Private Companies Get IFRS Made Easy

Private U.S. companies have a new option in accounting standards following Wednesday’s release of a simplified, vastly slimmed-down version of International Financial Reporting Standards.Private firms in the United States could already choose IFRS. Yet relatively few have done so, even though the...

By David McCann • July 10, 2009

A Fair Value Prescription for “Share Lending”

There are times when a company finds that the cost of borrowing its own shares is “prohibitive.” When that happens, a company may, and frequently will, enter into a share lending arrangement in connection with a convertible debt offering. The accounting treatment for such a transaction has been c...

By Robert Willens • July 6, 2009

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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

Revenue Recognition: Will a Single Model Fly?

Can U.S. and international accounting standard-setters realize their dream of fashioning a single revenue-recognition standard that would apply to all customer contracts? While the answer won’t be known for some time, it’s safe to say there are hurdles on the road ahead.In a joint discussion pape...

By David McCann • July 2, 2009

Will Whopping Goodwill Hits Hurt Deals?

The hits just kept coming last winter, as company after company reported huge goodwill impairment charges along with their 2008 earnings. Among the biggies: Conoco Phillips’s $25 billion writedown and CBS Corp’s $14 billion one, plus multi-billion impairment charges from Citigroup, Regions Financ...

By Alix Stuart • July 1, 2009

Citigroup Ready to Swallow a “Tax Poison Pill”

Citigroup announced the finalization of a definitive agreement with the U.S. government on June 10, and accordingly, will now launch its long-awaited exchange offers for its publicly held convertible and non-convertible preferred and “trust” preferred securities. In addition, the government will ...

By Robert Willens • June 29, 2009

The Fair-Value Deadbeat Debate Returns

A new discussion paper released last week by the staff of the International Accounting Standards Board has revived an old, but still fiery fair-value controversy.At issue: the role of credit risk in measuring the fair value of a liability. According to the paper’s opening statement: the topic has...

By Marie Leone • June 25, 2009

Study: Free-Cash Rise May Signal Start of Economic Turn

The first year-long improvement in free-cash margin since December 2007 suggests that non-financial public companies “are in the process of turning the corner in terms of financial performance,” according to an upcoming research report on over 3,500 companies by the Georgia Tech Financial Analysi...

By David Katz • June 23, 2009

International Standard Setters Have Their Say on MD&A

The promulgator of International Financial Reporting Standards today weighed in with its first proposal for what companies that use IFRS should include in the management commentary that accompanies their financials. But some members of the International Accounting Standards Board don’t think ther...

By David McCann • June 23, 2009

Another Fair Value Rule Tweak Is in the Works

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is proposing another in what has become a regular series of amendments and clarifications to its landmark pronouncement, FAS 157, Fair Value Measurements. The latest amendment/clarification, issued on June 8, is in the form of a FASB Staff Position ...

By Robert Willens • June 22, 2009

KPMG Should Be Tougher on Testing, PCAOB Finds

KPMG did not show enough skepticism toward clients last year, according to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which cited the Big Four accounting firm for deficiencies related to audits it performed on nine companies. The deficiencies were detailed in an inspection report released las...

By Marie Leone • June 19, 2009

Sara Lee Shells Out Sales to Save Suppliers

Editor’s Note: After this article was published, a Sara Lee spokesman contacted CFO to say Chappelle misspoke during the question-and-answer session of his presentation. In fact, the company does not offer written guarantees of future business to its raw material suppliers, which include pork and...

By Sarah Johnson • June 17, 2009

Will the New FASB Code Change Accounting?

Get ready to say good-bye to the alphabet soup that currently comprises Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.  As of July 1, standards now known as FAS, FSP, EITF, or APB, among others, will be subsumed into a new and less letter-centric organizational system as part of the Financial Accounti...

By Alix Stuart • June 17, 2009

The Quest for Capital

The economic downturn has caused CFOs to hone their negotiating skills for maintaining their access to capital. To keep the money they do have flowing and to make sure they have backup lines for future capital needs, finance executives are having more back-and-forth discussions with their custome...

By Sarah Johnson • June 16, 2009

New Rule Cites Lawsuit and Bankruptcy Disclosures

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued a brand new accounting pronouncement last month, FAS No. 165, Subsequent Events. According to the standard setting organization, the rule will be applied to the accounting for, and disclosure of, subsequent events not addressed in other appli...

By Robert Willens • June 15, 2009

“Cost Sharing” Pacts Come Under Scrutiny

Many multinational companies establish joint venture arrangements with their foreign affiliates, particularly with those affiliates that are organized in countries that have relatively low corporate tax rates in relation to the United States. If a disproportionate share of the income the venture ...

By Robert Willens • June 8, 2009

PCAOB Chairman Mark Olson to Retire

Mark Olson, chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, will retire after three years at the helm of the fledgling regulator.Olson joined the accounting-firm overseer in July 2006, around the time the non-governmental entity had begun reworking its controversial internal-control ru...

By Sarah Johnson • June 8, 2009

Audit Fees Rise, But Not by Much

A new survey on audit fees presents CFOs with a glass-half-full/empty test. On the plus side, fees in 2008 increased only 2.2% to 3.7%, a rate that falls below most measures of inflation and is a far cry from the substantial annual hikes of a few years ago.But muddying that rosy view is the fact ...

By Scott Leibs • June 4, 2009

Cleaner (Balance) Sheets: The 2009 Working Capital Scorecard

Read the complete results of the 2009 working capital survey, or review just those results that appeared in print.Plato called necessity the mother of invention. It may also be the mother of collection.Squeezed by a slowing economy and nearly frozen credit markets, U.S. companies showed themselve...

By Randy Myers • June 1, 2009

Time Warner Snags Spin-off Rule Tax Advantage

Time Warner Inc. announced last week that its board of directors has authorized management to proceed with plans to complete the “legal and structural separation” of AOL from Time Warner. The spin-off, according to Time Warner, will help both companies to focus on their core businesses and pursue...

By Robert Willens • June 1, 2009

IASB Proposes Its Own Fair-Value Rule

In a long-expected move, the International Accounting Standards Board has proposed guidance for how companies should apply fair-value measurements to assets and liabilities. The draft largely pulls parts from the equivalent rule in U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.While IASB’s intern...

By Sarah Johnson • May 28, 2009

Small Favors: GM Bankruptcy Could Mean Tax Boon

Amid the gloom of General Motors’ looming bankruptcy and U.S. taxpayers’ possible acquisition of 70% of its shares, there might be a tiny glow. It’s likely that the portion of the company’s huge losses that it can apply to offset taxable income will be limitless, a prominent corporate tax expert ...

By David Katz • May 28, 2009

PCAOB Rips E&Y on Revenue Recognition

Ernst & Young failed to note when two clients strayed from revenue-recognition rules, according to the latest inspection report on the Big Four firm by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Consequently, the regulator’s sixth annual inspection of E&Y resulted in those clients hav...

By Sarah Johnson • May 27, 2009

Leadership in Finance: World Fuel’s Ira Birns

Ira Birns brought a treasurer mindset to the CFO post at World Fuel Services nearly two years ago. And since that time, he has managed to convince the fuel provider’s global team to take what some may consider a contrarian view during this down economy. “We’re not saying yes to every piece of bus...

By Sarah Johnson • May 26, 2009

Standard Bearers

It is somewhat ironic, Harvey Goldschmid said, that only the first hour of the day-long meeting on Friday was open to observers. After all, one of the goals of the Financial Crisis Advisory Group (FCAG), convened by the International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standar...

By Jason Karaian • May 25, 2009

Investor Reps to Join IASB

Two of the four U.S. representatives on the International Standards Accounting Standards Board will represent investors, beginning this summer.IASB’s trustees announced this week that they have appointed new members Patrick Finnegan, director of the financial reporting policy group at the CFA Ins...

By Sarah Johnson • May 21, 2009