Financial Director articles from June 2005

Financial Director archives from June 2005

Editor's letter - An inspector goes away.(Editorial)
June 1, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers, editor, editor@FinancialDirector.co.uk This may come as a bit of a shock to you but Gordon Brown recently cracked a joke. I'm not sure if they were rolling in the aisles at the annual dinner of the Confederation of...

Keen to look after the net profits.(Reg Vardy appoints Gerard McAloon)(Gary Belcham promoted to Reliance Care)(Davis Service Group appoints Kevin Quinn)
June 1, 2005... Byline: Rachael Singh. Ward, a chartered accountant who started his career at Price Waterhouse specialising in audit and investigation, was originally contracted to FTSE last year to oversee business services, covering maternity leave. ...

Exit stage left.(Chief financial officers resign)(Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002)
June 1, 2005... Byline: John Sterlicchi in Tampa Bay. Sarbanes-Oxley has been like a pressure cooker for CFOs at some of the US's biggest firms. Not only have many failed to meet the 10-K filing deadline, it seems many more have jumped ship as a result....

Cheque it out.(Bacs Ltd.; payment system)
June 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. IP-based BACS is not only more secure than today's system, it can also handle billions more transactions. Companies that don't migrate to the new system in time may have to go back to chequebooks. In any...

Free for all.(rule for financial disclosure)
June 1, 2005... Byline: John Sterlicchi in Tampa Bay. The SEC's comment letters on all the companies it asks to provide additional information have always been considered confidential, but now they are available freely to anyone interested in them. ...

Far out risks.
June 1, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers. Following its recent visit to India, a popular destination for companies outsourcing major corporate functions, the FSA acknowledged that there are considerable risks in managing oursourced centres from afar. ...

Accounting - Rating agencies put on watch. Credit rating agencies issue views on the creditworthiness of companies. Corporate scandals have cast doubt on their worth.
June 1, 2005... Byline: Peter Williams. Credit rating agencies (CRAs) and the credit rating process are coming under increasing scrutiny. CRAs, along with auditors, the accounting profession in general and market regulators, came in for sharp criticism...

Corporate governance - If the boot fits ... In this time of stringent corporate legislation, one has to wonder why investors should not be forced to comply in the same way.
June 1, 2005... Byline: Robert Bruce. These are difficult days in the world of corporate governance, not least because people feel they are knee-deep in regulation and losing sight of precisely what sparked the onslaught of legislation. Small wonder,...

IT strategy - Dear diary ... 'Blogging' is the biggest driver of internet growth. But investing in online chat forums for business partners may be a costly mistake.
June 1, 2005... Byline: Tom Berry. Thursday, 12 May, 4.34pm Blogs (short for 'web logs') are personal diaries or streams of consciousness that are published on the web for all to see. Blogs sprang up in the late 1990s as link-driven sites with...

Economics - It's all in the balance. The size of the UK's external deficit was once an issue that could make or break a government. So why is that no longer the case?
June 1, 2005... Byline: Dennis Turner. To people of a certain age in Britain, one of the more confusing questions about the economy is why so little attention seems to be paid to the balance of payments. In the old days, the size of our external deficit...

The Financial Director interview - The money programme. Some people dread the prospect of change, but Zarin Patel, the first woman to ever hold the BBC's top finance job, absolutely thrives on it. And when she's not crunching numbers, she's chopping headcount.(British Broadcasting Corp.)(Interview)
June 1, 2005... Byline: Sarah Perrin. Change, and the thrill of managing change, is what gets Zarin Patel out of bed in the morning. A good thing, too, because as group FD of the BBC there's a lot of it around. The BBC is no stranger to change. In the...

Cover story - Nobody loves SME. The logistical challenge of running a finance function at a small-cap is not directly proportional to the company's size. The FDs of such companies have almost all the same problems as their FTSE-350 brethren, but a fraction of the resources.(Small and Medium sized Enterprises)(Cover story)
June 1, 2005... Byline: Peter Bartram. When Paul Smolinski quit as finance director of Compaq Computer's UK company to take up the post of group finance director at the Innovation Group, a public limited company which supplies technology-based business...

Corporate responsibility - It's better to give ...
June 1, 2005... Byline: Richard Willsher. Companies are aware of the many benefits of corporate giving, not just to their own bottom line by way of tax breaks, but also by improving their image with customers. Last year's Business in the Community...

Outsourcing roundtable - Out with IT.
June 1, 2005... Outsourcing, especially offshoring, is befuddled by terminology and negative news stories. Financial Director and Capgemini invited readers to share experiences at a roundtable to demystify the issue. What has your experience of outsourcing...

Linux - Cute and cuddly?
June 1, 2005... Byline: Cath Everett. Financial directors are starting to hear a lot of talk about Linux on the desktop and its associated benefits, but its mass appeal is some way off, not least because Microsoft will be hard to topple. Finance...

Decisions - Career breaks - Break or brake? Staff development is crucial to retaining good staff. But do sabbaticals and the like actually help employees' careers or hold them back?
June 1, 2005... Byline: Sarah Perrin. If the pressure is on to recruit and retain talent, your human resources department may suggest introducing career breaks, sabbaticals and sponsored MBAs. But are such schemes the most cost-effective way to attract...

Decisions - Share options - Piece of the action. Option schemes seem like an obvious way to ensure that everyone works in the interests of shareholders and reap some of the rewards. It's not so easy to select the right scheme.
June 1, 2005... Byline: Richard Willsher. The choice of performance and share-related remuneration plans for management and staff has become increasingly varied. At the same time, this increase in choice is complicated by changes in recent stock market...

Decisions - M&A - The pensions put-off.(Mergers and Acquisitions)
June 1, 2005... Byline: Sarah Perrin. Pensions deficits aren't just a problem for the companies that carry the liability. They are also becoming critical deal-blockers preventing the completion of mergers and acquisitions. As if completing a corporate...

Decisions - Final salary pensions - The final straw. The way in which current final salary pension schemes are structured will change. Does that change need to include their eventual demise?
June 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. Final salary pension schemes have been so hedged about with restrictions, onerous funding requirements and horror stories over scheme liabilities, it's no wonder that new final salary schemes are rarely being...

Decisions - Asset management - Shakin' that asset.
June 1, 2005... Byline: Richard Willsher. Companies have a vested interest in how well the staff pension scheme performs. That's why FDs are concerned with fund management policy and risks - and the selection of the asset manager. Whether or not the...

Decisions - Trustees - In the know.(Trustees Knowledge and Understanding Regulations)
June 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. Draft regulations say that trustees need to be taught more about pension schemes. But they must also learn how to stand up to company bosses and pension fund managers. New regulations setting out what it is...