Despite Chip Cards, Payment Security Continues to Be a Concern

 As retailers and restaurants have been slow to roll out chip-based point-of-sale terminals for more secure payment processing, companies such as Wendy’s are still experiencing POS breaches. Here are five stories to get you up to speed on the latest in POS security.Only 37% of Retailers Equipped ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 25, 2016

Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index Fell 0.2% in May

The U.S. economy is showing signs of resilience, but the numbers still point to slow growth with meaningful downside risks, according to new data from the Conference Board released Thursday.The board’s Leading Economic Index for the United States declined 0.2% in May to 123.7, following a 0.6% in...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 23, 2016

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

Musk Shifts Gears at Tesla With SolarCity Offer

Elon Musk is planning to drive his electric car maker Tesla Motors toward diversification by combining it with the solar installation company he also controls.Tesla on Tuesday offered to acquire SolarCity in an all-stock deal valued at up to $2.8 billion. Musk is the chairman and largest sharehol...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 22, 2016

FedEx Beats Q4 Estimates But Lowers Guidance

FedEx Corp. posted an unadjusted loss for its fiscal fourth quarter and lowered its guidance for the coming year as it continues to beef up its ground operations to keep up with the growth in online shopping.The company said Tuesday that it lost 26 cents per share for the quarter ended May 31, co...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 22, 2016

Corporate Cash Piling up as Brexit Vote Nears

While there’s a great deal of uncertainty about whether the United Kingdom will vote to leave the European Union this Thursday, there’s almost no doubt that a pro-Brexit result would be a downer for U.S.-based multinationals. And while no one is comparing the situation to the 2008-2010 financial ...

By David Katz • June 21, 2016

The Optimal CFO? Depends on Industry Growth Rate

Last month, in our Square-Off debate forum, CFO presented five opinions on the question of whether an accounting background is important to today’s finance chiefs. The views given were divergent, well-stated, and in some cases startling.Now comes a look at the issue from academia, with three busi...

By David McCann • June 21, 2016

Economic Profit: A Better Way to Measure Performance

BP shareholders balk at a $19 million compensation award for the company’s chief executive officer. Forty-two percent of Anglo American shareholders vote against a $4.9 million executive pay package. Credit Suisse’s CEO asks the board to cut his bonus after an unprofitable year.Frank R. Hopson Fr...

By Frank R. Hopson • June 20, 2016

Taking a Closer Look At Compensation Strategies

 Changes in overtime pay rules present an opportunity for CFOs to review their company’s payroll practices to minimize existing risk as well as future risk. Here are five articles covering the latest compensation trends that are important to CFOs.New Overtime Pay Rules: How to AdjustThe U.S. Depa...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 18, 2016

CFO Week in Review

In case you missed them, CFO offers the week’s most-read stories.CFOs on the Move: Week Ending June 10IMAX, Coach, Edison Int’l, Assurant, Ruby Tuesday, DSW, Colfax, Nexteer Automotive, DeVry Education, Beam SuntoryThe Era of the Well-Rounded CFOFour major disruptive changes in the past several y...

By Kerry Maruna • June 18, 2016

The Longest Cash Cycle

In the last decade, Amazon.com’s cash cycle — the time between when it pays cash for inventory and when it receives cash from the customer — started appearing in corporate finance textbooks as an example of brevity. While in many industries and companies a cash cycle can be one, two, three months...

By Vincent Ryan • June 17, 2016

Rite Aid Swallows Tough Medicine in First Quarter

Rite Aid on Thursday posted lower-than-expected revenues and earnings for its fiscal first quarter 2017, due to pressure on pharmacy reimbursement rates.The Camp Hill, Pa., drugstore chain reported revenues of $8.2 billion, a net loss of $4.6 million, or zero cents per diluted share, for the quar...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 16, 2016

FASB Requires Timelier Recording of Credit Losses

Addressing an issue that arose in the early days of the financial crisis, the Financial Accounting Standards Board today put out an Accounting Standards Update (ASU)  “requiring timelier recording of credit losses on loans and other financial instruments held by financial institutions and other o...

By David Katz • June 16, 2016

Welcome to ‘Risk Accounting’

Conventional ERM systems are generally assessment based and, consequently, they typically report results via an assessment metric often based on three colors: red, amber, and green. The managerial usefulness of such systems is limited for a number of reasons: first, “assessment” as opposed to “me...

By Peter Hughes • June 16, 2016

Brexit Fears Roil Markets

Not only are stock markets down across Europe ahead of a possible Brexit, but bonds are even in negative return territory as investors are now willing to pay for safety.Recent opinion polls have suggested that there may be growing support for a Brexit vote in the June 13 referendum, in which Brit...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 14, 2016

IT Operational Budgets Barely Increasing

Slowing corporate revenues are impacting IT spending, according to the Computer Economics annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study for 2016/2017..The Irvine, Calif. firm’s survey of more than 200 IT executives in the United States and Canada showed that IT operational spending will increa...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 14, 2016

Private Firms Loving FASB Breaks on Interest-rate Swaps

Despite worries that privately held giants like Koch Industries and Cargill will gain an unfair advantage over public companies via a Financial Accounting Standards Board simplified hedge accounting alternative for reporting interest-rate swaps, the board enacted the measure in 2014.Michael Cheng...

By David Katz • June 14, 2016

SEC Allows Use of Inline XBRL Data in Filings

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has announced it will allow companies to file financial statements using a format known as Inline XBRL as part of its effort to improve the transparency of and access to disclosures.Companies are already required to structure financial statement data in...

By Matthew Heller • June 14, 2016

Medtronic Wins Battle Over $1.3B Tax Bill

A U.S. Tax Court judge has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service improperly assessed Medtronic a $1.3 billion tax deficiency, finding its allocation of profits between the medical device maker’s operations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico was unreasonable.In a case that focuses on Medtronic’s transf...

By Matthew Heller • June 13, 2016

Tech M&A Activity on the Rise

The tech sector has seen quite a bit of activity recently, with Microsoft buying LinkedIn, Salesforce buying Demandware, and Marketo going private. Here’s a look at some of the larger tech deals so far this year.In the largest tech deal of 2016, Microsoft announced early Monday that it was acquir...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 13, 2016

Be Careful What You Crowdsource

Tools for handling and analyzing very large amounts of unstructured data are increasingly “mainstream” in both research and enterprise IT operational use. What they make possible is fascinating – and the potential to “mine” these huge pools of data (which I suppose we should call “lakes” or even ...

By John Parkinson • June 13, 2016

Dell Parent Posts Loss from EMC Deal

Dell’s parent company on Friday reported that profits were hit by costs related to Dell’s pending acquisition of EMC Corp. and weaker-than-expected sales.For the first quarter, Denali Holding posted an operating loss of $161 million, an improvement from last year’s loss of $335 million but steepe...

By Matthew Heller • June 10, 2016

H&R Block Shares Up Despite ‘Bad Tax Season’

H&R Block’s tax return volume fell more than 4% during its tax-season quarter but its shares surged on Friday as earnings beat estimates and the company increased its dividend.The tax preparer earned $700.7 million, or $3.13 a share, for the fourth quarter that ended April 30, down 5.2% from ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 10, 2016

Coach’s CFO Nielsen to Leave

Jane Hamilton Nielsen has left New York luxury handbag and accessories retailer Coach to be chief financial officer at ailing Ralph Lauren, sources told The Wall Street Journal, but the rival has yet to publicly confirm.Late on Wednesday Coach said that Nielsen had told the company that she would...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 9, 2016

Metric of the Month: The Cost of an Invoice

Process improvement in financial management means spotting resource leaks that you don’t see when working on a day-to-day basis. In the area of accounts receivable (AR) management, revenue leakage can take the form of unnecessary overhead costs, toleration of late customer payments, weak recovery...

By Mary C. Driscoll • June 9, 2016

Staggered Boards Affect Audit Committee Quality

Audit committees at companies with a staggered board structure are not responsive to low shareholder approval, making them less effective than their counterparts at firms that do not stagger board elections, according to a new study.In staggered (or classified) votes, only a third of board seats ...

By Matthew Heller • June 8, 2016