CFO, The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives articles from August 2007

CFO, The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives archives from August 2007

What's at stake.(from the editor)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... IT'S A SAFE BET that the current debate over who should govern accounting rules will never make the evening news. The general public doesn't much know or care whether the SEC is exerting undue influence over the PCAOB, or if Congress is...

Sarbox at five.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... Setting up and testing controls is a major part of any CFO'S job ("Five Years and Accounting," July). That's why finance chiefs have internal-audit departments, controllers, accounting managers, and, hopefully, the necessary experience to...

Diverse voices on diversity.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... I graduated with an accounting degree 30 years ago and am currently a CPA and CFE. The same issue that was a problem then is a problem today: the lack of diversity in the workplace ("Gap Analysis," June). For too long, companies have clung to...

Using metrics effectively.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... "Measuring Up" (June) cites a Deloitte survey in which managers indicated that they would benefit from higher-quality information regarding employee commitment. I disagree. Employee commitment is the result of effective employees, not the...

SG&A outsourcing.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... We read Randy Myers's article "Going Away" (May) with interest. Having completed our own survey on SG&A outsourcing at 35 companies earlier this year (we focused on $500 million-to-$5 billion midmarket companies), we, too, found that a...

Such a deal!(letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2007... No matter what the price, or at what age you buy a long-term-care policy, all the premiums paid amount to a down payment on one year of care when you adjust for inflation over two or three decades ("Long-Term Thinking," May). I'd call that a...

Chilling thoughts.(RISK MANAGEMENT)(Statistical data)
August 1, 2007... RISK, LIKE LUCK, COMES IN TWO VARIETIES: good and bad. The latter you hope to avoid, the former to capitalize on. Lately, however, there's been precious little capitalizing. Companies have been decidedly risk-averse for years, accumulating...

Who will pick up the terror tab?(INSURANCE)
August 1, 2007... THE TERRORISM RISK INSURANCE ACT (TRIA) will expire at the end of this year, and as Congress prepares to debate a second extension of the act (the first passed in 2005), the stakes have changed. For one, more than 60 percent of U.S....

Power scourge.(TECHNOLOGY)
August 1, 2007... IF YOU THOUGHT COMPUTER hardware and software were expensive, consider that the electric bill for a data center can eat up 25 to 44 percent of its budget. That raises concerns not just about the bottom line, but also about brownouts or...

Game on!(ACCOUNTING)
August 1, 2007... ENRON AND WORLDCOM may have given accounting games a bad rap, but one software company hopes that a more literal interpretation of the concept can prove useful Last month Softrax Corp. went live with "Revenue Recognition Challenge," a free...

Verbatim.(topline)
August 1, 2007... "We used to be the Big Eight mid then we were the Big Four and now we're sort of the Big Eight again. There are eight firms that audit more than 100 public companies now, and we're working together to have a voice as a profession." ...

A room of their own.(GOVERNANCE)
August 1, 2007... FIRST CAME VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETINGS, then "paperless" proxies, and now the Internet may play a role in shaping another aspect of company-shareholder communications: ongoing dialogue between shareholders and management, made feasible by dedicated...

Big Brother is watching (and listening).(topline)(Statistical data)
August 1, 2007... Big Brother Is Watching (And Listening) 2001 2005 Monitor Internet connections 63% 76% Block connections to inappropriate Websites 40 65 Monitor E-mail 47 ...

Ay, Caramba!(WEB MONITORING)
August 1, 2007... A RECENT SURVEY FROM the American Management Association found that over the past five years the number of companies that monitor employee Internet use has risen 13 percent. More than three-fourths of employers now track employee Web use to...

Mini-meds offer some relief.(OUTSOURCING)
August 1, 2007... SIX YEARS AGO, only 13 percent of employees at Ratner Cos., an operator of 1,000 salons under such names as Hair Cuttery and Salon Cielo, took advantage of the company's medical plan. Today, 78 percent have coverage, under a limited benefit...

Compensation: all talk.(topline)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Companies continue to discuss pay-for-performance, but that's about all they're doing. Asked about how they shape compensation practice to drive business results, only 29% of 171 companies surveyed by Authoria said they use aggressive...

I'm as happy as a CFO!(topline)
August 1, 2007... Asked if they're satisfied in their current jobs, execs answering yes were most likely to work in HR or finance, 67% Human Resources 63% CFO/Controllers 47% General Mgmnt. 42% Sales 41% CIO/IT Source: ExecuNet

$1 trillion and counting.(DEALS)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
August 1, 2007... IF THE SECOND HALF OF 2007 matches the first half, this will be a record year for mergers and acquisitions. North American deal-making crested the $1 trillion mark at the end of June, a full 10 weeks earlier than in 2006. Globally, deals...

An alternative to the alternative.(INCOME TAX)
August 1, 2007... IF YOU'RE AMONG THE MILLIONS of Americans who pay more in federal income taxes each year because you're prey to the alternative minimum tax, help may be on the way. Created nearly 40 years ago, the AMT was originally targeted at a mere 155...

The seven-year itch: after a long dry spell, the market for IPOs may be ready for a resurgence.(by the numbers)
August 1, 2007... SEVEN YEARS AFTER THE BURSTING OF THE TECH BUBBLE, the initial-public-offering market is showing signs of a long-awaited recovery. Last May was the most active month for venture-backed IPOs since October 2004, according to the National Venture...

Successes against terror in Indonesia aside, Southeast Asia is getting more dangerous. But it's a mistake for U.S. companies to lock down.(VIEW FROM asia)
August 1, 2007... HEAD FOR ANY ONE OF THE pricey business hotels in Jakarta, and you'll feel like you're entering Iraq's Green Zone. Entrances have more than one barricade and guards poke around in the taxi trunks. Soldiers are everywhere. Yet Indonesia can...

What's hot this summer: you may not know these five products and services. You should.(in tech)
August 1, 2007... HERE AT CFO, WE GET A LOT of information from technology vendors offering products that promise to do everything from scrubbing your numbers to cleaning your computer screen. We dutifully evaluate these offerings so you don't have to. Lo and...

No exit: MAC clauses are supposed to protect buyers, but in a seller's market the burden may fall to the buyer's CFO.(deals)
August 1, 2007... DIVORCING FOR IRRECONCILABLE differences may be legal in most states, but it won't get you out of a merger. Just consider the 2006 court battle between marketing-services firm Valassis Communications Inc. and direct-mail firm ADVO Inc. ...

Coty's Michael Fishoff.(ON THE RECORD)(Interview)(Company overview)
August 1, 2007... WHAT DO JENNIFER LOPEZ, GWEN STEFANI, VICTORIA BECKHAM, AND TOM BRADY have in common? Aside from their gift for grabbing headlines, these celebrities all lend their names to Coty Inc. flagrance lines. To CFO Michael Fishoff, each represents a...

A wild ride: over the past decade, NASCAR has raced to the top of the sports world. Is it finally beginning to slow down?(Cover story)
August 1, 2007... SPEED. IT'S ABOUT SPEED. That may seem ridiculously obvious--like saying the sun is a tad on the warm side. But to witness up close how cars accelerate out of a turn, their 800-HP engines thundering, the g-forces pinning drivers to their seats...

The SEC Rules: five years after Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC is flexing its regulatory muscle as never before.(5 Years & Accounting: Part 2)
August 1, 2007... If Enron made accounting sexy and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act made it lucrative, the current power struggle over rule-setting makes it both compelling and consequential. Accounting may ultimately come down to numbers, as math does, but the rules...

The ultimate test drive: why companies are turning to customers for help with design.
August 1, 2007... IN 1927, THE FIRST CARS rolled off the production line at fledgling Swedish automaker Volvo. The inaugural $800 sedan came in two versions: an open-bodied touring model and a "saloon" (that is, covered) model. Guess which one sold? Customers in...

Better ways to buy: treasury is teaming up with purchasing to tame commodity risk.(in practice)
August 1, 2007... On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange early this summer, the price of block cheddar cheese was up 79 percent from a year earlier In central Illinois, No. 2 yellow corn was up 68 percent from a year ago. And down in Texas, natural gas at the Henry...

The overfeathered nest egg: critics say financial-planning calculators encourage employees to save too much.(pensions)
August 1, 2007... FIRST, LET'S GET ONE THING straight: critics of conventional retirement-savings models do not want employees to simply forget about saving for retirement. "We aren't promoting undersaving," says Ty Bernicke, CFE with Bernicke & Associates Ltd.,...

Lessons in sitting pretty: many "paper millionaires" understand less about their stock options than they think.(your money)
August 1, 2007... STOCK OPTIONS ARE LIKE SEX, SAYS BETH Walker, founder of financial-planning firm Virtual CFO and author of An Employee's Guide to Stock Options. "Everybody wants some, everybody claims to know what they're doing, and everybody makes a mistake...

The real deal: CFOs in the real estate industry face a singular set of challenges.(your move)
August 1, 2007... FINANCIAL SKILLS ARE, AS EXECUTIVE recruiters like to say, fungible. In fact, more than 50 percent of new CFO hires come from outside their industry. But sometimes, says Scott Simmons, vice president of executive recruiting firm Crist...

Linda Combs is retiring as controller at the Office of Management and Budget and head of its Office of Federal Financial Management.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
August 1, 2007... Linda Combs is retiring as controller at the Office of Management and Budget and head of its Office of Federal Financial Management. Combs was previously CFO at the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency; she also...

Circuit City Stores.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
August 1, 2007... In a case of retail roulette, Circuit City Stores has appointed Bruce Besanko as its new CFO, he most recently served as CFO at Yankee Candle and succeeds Michael Foss, who left in April to become CFO of Petco Animal Supplies....

Viacell.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
August 1, 2007... John Thero, formerly the CFO of Acusphere, is the new CFO of biotech firm Viacell. He succeeds Stephen Dance, who resigned....

MassMutual Retirement Income.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
August 1, 2007... MassMutual Retirement Income has named Douglas Russell COO and CFO. Russell was most recently SVP and head of client services for Prudential Retirement....

Norfolk Southern.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
August 1, 2007... Henry Wolf has retired from his post as CFO of Norfolk Southern; James Squires, the company's EVP of finance, will assume the CFO post....

Pro-Build Holdings.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
August 1, 2007... Pro-Build Holdings has named Thomas Ryan as CFO, a new position at the company. Ryan was vice chairman of Allied Waste Industries.

Foreign intrigue.(grapevine)
August 1, 2007... THE MYSTERY DEEPENS at International Rectifier Corp. In July, the power management company fired longtime CFO Michael P. McGee several months after launching an investigation into accounting irregularities at a foreign subsidiary. While the...

Farewell, Judy Lewent.(grapevine)
August 1, 2007... Peter Kellogg has big shoes to fill. This month, the former Biogen Idec CFO replaces legendary Merck CFO Judy C. Lewent, who is retiring from the $23 billion (in revenue) pharmaceuticals company after 27 years, 17 as finance chief. Lewent...