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

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

Keep it simple.(from the editor)
December 1, 2007... IF NOTHING ELSE, the fallout over SIVs, CDOs, and other complex securities proves that we're still learning the lessons of Enron. Lesson 1: High returns are addictive--once you've seen 20 percent, it's hard to go back to single digits. Lesson...

The war for talent is being waged on many fronts.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... I applaud the Big Four accounting firms for their approach to recruiting, and CFO magazine for its coverage, but let's not forget that firms both large and small are all vying for access to candidates ("Lights, Camera, Audits!" Topline,...

Broken treaties, broken promises.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... "The Long Trail" (October) was an excellent article. A couple of points to make: first, the Department of Interior--through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)--took on the trustee relationship without a system to provide trust accounting,...

When did we lose control?(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... While outsourcing is nothing new to our country, it's becoming clear that with economic globalization we have lost control over our products ("Chinese Checking" September). Chinese toy manufacturers have grown over the past 25 years and have...

Restating your case.(ACCOUNTING)(companies opt for restating themselves)
December 1, 2007... RESTATEMENTS HAVE BECOME AN INCREASINGLY COMMON fact of life for finance departments, with 1 out of every 10 U.S. public companies restating their financials in 2006. They've become so widespread, in fact, that some of the stigma may be fading,...

Playing by fewer rules.(SEC)(United States. Securities and Exchange Commission conference on accounting standards)
December 1, 2007... AS THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION'S Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (CIFR) gets down to business, one of its first actions may be to recommend that the U.S. financial-reporting system cut down on its use of...

VEBA la difference?(BENEFITS)
December 1, 2007... IN A MOVE THAT MAY BE of great interest to other large companies, General Motors has unloaded $47 billion in retiree-hearth-care obligations to a voluntary employee beneficiary association, or VEBA. VEBAs have existed in some form since...

Loyalty programs prepare for takeoff.(SPIN-OFFS)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ARE FREQUENT FLIERS ABOUT TO FLY SOLO? Airline loyalty programs may soon become stand-alone businesses as struggling carriers consider unlocking the growth potential of these highly profitable units. "Separating the...

Hitting the books, with some help.(BENEFITS)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] TUITION REIMBURSEMENT HAS BEEN a common corporate perk for years, but IBM is proposing a new twist: a 401(k)-type program in which employees could contribute to an interest-bearing education account supplemented by...

Debating the need for speed.(BUYBACKS)(comapnies prefer Accekerated Share Repurchases as an efective tool )(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... ACCELERATED SHARE REPURCHASES (ASRs) can boost a [anguishing stock and lead to a sustained rise in share price, but at what cost? Companies that take the ASR route buy all the shares up front from an investment bank that has borrowed them...

Look who's not talking.(GOVERNANCE)
December 1, 2007... MERRILL LYNCH CEO E. Stanley O'Neal knows what happens when a CEO's priorities differ from those of the company's board of directors. Subprime losses notwithstanding, O'Neal got the ax in October after the board learned he had launched merger...

Flu diligence.(HEALTH)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FLU SEASON NEVER USED TO BE REGARDED as a corporate-risk issue. In fact, "before last year, 99 percent of companies hadn't thought about it at all," says Michael Cryer, M.D., senior medical director and principal at...

Budgeting: bring it on: after wrestling with tech implementations and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, CFOs are finally ready to address the budgeting process.(by the numbers)
December 1, 2007... IT'S NO SECRET THAT BUDGETING is the bane of the CFO's existence--an annual battle to wring information and concessions out of operating units while generating 45,000 spreadsheets that, in the end, provide a best-guess at the upcoming year's...

View from: Europe: the cold war might be over, but a chill wind threatens to blow through business between Russia and the west.(topline)(russian comapnies realtion with west is not healthy)
December 1, 2007... THERE WERE SEVERAL WAYS TO INTERpret recent remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who used a speech to his country's parliament to take a swipe at the growing number of domestic companies hiring foreign executives to flU their management...

Acquiring minds want to know: new software and services help buyers assess the IT systems of potential takeover targets.(in tech)
December 1, 2007... WHENEVER MANAGERS AT private-equity firm The Watermill Group identify a likely takeover candidate, they look at the standard benchmarks. Those include a target's earnings power and debt level, as well as intangibles like the competence of...

Rust belt.(RISK MANAGEMENT)
December 1, 2007... SADLY, THE HORRIFIC COLLAPSE OF the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis in August did not surprise longtime critics of the nation's transportation system. The truth is, civil engineers, trucking CEOs, even media types (see "Delayed in the...

Not-so-small-talk: a successful deal may hinge on the ability to create trust--or uncover deception.(insight)(managing customers properly)
December 1, 2007... HE RUBS HIS CHIN, YOU RUB your chin. She crosses her legs, you cross your legs. Does he have a Southern accent? Talk more slowly and drop the occasional "y'all." While this might sound like one of those games children play to annoy one another,...

Down but not out: private equity may have lost some of its leverage, but it's still a force for companies looking to buy, sell, or just attract capital.(deals)
December 1, 2007... THE RECENT FALLOFF IN PRIvate-equity activity could hardly have been more precipitous. As credit markets tightened, the value of the leveraged buyouts (LBOs) done in the third quarter plunged nearly 80 percent, to $67 billion. Money-raising,...

Homeland Security's: Tom Ridge.(ON THE RECORD)(interview of)(Tom Ridge founder of Ridge Global LLC)(Interview)
December 1, 2007... AS THE FIRST SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY, Tom Ridge instituted tough new border controls and airport-security measures, and executed the famous color-coded alert system. Now the former governor of Pennsylvania has formed his own...

A tale of six cities: cross-town or cross-country, the search for better real estate deals is on.(Cover story)(Company overview)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN ERIK PRUSCH JOINED BORLAND SOFTWARE CORP. LAST YEAR, his top priority was making the company profitable after two years of losses. Critical to achieving that goal was the relocation of company headquarters from...

Mastering the flow: CFO's new Cash Masters Scorecard shows which companies are best at turning sales dollars into cash flow.
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN THESE MARKET-RATTLING, credit-crunching, confidence-sapping times, cash can be a very good thing for a company to have (although return-hungry shareholders might argue over how much). And indeed, Corporate America...

2007 cash masters scorecard.
December 1, 2007... The 2007 REL/CFO Cash Masters Scorecard ranks the 1,000 largest public companies headquartered in the United States by cash conversion efficiency--cash flow from operations divided by sales--based on publicly available year-end results for...

Earth in the balance sheet: sustainability reports offer plenty of eye candy, but can they actually help managers make better decisions?(CFO 20/20: view on sustainability reporting)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Three weeks before Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to sound the alarm on climate change, a coalition of investors, state governments, and environmental groups was sounding an alarm of its own. It...

The new mix: with so much riding on 401(k)s, more and more companies are reconsidering their plan offerings.(spotlight)(companies manages it's 401K plans )
December 1, 2007... MARK Anderson is in the middle of overhauling his company's 401(k) plan. Anderson is the finance chief of Granite City Electric Supply Co., a Quincy, Massachusetts-based distributor with about 180 employees. The project began because he and the...

Thank you, and good night! How to make a graceful exit when you resign.(your move)
December 1, 2007... WHEN SANDRA Wijnberg decided to resign as chief financial officer at Marsh & McLennan Cos. in 2005, she had one overriding objective: "I wanted to make sure I didn't create another crisis," she remembers. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] At the...

PCAOB.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Tom Hohman has resigned from his position as CFO of the PCAOB. A founding officer and the board's first finance chief, Hohman is pursuing an entrepreneurial opportunity....

Ciber.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Peter Cheesbrough has been named CFO at Ciber, taking the reins from David Durham, who resigned to become finance chief of StarTek. Cheesbrough, who is also a Ciber board member, joins the systems-integration consultancy from Navigant...

UAP Holding.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Agricultural products distributor UAP Holding has appointed Jeffrey L. Rutherford to the CFO post. He succeeds Dave Bullock, who is now COO. Rutherford comes onboard from Deere & Co.'s Lesco unit, where he was president and CEO....

Lending Tree.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Matt Packey is the new CFO of Lending Tree. The former chief accounting officer, he replaces Keith Hall, who is pursuing board of director opportunities elsewhere....

Aptara.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Aptara, a provider of content-management services, has named Dev Ganesan as its CFO. Ganesan served as a board member for the company and is the former CEO of Intelliworks....

Korn/Ferry International.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Stephen Giusto is the new CFO at Korn/Ferry International. Previously CFO with Resources Connection, he succeeds Gary D. Burnison, who was named CEO in July....

General Motors.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... General Motors has appointed Ray Young to the new position of group VP, finance. Young was previously president and managing director of GM's Brazil unit....

Aon.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Christa Davies has joined Aon as EVP, global finance, and will be appointed CFO in March 2008. She will replace CFO David P. Bolger, who announced in May that he would be leaving the company, and has since been named COO of the Chicago Olympic...

Quest Software.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... Quest Software has selected Scott Davidson as its new CFO. The company's former treasurer, Davidson replaces Michael Lambert, who resigned to become the finance chief of Advanced Medical Optics....

New York Life Investment Management.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... David G. Bedard is the new CFO of New York Life Investment Management. He succeeds Steve Mandela, who will manage the company's institutional-alliance business....

The Conference Board.(CFOs ON THE MOVE)
December 1, 2007... The Conference Board has named James H. Slamp as its new CFO. He replaces George Convery, who is retiring after a tenure of 50 years with the research and membership organization.

The downside of risk.(grapevine)
December 1, 2007... LAST JULY, MERRILL LYNCH CFO Jeff Edwards told investors that the investment bank's exposure to the subprime mess was "limited, contained, and appropriately marked," But the more than $8 billion in third-quarter sub-prime write-offs the bank...

Most valuable promotion.(grapevine)
December 1, 2007... THE "MONSTER DEAL" that Jordan's Furniture concocted last spring would likely have any CFO biting his nails. The Massachusetts-based furniture retailer promised full rebates on any sofa, dining table, bed, or mattress bought between March 7 and...