Financial Director articles from April 2005

Financial Director archives from April 2005

Editor's Letter - Why FDs are central, but nervous.(Financial Directors)(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers, editor, editor@FinancialDirector.co.uk. It won't take you long to spot the connection between these eight companies: Marks & Spencer; J Sainsbury; Boots; MFI; WHSmith; Rentokil; Cookson; Lastminute.com. They have (as...

Sainsbury's pile in for Shapland.(Darren Shapland)(people)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Rachael Singh. Sainsbury's has announced that Carpetright finance director Darren Shapland (left) will join as group FD, replacing Roger Matthews, who will stay on with the retailer until after the preliminary results in May. ...

Insight - Be your self.(communication skills of financial directors)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. Coming across well during a presentation is vital not only to an FD's career but to protect the corporate image. Even the most financially astute FD will worry the analysts if his appearance is too wooden. ...

Insight - The fine print.(international financial reporting standards)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Joanna Gant. As companies switch from UK GAAP accounts to IFRS, they must make sure that the new series of numbers don't unwittingly trigger a breach of agreed bank and borrowing covenants. Assessing the impact of international...

Insight - Why oh why?(resignations)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Sarah Perrin. When an FD resigns, there is always speculation. But when an FD resigns with no apparent job prospect on the horizon, the rumour mill goes into overdrive. In mid March, the resignations of three FTSE-250 FDs were...

Insight Interview - Is scottfree?(Scott Di Valerio)(Interview)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Tom Berry. Microsoft CFO John Connors announced his retirement in January. By involving his corporate controller Scott Di Valerio in talking to the markets, has he been grooming him as his successor? Managing Microsoft's...

Insight - Summertime summit on the agenda.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The first-ever Financial Director Summit takes place in June 2005, hosted and organised by VNU Exhibitions Europe, a sister company to the publishers of the award-winning Financial Director magazine. The Financial Director Summit will...

Insight - Time to face music.(lawsuits)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Tom Berry. On 21 March, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Time Warner (formerly AOL Time Warner) with materially overstating advertising revenue and the number of its internet subscribers, and with aiding and abetting...

Insight - Going Going Gone?
April 1, 2005... Byline: Peter Warren. The University of Glamorgan has found that sensitive company data is not properly wiped from many hard drives sold on eBay. Companies should revisit their IT disposal policy. Highly sensitive data, such as user...

Accounting - You can't do IFRS by halves. The IFRS clock started ticking for real on 1 January, but the first signs of trouble will surface in the Q1 reporting period. Ready?(international financial reporting standards)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Peter Williams. Companies with December year-ends have now reported their last full-year figures under UK GAAP and have started to give an indication of what the numbers would have looked like under the emerging international...

Corporate governance - When arrogance reigns supreme. Now that Sarbox has become a permanent fixture of business dealings, the biggest threat to corporate collapse is still the CEO.(chief executive officer)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Robert Bruce. Now that Sarbox has become a permanent fixture of business dealings, the biggest threat to corporate collapse is still the CEO. The more the development of corporate governance unfolds, the more it is becoming...

IT Strategy - RFID tags can help improve a company's supply chain management. But once all the data is collected, how is it then processed?(radio frequency identification)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Tom Berry. Analysis paralysis Business IT has been dominated by what industry commentators like to call 'killer' technologies. In other words, pieces of kit and software that create 'business revolution, not evolution'. But...

Economics - Brown's end-of-term report. After eight years, Gordon Brown has an enviable track record, but it may be in jeopardy as trade and fiscal deficits widen.
April 1, 2005... Byline: Dennis Turner. At this point in the political cycle, decisive policy action tends to take a back seat to vague promises. Hopes for a reasoned analysis of where the economy is now, moreover, have to give way to partisan statements...

The Financial Director Interview - Company Ties. Since outsourcing and IT services companies Logica and CMG merged in 2002, FD Seamus Keating has been trying to help employees realise the benefits of having greater scale in a difficult market. But maximising human capital doesn't require the use of corporate neckwear.(Interview)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Sarah Perrin and Nick Sinclair. LogicaCMG, provider of management and IT consultancy, systems integration and outsourcing services, was formed through the merger of two similar size competitors at the end of 2002. With...

Cover story - Question time.(marketing management)(Cover story)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Steve Dell. Finance directors tend to fall into three camps when it comes to their views on marketing. Some still view the function as the unaccountable purveyor of expensive advertising; others are intimidated by the fancy...

Mergers - Supersize deals.
April 1, 2005... Byline: Richard Willsher. Since the glory days of the 1990s, merger activity in the US has stalled. Sarbanes-Oxley has had corporates looking at their internal controls rather than at potential takeover targets. But cheap funding means...

Banking - Break the bank.
April 1, 2005... Byline: Jules Stewart. British banks used to believe that the Bank of England existed to protect them from the real world. But the new order has had little impact on their biggest corporate clients. The dramatic collapse of Barings a...

Technology - Come together. Convergence is an important trend in the IT and telecoms industries, reaching across traditional organisational structures and influencing the way companies do business.
April 1, 2005... Byline: Ben King. Convergence is the linking of telephone and data networks together, and running both services on the same set of equipment. It's often known as Voice over IP (VoIP) because the new system sees the telephone network...

Decisions - Company's fleet policy.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Tom Berry. Finance directors have even more reason to take a long, hard look at their company's fleet policy. Following the confusion and complexity of carbon emission-based tax on company cars, the European Commission hopes to...

Decisions - Green fuels - Clean as a whistle.
April 1, 2005... Byline: John Maslen, editor of Fleet News. The future of the use of alternative fuels in UK fleets is in crisis following a clash over a programme of grants for clean-fuel cars. Both industry and government are attempting to persuade...

Decisions - Fleet management - Back seat driver.
April 1, 2005... Byline: John Maslen, editor of Fleet News. The traditional job of fleet manager is disappearing as finance and human resources tighten their grip on company car policy. But do finance directors know how much extra risk management work they...

Decisions - Technology - Track and trace.(Digicore UK)(Toad Group)
April 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. Vehicle tracking may seem like just another addition to life with Big Brother. But by installing tracking systems in fleet cars, companies are able to manage their vehicles and drivers more effectively - if they...