Strategic Finance articles from June 2003

Strategic Finance archives from June 2003

The IMA vision: global leadership. (Perspectives: Letter from the President).
June 1, 2003... The world is getting smaller. Business is becoming increasingly global. As these changes occur, financial professionals all over the world are seeing the need to become part of an organization that helps them enhance their knowledge, their...

Strategy and the board of directors. (Strategic Management).
June 1, 2003... How well do directors truly understand the strategy of a business? I'll share my thoughts based on experiences at recent executive workshops and coaching sessions with CEOs, CFOs, and directors on developing a structure for understanding and...

Tips for a successful relocation. (Careers).
June 1, 2003... In today's tight employment market, it's not uncommon for accounting professionals to expand their job searches beyond their immediate geographic areas. Once you receive an offer that requires relocating, however, you'll face some tough...

Creating business knowledge for strategic leadership.(Institute of Management Accountants Conference)
June 1, 2003... Today the practice of management accounting and financial management is captured in the whirlwind of the Information Age and its seemingly endless acceleration of the pace of change. The challenge is to understand the leadership difficulties...

Leslie Seidman named to FASB; Gary Schieneman reappointed. (News).(appointment to Financial Accounting Standards Board)(reappointment to Financial Accounting Foundation )(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... IMA MEMBER LESLIE F. SEIDMAN, CPA, HAS BEEN APPOINTED TO A THREE-year term on the Financial Accounting Standards Board beginning July 1, 2003. She will complete the term of John K. Wulff, who resigned from the Board, effective June 30, to...

Job news good for accounting grads. (Street Wise).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Most business graduates are finding jobs and at higher salaries than other graduates, according to the spring 2003 salary survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), a Bethlehem, Pa.-based organization that...

Readers' input.(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2003... THE NEW AIA I read with interest the News item [April 2003] on the newly formed AlA [Association for Integrity in Accounting] and their desire to eliminate the FASB and inject themselves and the government in setting new accounting...

Ethical corporations are still more profitable. (Ethics).(results of research by The Institute of Business Ethics)
June 1, 2003... IT'S REFRESHING TO READ THE RESULTS OF NEWER RESEARCH THAT REPLICATES a conclusion about which I have long been convinced: Large corporations that display a commitment to ethical behavior have superior long-term financial performance. The...

Credit agencies in congressional crosshairs. (Government).
June 1, 2003... NOW THAT THE SECURITIES & Exchange Commission is getting near the end of the road on Sarbanes-Oxley (S-O) rulemakings, Congress is putting together an agenda for post-Enron "unfinished business." Credit rating agency reform will definitely be...

Finding the value of financial investments. (Books).(Investment Pricing Methods)(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... * VALUING AND PRICING FINANCIAL INVESTMENTS can be difficult for any financial or accounting professional. In their book, Investment Pricing Methods, Patrick Casabona and Robert M. Traficanti provide a basic understanding of the various methods...

IMA 2002 salary guide: members' salaries are still going up.(related article: Male/female compensation)
June 1, 2003... Several interesting developments emerged from this year's salary survey. First, a trend that has occurred since 1992 has been broken: Usually there is no statistically significant average salary increase in even-numbered years following one in...

How to be a top strategic advisor: follow the advice of Walter B. Meigs, American hero. (Career Skills).
June 1, 2003... In college, our first accounting book was Accounting: the Basis for Business Decisions, written by Walter B. Meigs, a consummate educator who was devoted to his students, accounting, and the process of education. To my understanding, many...

The art of earnouts: both sides can win with this increasingly popular M & A dispute-resolution strategy. (Financial Management).(Interview)
June 1, 2003... When Moe, Larry, and Curly had a disagreement, it was usually nothing that a double-fingered poke in the eyes or tire-iron over the head couldn't solve. Earnouts, on the other hand, require a bit more finesse. An earnout, in a...

Privacy protection on the Internet. (Technology).
June 1, 2003... It's Saturday morning, and you're looking forward to a leisurely weekend when you receive an urgent call from the office. Your company has been charged in a $500 million class-action lawsuit for violating customer privacy by selling the names...

Managing a business as a portfolio of customers to drive profit. (Performance Measures).
June 1, 2003... A recent issue of Fortune magazine asserted that only the best 20% of a company's customers generate a huge portion of its share price--in some cases, all of it. The trouble is, the authors wrote, the worst 20% may destroy a ton of value with...

WordPerfect Office 11. (Tools of the Trade).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... WordPerfect Office 11 from Corel has enhanced compatibility with other file formats, ability to publish to XML and PDF, access to Microsoft Outlook[R] Address book, multilingual writing tools for more than 30 languages, RealTime preview, and a...

PDF. (Tools of the Trade).(portable document format)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... PDF (Portable Document Format) is the standard for producing documents that can be read by anyone, anywhere who has the free Adobe Reader software. In business, PDF documents have a number of advantages over paper while sharing some of the...

Sageworks, Inc. (Tools of the Trade).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Sageworks, Inc. has released ValueCents, a financial analytic tool that uses a tier-one feed from the SEC's EDGAR database to produce reports that evaluate the operating performance of nearly every publicly traded company in the U.S. The...

Handspring PDA. (Tools of the Trade).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Handspring PDAs accept Springboard Modules that plug in the back. Early on, there were just a couple of modules, but now there are six general categories for Springboards, including communications and navigation (mobile phones, wireless modems,...

Escaping the catch. (Tech Forum).(progress forward by returning to basics)
June 1, 2003... * ONE OF THE DRAWBACKS of looking at new software and hardware on a regular basis is that, over time, you tend to develop the misguided mind-set that whatever's next is likely to be better. You forget that the latest version could actually be a...

Foes of stock-option expensing rise again. (Trends in Financial Management).
June 1, 2003... * NEW ACCOUNTING FOR STOCK options is a controversy that just won't die. In mid-March, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) said it was tackling a project to improve the "accounting and disclosures of stock-based compensation."...

Cairo University ties for lead in CMA exam completers in 2001. (Certification).
June 1, 2003... THE LAST REPORT OF SUCCESSFUL CMA candidates by college or university was in the September 2001 issue of Strategic Finance, which reported the top 20 colleges and universities producing CMA exam completers through December 2000. This report...

Really retro. (End Note).(www.officemuseum.com)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Your stapler sits on your desk, still clamped shut on a small sheaf of papers from yesterday, and your computer, silently colluding, has locked up on a screen with about an hour's worth of work frozen inside. As you lean forward, squinting,...