Exchange Commission’s effort to automate public company financial reporting is well underway, with about 9,000 public companies already filing using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) since 2009, the SEC and other regulators had hoped by now that the XML langua...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Nov. 21, 2012

Companies Asleep at Bribery Wheel

Although the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) has been in effect for 35 years as of Dec. 19, many companies still have a long way to go in complying with it. Indeed, 44.6% of professionals saying their either that their companies are not making improvements to prevent and detect corrupt activ...

By Caroline McDonald • Nov. 21, 2012

Capital Goes Back to Nature

Are the resources essential to human survival and economic activity a material business issue? To what extent are they covered by current financial reporting frameworks? A recent report by KPMG and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) examines “natural capital” – “the stock o...

By Andrew Sawers • Nov. 20, 2012

Angry U.K. Lawmakers Confront Starbucks CFO

A British parliamentary committee is investigating claims that several large U.S.-based companies have been underpaying corporate taxes. Starbucks’s global CFO, Troy Alstead, as well as senior executives from Google and Amazon, were called to testify amid public uproar over the matter.Reuters rep...

By Andrew Sawers • Nov. 19, 2012

Diamond Foods: When Accounting Goes Wrong

Not many companies can bounce back in a short time from an accounting scandal that results in the ousting of its chief executive officer and CFO, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, and tarnished relationships with its key product suppliers. But Diamond Foods is attempting to do j...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Nov. 16, 2012

China Opens to the PCAOB

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will soon have increased access to U.S.-listed companies in China. The auditing overseer recently struck an agreement with the Chinese government to begin “observational visits in China,” according to a PCAOB spokesperson.Under the agreement, the boar...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Nov. 15, 2012

Letting Go of Guidance

Providing quarterly earnings guidance to Wall Street is widely criticized for consuming an inordinate amount of time, rarely hitting the bull’s-eye, and unnecessarily shifting a company’s focus to short-term tactics at the expense of long-term value. Yet most CFOs still put their shoulders to the...

By Russ Banham • Nov. 15, 2012

David Walker: Fire and Brimstone on Debt

BOSTON — At Thursday’s MIT Sloan CFO Summit, David M. Walker, U.S. Comptroller General from 1998 through 2008 and founder and chief executive officer of Comeback America Initiative, said in his morning keynote address that as a CPA and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, he’s “a patr...

By David Rosenbaum • Nov. 15, 2012

Targeting Tax Uncertainty

CFOs of private companies should soon get clearer guidance on how to report their companies’ income taxes. The Private Company Council (PCC), created in May by the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), plans to make income-tax uncertainty one of the first items on its agenda by tackling Financia...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Nov. 15, 2012

Good, but Not Good Enough

Congratulations on your complete and well-balanced article on market structures, “Brave New Market” (October). Permit me to add my 40 years of equity-markets study to the 30 years of James Angel mentioned in your article to say, like him, that “the market structure looks really good.” “Perhaps no...

By CFO Readers • Nov. 15, 2012

Test Your Pricing Strategy, Sandy Reminds CFOs

Many of us in the U.S. Northeast have struggled with storm damage, electricity outages, and gas shortages since superstorm Sandy ravaged the area a few weeks ago, and tensions have flared.  Perhaps the most widespread frustration has been with the gasoline shortages,and many economists believe it...

By Gregory V. Milano • Nov. 15, 2012