The Rise and Rise of Procurement

Look how much you’ve grown!Finance executives don’t actually say that, of course, but when they talk about their colleagues in procurement they sometimes sound as if they are surprised at themselves for taking the function so seriously. It wasn’t long ago, after all, that finance executives tende...

By Josh Hyatt • May 15, 2012

FASB Stands Pat on Reviled Tax Rule

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has ended any lingering hope that it will rethink one of its more controversial rules. The standard-setter announced in March that it will not review FASB Interpretation No. 48 (FIN 48, also known as Topic 740), its rule for accounting for uncertainty in t...

By Sarah Johnson • May 15, 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

Growing Together

Richard Lees has always been a consumer-products guy, spending much of his career at Pillsbury, Dannon North America (where he was CFO), and Gillette, working in cities like Minneapolis and Boston. Today, as CFO of Ocean Spray Cranberries, the 49-year-old Lees goes to work in the small town of La...

By Edward Teach • May 15, 2012

IRS Holds Up Transfer-Pricing Deals

Senior finance and tax executives may be wondering whether their companies should work with the Internal Revenue Service on transfer-pricing agreements after learning about the agency’s latest progress report. The IRS revealed in April that it processed fewer advance pricing agreements (APAs) in ...

By Sarah Johnson • May 15, 2012

Left to Their Own Devices

BYOD! No, that’s not a misprint. BYOD stands for “bring your own device,” a policy that is catching on in Corporate America. By allowing employees to use their own mobile devices — smartphones, tablets, laptops — in the workplace, companies hope to reap big savings in equipment and training costs...

By David Rosenbaum • May 15, 2012

Why Bankruptcy Should Matter in Lease Accounting

For years, some rather basic bankruptcy concepts have not applied to lease accounting. That may soon change if the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board finally come together on a new approach that follows common bankruptcy laws.The bankruptcy idea ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 15, 2012

Costs of Data Breaches Drop

In March, the Ponemon Institute, an independent research center that examines privacy, data protection, and information-security policies, reported the first decline in at least seven years of both the organizational cost of data breaches and the cost per lost or stolen record.The institute’s sev...

By David Rosenbaum • May 15, 2012

Vintage Finance

Name: Lance SpearsPosition: CFO, Wine by Joe, a 30-person custom-winemaking, bulk-wine, and control-label business in Oregon that specializes in Pinot NoirPrevious Positions: CFO and president of the North American division of Seguin Moreau, one of the world’s largest wine-barrel cooperages. VP o...

By Marielle Segarra • May 15, 2012

Key-Person Insurance: A Cash-Flow Caveat

As many companies wonder what to do with the massive piles of cash they have accumulated over the past few years, one increasingly popular tactic is to spend some of it on life insurance policies on key executives.Although that can be financially effective, it requires companies to make a critica...

By David McCann • May 15, 2012

Will These Investments Catch On?

In February, the Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury issued proposed new rules aimed at giving 401(k) plan participants more options to invest in annuities that guarantee a lifetime income stream. But the proposals don’t go nearly far enough to persuade plan sponsors to offer s...

By David McCann • May 15, 2012

Welcome to the IP Bubble

Last summer Google bought cell-phone maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, largely for its treasure chest of 17,000 patents.Last month, preparing for its initial public offering, Facebook paid Microsoft $550 million for about 625 of the 925 patents Microsoft had just purchased from AOL for $...

By David Rosenbaum • May 14, 2012

Transatlantic Divide Grows Over Audit Rotation

Although audit firms on both sides of the Atlantic are locked in arms against mandatory audit term rotation, they’re clearly split on how best to maintain auditors’ objectivity and skepticism. While alternatives to mandatory rotation are gaining ground in Europe, the United States may be headed i...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 11, 2012

Watchdogs Put Closer Eye on Broker-Dealer Accounting

Regulators like the Financial Industry Regulation Authority say accounting mistakes by broker-dealers are becoming more prevalent in everything from accruals to improper netting.“We are seeing a lack of accruals for contingencies,” said Kris Dailey, vice president in the Risk Oversight & Oper...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 10, 2012

Waking Up from Expense Report Nightmares

In his “old life,” at another company, Jeff Harrison ran a mobile engineering group. He had about 400 engineers “driving around, fixing HVAC systems, electrical, and plumbing.”His engineers would buy supplies at Home Depot and True Value as needed, and then, Harrison says, they’d “fill out paper ...

By David Rosenbaum • May 10, 2012

How High Court Vote Could Affect Health Industry’s Cash

If the U.S. Supreme Court lets the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act stand, it could boost the revenues of the nation’s health-care providers and improve their ability to spawn free-cash flow as they grow.Then again, if the Justices retain a provision in the new law curbing the rise of M...

By David Katz • May 4, 2012

Should Medical Device Companies Make or Buy Their Growth?

In most industries, the greater the proportion of cash flow that companies reinvest back into the future of their business, the higher their share price tends to rise over time. Not so for medical-device companies in recent years, especially when that reinvestment is into acquisitions.These findi...

By John R. Cryan and Gregory V. Milano • May 3, 2012

CFOs Warm to More Frequent Tax Talk

Tax executives are spending more time in front of the C-suite — a practice that is gaining ground with more CFOs whether they are ready for it or not.Gone are the days when a corporation’s tax director stood last in line to update the CFO on a new tax advantage or unfriendly charge sure to affect...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 3, 2012

“Flush with Cash” Has New Meaning

For months, nonfinancial companies have put off spending on capital needs and hoarded cash. But for the first time since the financial crisis, they are increasing their capital spending — even as they fill their coffers.This new condition has been met with some positive sentiment by at least one ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 1, 2012

Keep SEC as Investment Adviser Watchdog, Auditors Urge Congress

Urging Congress to keep oversight of investment advisers with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) yesterday slammed the Investment Adviser Oversight Act of 2012. Introduced in the House of Representatives on April 25, the bill would transfer oversight of...

By David Katz • April 27, 2012

Elder-Care Industry Goes Lean

Like most of the health-care industry, nursing-care facilities are often labeled recession-proof. In fact, private nursing homes took something of a hit in sales during the recession, with an average annual drop in sales growth of about 2% from 2007 to 2011, according to data from Sageworks, a fi...

By Marielle Segarra • April 20, 2012

Do Your Internal Auditors Have the Right Skills?

Ten years after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act made financial controls job number one for internal auditors, companies want these employees to increase the amount of attention they pay to operational risks.According to a recent survey by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), just over one-quarter of ...

By Sarah Johnson • April 19, 2012

Are Your Employees Committing Fraud?

Internal fraud is a huge risk to companies. Experts estimate that on average it costs companies 3% to 5% of revenue each year. Especially when profit margins are thin, internal fraud can literally put some companies out of business.But executives are prone to underestimating the amount of fraud t...

By Tracy L. Coenen • April 19, 2012

CFO Adds Cautious Note to Coke’s Optimism

Even as Coca-Cola was reporting an 8% boost in net income this quarter, its CFO, Gary P. Fayard, injected a note of caution into the company’s optimism at its earnings call Tuesday.“We have seen — if you think back, actually first quarter of 2010, things looked like, economically, they were getti...

By Marielle Segarra • April 17, 2012

No Employee Left Behind

Companies are in business to make money. So why shouldn’t everyone working for a company understand how money is made?Armed with such knowledge, salespeople could sell in a way that better boosts the bottom line, while other employees could appreciate the importance of pitching in on cost-saving ...

By David McCann • April 15, 2012

A Guide for the Performance-Perplexed

Jeremy Hope, who died last September, was a respected advocate of improving performance management. Co-founder and research director of the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable, a learning network with dozens of corporate members, Hope wrote several books on the subject, including Beyond Budgeting, Reinve...

By CFO Editorial Staff • April 15, 2012