Unfair Value

In the current issue of Barron’s, former Financial Accounting Standards Board chief Dennis Beresford weighs in on the effects of new accounting policies on earnings.Beresford, now an accounting professor at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, believes the new rules will do the ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 21, 2001

FASB Rejects Wall St. Plea for Mortgage-backed Securities

The Financial Accounting Standards Board rejected another Wall Street effort to design commercial mortgage backed securitizations (CMBS) compliant with FAS 140, in effect since April 1, according to a report by Dow Jones Newswires in the Wall Street Journal, FASB senior project manager Halsey Bul...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 18, 2001

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

BREAKING NEWS: FASB Sets Effective Date for New Goodwill Standard

Mark your calendars. The Financial Accounting Standards Board set the effective date for its goodwill and intangible assets statement during its Wednesday meeting.The timeline is as follows:As expected, pooling transactions will no longer be permitted after June 30. All mergers must use the purch...

By Craig Schneider • May 16, 2001

Finance Professionals Group Seeks Internet Tax Moratorium Extension

Bethesda, Md.-based Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) recently asked Congress to extend the current moratorium on new Internet sales taxes for an additional four years and encouraged reform of the nation’s complex and inconsistent sales tax structure.AFP said that while it supports th...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 16, 2001

BREAKING NEWS: SEC Sues Former Sunbeam CFO Kersh, Dunlap, and Four Others

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against five former top executives at Sunbeam Corp., including former chief executive Albert “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap and former chief financial officer Russell Kersh for fraud, resulting in billions of dollars of investor losses. “This cas...

By Stephen Taub • May 15, 2001

PricewaterhouseCoopers CEO to Resign

Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said chief executive James J. Schiro is stepping down.Schiro was CEO of Price Waterhouse since 1997. He presided over the 1998 merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, which resulted in the formation of the world’s largest accounting firm.A...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 14, 2001

Why J&J Jumped to Purchase Accounting

Suddenly, the purchase accounting method is not all that terrifying to pharmaceutical and health-care giants. At least that’s the message Johnson & Johnson sent on Wednesday when it announced that it is in “advanced discussions” to acquire Inverness Medical Technology’s diabetes care products...

By Craig Schneider • May 11, 2001

Bush Expected to Nominate Harvey Pitt as SEC Chief

According to the Wall Street Journal, President Bush is expected to nominate securities lawyer Harvey Pitt as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.The president has reportedly signed off on Pitt’s nomination. An announcement is expected soon.Pitt, a partner at Washington, D.C.-based...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 7, 2001

‘Going-Concern’ Statements Actually Have a Silver Lining

According to a Dow Jones Newswires report in the Wall Street Journal, going-concern statements have their bright side.The statments are written by an auditor and attached to an initial public offering to suggest that there’s doubt a company can stay in business. According to a recent study by two...

By CFO Editorial Staff • May 7, 2001

EXCLUSIVE: FASB May Delay Effective Date for New M&A Standards

Companies may not have to begin implementing new merger accounting standards as early as previously thought, an official of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) tells CFO.com.Kim Petrone, FASB project manager, said FASB expects to make its decision on the timing by the end of this mont...

By Craig Schneider • May 2, 2001

Where’s the CFO?

The Cendant Corp. accounting debacle was the biggest corporate swindle of the 1990s, where some $500 million in phony revenue was recorded at CUC International Inc. in the two years prior to its 1997 merger with HFS Inc. to form Cendant. But did this fraud go back as far as the 1980s?Cendant cert...

By Stephen Barr • May 1, 2001

Tax E-fficiency

If taxes aren’t the first thing that come to mind when you think of spending on information technology, you aren’t alone. For example, according to a survey last fall by KPMG LLP and eCFO (the technology- focused cousin of this magazine), 68 percent of CFOs said taxes played little or no role in ...

By Ian Springsteel • May 1, 2001

Counting Their Chickens

Last summer, when Irvine, California, semiconductor maker Broadcom Corp. was negotiating to buy Altima Communications Inc., its biggest concern was the company’s relationships with its customers. As with any small company in the hypercompetitive technology sector, winning and keeping customers is...

By Ian Springsteel • May 1, 2001

Will FASB Finish on Time?

Still months away from issuing its official standard, FASB made several adjustments to its proposal on accounting for goodwill and intangibles during its meeting last Wednesday. The most notable changes to its 2001 Exposure Draft Business Combinations and Intangible Assets — Accounting for Goodwi...

By Craig Schneider • April 16, 2001

Freebie and the Bund

In September, executives at German media giant Bertelsmann AG (www.bertelsmann.com) joined the growing ranks of companies offering employees free computers and low-cost Internet access for home use. Bertelsmann’s plan, dubbed PC/Web Offer for All, pretty much mirrored schemes launched earlier by ...

By John Goff • April 15, 2001

Why Pepsi Loves Pooling

PepsiCo, Inc. is going to great lengths to satisfy its latest case of the munchies. The snack food and soft drink maker said late Monday that it agreed to sell 13.2 million shares of its stock to ensure that its pending merger with The Quaker Oats Co. will qualify for the “pooling of interests” m...

By Craig Schneider • April 11, 2001

A Busy Day for FASB

The FASB is in meetings all Wednesday, re-deliberating on the revised 2001 Exposure Draft, Business Combinations and Intangible Assets — Accounting for Goodwill and it will address the following issues: The criteria for recognizing acquired intangible assets separately from goodwillThe accounting...

By Craig Schneider • April 11, 2001

Can a New SEC Chairman Repair Relations With Top Execs?

Corporate America is mad as hell and not going to take it any longer. At least that’s the word from Barry Rogstad, president of the American Business Conference, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of midsize public growth companies.Noting the recent string of directives from the Securities and Ex...

By Lisa Yoon • April 9, 2001

Unmixed Blessing

(Editor’s Note: This story is part of an occasional series on the reaction of CFOs to planned changes to goodwill and other aspects of M&A accounting.)Scott Royster knows a good thing when he sees one.As CFO of Radio One, a firm that has been using acquisitions to grow by leaps and bounds sin...

By Ed Zwirn • April 4, 2001

Technology Review Time for the Tax Department

Corporate tax departments have been the forgotten stepchild of financial IT innovation — until now. According to a new survey by KPMG LLP, 70 percent of the Fortune 1,000 tax directors polled say they are currently leading radical restructuring efforts focused on using technology to reduce paper ...

By Alix Stuart • April 1, 2001

Technology Review Time

Corporate tax departments have been the forgotten stepchild of financial IT innovation–until now. According to a new survey by KPMG LLP, 70 percent of the Fortune 1,000 tax directors polled say they are currently leading radical restructuring efforts focused on using technology to reduce paper an...

By Alix Stuart • April 1, 2001

Decoding Intangibles

Hold the hosannas for Edmund Jenkins and the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Yes, the accounting world’s grandees may have bowed to political reality when they eased their stance on accounting for business combinations, but their new thinking about goodwill could make life difficult for cor...

By Andrew Osterland • April 1, 2001

Son of Reg FD

For the past year, senior financial execs have been focusing on such hot topics like FAS 133, the derivatives-reporting rule, Regulation FD and the imminent new rules governing merger accounting. As a result, SFEs might be excused for overlooking FAS 131, which will be closely scrutinized by the ...

By Lisa Yoon • March 29, 2001

UPDATE: IAS Sets First Monthly Meeting for London

Less than two months after its 14 members were named, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is now formally in operation. While the new board and its members won’t be officially working full time until April 1, the constitution empowering it was officially put into effect earlier th...

By Ed Zwirn • March 23, 2001

How FAS 133 Cost Sears $270 Million

The $270 million charge against earnings that Sears, Roebuck reported this week in its 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission stems from the 1997 termination of an interest rate swap in its credit card portfolio, a company spokeswoman said. But precise details on the terms of the...

By Joseph Radigan • March 23, 2001