Testing the Code

Testing the CodeIs 2000 a leap year? It is, but many people, including some programmers, think otherwise. And that’s just one reason why a lot of seemingly cleaned-up software code will fail on or after January 1, 2000.The typical year 2000 (Y2K) remediation effort finds and corrects about 1,000 ...

By John Xenakis • July 1, 1999

A Policy for Trade Secrets

Insurance for trade secrets, such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. What’s next? Now there’s a policy designed to protect against the theft of trade secrets. But some think you shouldn’t insure what can’t be quantified.CNA Financial CorporationCNA Financial Corp. introduced a trade secret p...

By Steve Bergsman • July 1, 1999

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

Dollars in the Details

(Note and link omitted)As levers of financial management go, none bears more weight than working capital. The viability of every business activity rests on daily changes in receivables, inventory, and payables.“We focus on all three,” declares CFO and executive vice president Larry Waisanen of bu...

By S.L. Mintz • July 1, 1999

What CEOs Want

What do CEOs want in their CFOs? Would you believe finance expertise, leadership–and impeccable Little League credentials? James Lavelle thinks so. The chairman and CEO of Cotelligent Inc., a $327 million San Francisco IT consulting and outsourcing-services firm, recently spent more than a year s...

By Julie Carrick Dalton • July 1, 1999

Pfizer Defiant

Perched on the third-floor landing of Boston’s Marriott Copley Place, a tense analyst lies in wait for the trio of Pfizer executives ascending the escalator. “Looks like Celebrex is gonna be a blockbuster,” the analyst ventures, referring to a new arthritis drug that has been selling like hotcake...

By Stephen Barr • July 1, 1999

$10B in Federal Revenue Lost Yearly to Tax Shelters

To hear the Treasury Department tell it, some $10 billion in federal revenue is lost each year to abusive corporate tax shelters, with only a portion subsequently recouped through Internal Revenue Service countermeasures. So the Clinton Administration has proposed sweeping changes to the tax laws...

By Ian Springsteel • June 1, 1999

Is Enron Being Tripped Up by New Accounting Rule?

Companies worried about the impact of a proposed change in the rules for accounting for unconsolidated subsidiaries should keep their eyes on Enron Corp. With an aggressive growth strategy taking the company into newly deregulated businesses here and abroad, the Houston- based energy company, wit...

By Ronald Fink • June 1, 1999

With The Internet, The Whole World Is Listening

Last January, top executives of C-Cube Microsystems Inc. conducted a conference call with about 60 people, mostly analysts and portfolio managers, to discuss the company’s performance for Q4 1998. Three months later, when the Milpitas, Calif., maker of digital video systems and chips announced it...

By Joseph McCafferty and John Xenakis • June 1, 1999

Internet Shortcut for Capital Markets: Running in Circles

Three years ago, the financial press began to predict the end of Wall Street as we know it. Prompting such predictions was the news that the founder of New York’s Spring Street Brewery had taken the company public over the Internet. Here, went the thinking, was a ready means of cutting out invest...

By Steve Bergsman • June 1, 1999

Poised for Takeoff

For years, U.S. businesses have sought to rein in the costs of corporate travel, which collectively amounted to a whopping $175 billion in 1998, according to a recent survey by American Express Corporate Services. They have done so essentially in four ways: enforcing travel policies, negotiating ...

By John P. Mello Jr. • June 1, 1999

Finance Executives Doing the Heavy Lifting

William Kelly, chief financial officer of Boston Partners Asset Management LP, may not have a background in climate control, data transfer, information technology, or crisis management, but recently he received a crash course in each when he oversaw the redesign of the investment firm’s new offic...

By Julie Carrick Dalton • May 1, 1999

Watchdogs or Lapdogs?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least as far as audit committees are concerned. Twenty-five years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions and payoffs to foreign governments by defense and aviation giant Lo...

By Stephen Barr • May 1, 1999

Rational Exuberance?

Want evidence that there’s method to U.S. dealmania? Consider the fact that credit rating agencies have responded with relative aplomb to last year’s frenzied merger-and-acquisition activity.Despite the record number and dollar value of nonfinancial mergers and acquisitions tracked by Securities ...

By S.L. Mintz • May 1, 1999

Little Fish, Big Stock Pond

Craig Rogers spends his days in a place he calls “bulletin–board hell.” As vice president and treasurer of Cell Robotics International Inc., an Albuquerque manufacturer of laser-based medical devices, Rogers routinely copes with investment bankers who won’t touch his deals and brokers who won’t t...

By Joseph McCafferty • May 1, 1999

Risk’n Kit and Caboodle

Peter Cox, CFO of United Grain Growers Ltd. (UGG), spent part of his early career as an accountant with Price Waterhouse in Paris. Born and reared in the United Kingdom, Cox says the experience taught him to understand the shortcomings of traditional accounting treatments in capturing a corporati...

By Russ Banham • April 1, 1999

California C-Suite Fraud: Guilty As Charged

The hearing last December in U.S. District Court in San Francisco had reached the moment of truth. Chan Desaigoudar and Steven Henke, former executives of California Micro Devices, had been convicted five months earlier of securities fraud and insider trading. And as the two stood for sentencing,...

By Stephen Barr • April 1, 1999

Why Veterans Love VERA

Think you had a tough time selling your company’s reengineering plan? Think again. After all, did you have to fend off a motion on the floor of the House of Representatives aimed at killing yours? W. Todd Grams did.The chief financial officer of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Grams fac...

By Stephen Barr • April 1, 1999

New Boeing CFO: Fearless in Seattle

It’s not every day that a new CFO flatly contradicts the boss in front of a reporter. Boeing Co. president and chief operating officer Harry Stonecipher had railed against the venerable program-accounting system for airliners. “You have to know the cost of the airplane as you go along the product...

By Roy Harris • April 1, 1999

Mergers, Acquisitions and Shell Games

Remember the reverse merger? This technique for going public quickly–used by Ted Turner to launch the Turner Broadcasting System–had its wings clipped by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the mid-1990s. But now, Internet companies and roll-up firms, hell-bent on cashing in on Wall Street’...

By Joseph McCafferty • April 1, 1999

Draining the Pool

New accounting rules for business combinations could make many mergers and acquisitions look a lot less enticing than they do today if the rules that are expected to be proposed in June are adopted.First, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has all but proposed the end of the popular pooling...

By Ian Springsteel • March 1, 1999

Between the Lines of Open-Book Management

The scenario is simple, says Tom Landa, chief financial officer of AmeriSteel. A worker fails to do proper maintenance in one of the company’s steel mills; the machine fails; production stops; output slows; prices go up; customers drift away; profits sag; and everyone receives a smaller bonus at ...

By Julie Carrick Dalton • March 1, 1999

How PeopleSoft is Regaining Momentum

A few days before the new year, Ronald Codd stepped down as CFO of PeopleSoft to take the reins of Momentum Business Applications, a research and development company PeopleSoft decided to spin off last November. The move is clearly a bold departure. Drug companies, such as Alza, Centocor, and Imm...

By A CFO Interview • March 1, 1999

A Civil Reaction

A Civil ReactionMaybe the chemistry just isn’t there, because W.R. Grace & Co. is on the move, but its CFO, Larry Ellberger, is staying behind. The CFO and SVP announced he will resign when the specialty-chemicals company moves its headquarters from Boca Raton, Fla., to Columbia, Md., later t...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 1, 1999

Reel-World Accounting

At the Academy Awards ceremony a year ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger tossed Titanic an accolade that may have dwarfed even the best-picture honor. “Some say its box office may grow so large,” he intoned in the intimidating accent Hollywood has made globally recognizable, “that it will actually show a...

By Roy Harris • March 1, 1999

Bandwidth Pipe Dreams

Ask any group of technology managers if they would rather double the speed of their network or double the speed of their PC, and nearly all of them will opt for the faster network.Clearly, a change in investment priorities toward bandwidth–the capacity of a network to move data, measured by bits ...

By Edward Teach and Jeffrey Ubois • March 1, 1999