SEC Clarifies New Rules on Executive Pay

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has clarified what data companies can use to comply with its new rule requiring disclosure of the relationship between executive pay and performance.The pay-for-performance proposal is part of the Dodd-Frank law’s disclosure package involving executive ...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 24, 2016

Stock Options Help Firms Keep Workers Quiet

Companies offer stock options to rank-and-file employees to deter them from reporting financial misconduct, according to a new study that may have implications for regulatory efforts to encourage whistleblowing.The study found firms involved in financial reporting violations granted more rank-and...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 21, 2016

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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

The End of Accounting?

Although the title of the new book Baruch Lev has co-authored, “The End of Accounting,”  provocatively suggests the finale of financial reporting as we know it, he cautions that he really isn’t calling for its absolute elimination.Baruch Lev Baruch Lev“We don’t recommend getting rid of financial ...

By David Katz • Oct. 20, 2016

New ISO Standard Is an Anti-Bribery Game-Changer

As of Oct. 14, there is a new global standard for anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) management systems, courtesy of the International Organization for Standardization. Called ISO 37001, it means there is now an internationally recognized set of measures to prevent and detect bribery.David Lawler ...

By David Lawler • Oct. 20, 2016

How to Choose a 401(k) Plan Auditor

For startup companies or others that are putting a 401(k) plan in place, the details may seem endless.Generally, audits of such plans with 100 or more participants are required as part of the Form 5500 filing for employee benefit plans. For 2015, the instructions for the form ran 82 pages. By com...

By Robert J. Rojas • Oct. 18, 2016

Banks Take on the Fintechs

While there is great uncertainty about the future of banking, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the digital revolution that has pitted fintechs and banks against each other, in recent years, is beginning to approach an inflection point. Competition in many markets is tightening as new pla...

By Kenny Smith • Oct. 18, 2016

Goldman Sachs Posts 58% Increase in Profit

Goldman Sachs reported surprisingly strong earnings on Tuesday, breaking out of a recent slump amid a surge in revenue from its core trading division.CFO Harvey Schwartz said the third quarter was Goldman’s best in five quarters, with revenue increasing 19% to $8.2 billion and profit climbing 58%...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 18, 2016

Merger Mania: How to Reconcile Tax Functions

You cannot throw a rock these days without hitting a financial executive at a multinational corporation who’s stressed-out about a merger. Calendar year 2015 saw an all-time record volume of M&A transactions, with a total of $4.7 trillion in global deals announced during the 12-month period. ...

By Brian Peccarelli • Oct. 17, 2016

Netflix Stock Rises 20% on Q3 Member Growth

Netflix shares soared in after-hours trading Monday as the video streaming service reported adding nearly 3.6 million subscribers in the third quarter.The growth in subscribers far exceeded Netflix’s forecast of about 2.3 million new subscribers and made up for its sluggish second quarter, when i...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 17, 2016

BofA Crushes Estimates With 6.6% Profit Gain

Bank of America on Monday reported its first profit increase in three quarters, benefiting from a surge in trading revenue and its cost-cutting efforts.The bank’s top and bottom lines beat analysts’ estimates as profit rose 6.6% to $4.45 billion, or 41 cents a share, and revenue increased 3% to $...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 17, 2016

Presidential Campaign Spotlights Net Operating Losses

On Oct. 1, The New York Times released pages from the Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York 1995 tax returns of Donald J. Trump, the  Republican presidential nominee. The pages showed a $916 million loss, which could potentially cancel out federal income tax liability for up to 18 years. The news...

By Ken Crutchfield • Oct. 17, 2016

Wells Fargo Profit Falls But Beats Estimates

The scandal over Wells Fargo’s sales practices didn’t appear to have dramatically affected its bottom line as the embattled bank’s third-quarter earnings came in ahead of analysts’ estimates.Wells Fargo reported Friday that profit fell 2.6% to $5.64 billion, or $1.03 a share, beating the consensu...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 14, 2016

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Oct. 14

Jason Hollar has been promoted to CFO at Sears Holdings, effective immediately. He succeeds Robert A. Schriesheim, who left the company to pursue other business interests. Hollar joined Sears in October 2014 as senior vice president of finance.Voya Financial has promoted Michael Smith to the top ...

By Joan Urdang • Oct. 14, 2016

Clinton v. Trump: Who’s Better for Business?

As you may be aware, this year’s presidential election campaign is like no other. We’ve heard a whole lot of buzz about the candidates’ temperaments and character, about demagoguery and email servers, about bigotry and speaker fees—not to mention marital fidelity, reality TV, pantsuits, and hand ...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 11, 2016

Rent-a-Center Blames POS System for Sales Drop

Shares of Rent-a-Center plunged on Tuesday after the furniture and equipment rental firm preliminarily reported a sharp drop in same-store sales resulting from problems with a new point-of-sale system.Rent-A-Center said sales at stores open at least a year fell about 12% in the third quarter, com...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 11, 2016

The Evolution of Budgeting and Forecasting

 The year-end budgeting and planning crunch is in full swing, which has many finance teams questioning whether the annual budgeting ritual is still a valuable exercise. Here are fix articles looking at current trends and tips for how to avoid the mad dash to close the books.Why Continuous Improve...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 8, 2016

Disappointed with FP&A? Ramp Up Tech Spending

It might not come as much of a surprise to learn that the more companies spend on analytics technology, the better the performance of their financial planning and analysis functions.What might be less intuitive is just how extreme the advantage is when using more FP&A-oriented technology.In t...

By David McCann • Oct. 7, 2016

Credit Suisse Fined $90M for Inflating Metric

Credit Suisse has agreed to pay $90 million to settle charges that it misrepresented how much new wealth management business it was attracting by manipulating a key performance metric.The “net new assets” metric tracks the total net inflow of assets under management (AUM) from new and existing cl...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 6, 2016

Holiday Retail Shopping to Increase 4%

With the holidays around the corner, some U.S. consumers say they will spend more or the same as last year on holiday purchases by year’s end, although still not as much as pre-recession standards, according to a new survey by the consulting firm AlixPartners.The “U.S. Holiday Sales Forecast and ...

By Sean Allocca • Oct. 3, 2016

Key Performance Drivers: KPIs Evolved

Key performance indicators (KPIs) have long been a fundamental tool for a company’s management to measure performance. KPIs focus management’s attention on a finite array of statistics that are indicative of a company’s performance, and are believed to have explanatory power over the company’s de...

By Michael S. Blake • Oct. 3, 2016

Six Ways to Cut Your Shipping Costs

Transportation costs are one of a company’s major expenses. Depending on the type of industry, truck and parcel shipping payments can represent 5% to 10% of costs. Unfortunately, shipping pricing is extremely complex, with different classifications, numerous discounts, constantly changing fuel su...

By Garry Oswald • Sept. 29, 2016

PepsiCo Beats Q3 Estimates, Raises Guidance

PepsiCo on Thursday reported better-than-expected third-quarter results and raised its full-year guidance for a second straight quarter as the company continued to be one of the packaged food industry’s strongest performers.PepsiCo’s earnings rose 4% to $1.40 per share, defying analysts’ estimate...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 29, 2016

Voluntary Audit Disclosures Continue to Grow

Large U.S. companies are continuing to increase voluntary audit committee-related disclosures in a number of areas including how they oversee and appoint external auditors and the reasons for changes in fees.In a review of the 2016 proxy statements of Fortune 100 companies, EY’s Center for Board ...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 28, 2016

Minding the Non-GAAP Measures

The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a hard look at non-GAAP measures in reaction to the increased use of these measures. As a result, companies and audit committees need to consider reexamining their non-GAAP measures and related controls and procedures for disclosure of such measure...

By Jennifer Burns and Jeff Aughton • Sept. 27, 2016

Clinton Proposes Raising Estate Tax to 65%

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has proposed raising the tax on inherited wealth to 65% for the largest estates, a stark contrast to her GOP opponent Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate the estate tax.Under current law, estates worth $5.45 million or more for an individual are taxed ...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 26, 2016