CFO, The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives articles from February 2004

CFO, The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives archives from February 2004

Sarbanes-Oxley and outsourcing.(Featured in February)
February 1, 2004... India, China, and other emerging nations are filled with outsourcing promise, but they may also harbor regulatory poison. In the face of Sarbanes-Oxley's Section 404 rules on internal controls, CFO.com examines the challenges of compliance for...

Truth or jail.(from the editor)(Editorial)
February 1, 2004... THE LANDSCAPE IS SHIFTING. EVEN AS BAD-BOY CFOs go to trial and to jail, most senior finance executives, according to our latest survey (see "New Terrain," page 40), believe that CFOs will emerge as a stronger presence in their companies than...

Looking at property tax.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2004... THANKS FOR YOUR RECENT FOCUS ON state taxes ("Stingers," January). One area that was missed is the increasing local property-tax burden being placed on commercial and industrial owners. In most situations, the taxable value of these assets has...

Some things don't change.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2004... AS I READ ARTICLES ABOUT THE benefits of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, I just have to shake my head. At the root of the collapse of Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, and HealthSouth is the excessive greed of executive management and the fear...

Last to first.(newswatch)( Compex Technologies Inc. )(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... When is a CFO not entirely thrilled to see the company's stock price go through the roof?. When it suddenly means that he or she will be working weekends. That's the fate of Scott Youngstrom, CFO of Compex Technologies Inc. After the New...

Is 10 year's enough.(Enron)
February 1, 2004... LAST MONTH Andrew Fastow agreed to accept a plea bargain that will land the former Enron CFO in jail for a decade, while his wife serves five months and the couple pay a fine of at least $20 million. The deals had fallen apart earlier in the...

India ink.(Research)
February 1, 2004... THE OFFSHORING trend has taken another surprising turn. Having successfully outsourced to India such back-office functions as IT, investment banks are now sending some of their financial analysis and research overseas. In recent months, firms...

The medicare reform effect.(Benefits)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... As health-care costs increased, many companies cut back on the medical benefits they offer to their retirees. So when President Bush signed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 into law in December, some...

Citigroup back in the storm.(Structured Finance)
February 1, 2004... JUST WHEN CITIGROUP WAS HOPING it had shed the taint of its Enron-era dealings, it got sucked back in--by a black hole, of all things. Shortly before its year-end bankruptcy filing, ailing Italian dairy giant Parma]at issued an explanation...

Restarting the spin cycle.(Equity)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... The return of the initial public offering market could unleash a flurry of spin-offs this year, especially among companies that have consolidated during the downturn. Several companies have already announced plans for spin-offs in 2004,...

The mezzanine machine.(Debt)
February 1, 2004... INVESTORS ARE BUILDING UP mezzanine funds, but companies are turning to them only reluctantly. In September, Goldman Sachs announced that it had closed the largest mezzanine debt fund ever raised--$2.7 billion. Later that month, Castle...

Who'll follow the script?(Compensation)(Panel Discussion)
February 1, 2004... This may or may not be the year companies finally rein in excessive executive pay. But they now have the tools to try. In mid-December, an advisory panel sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Corporate Directors...

No more free ride?(Tax)
February 1, 2004... THE TAX-FRIENDLY STATUS of online commerce and Internet access could be in jeopardy: legislators are beginning to warm up to the idea of taxing Internet commerce more consistently. Currently, merchants are obliged to collect state and local...

An industry shoulder to lean on.(Networking)(associations)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... No two CFO jobs are alike. For this reason, a number of industry-specific finance associations have cropped up to provide networking opportunities and support to CFOs in the same industry. There is the Private Equity CFO Association, for...

Spy vs. spy: companies are spending billions on network security, but staying ahead of hackers may be a pipe dream.(techwatch)
February 1, 2004... ANY WAY YOU LOOK AT IT, 2003 was a real bad year for network security. Although corporate concern over cyber threats jumped dramatically, so too did the number of cyber attacks against companies and their machines. Indeed, security specialist...

Bum Steer?(Software)(Longhorn)
February 1, 2004... CALL THEM EARLY ADOPTERS. This past December, reports began circulating that consumers in Malaysia were queuing up to purchase pirated copies of Microsoft's next-generation operating system. This despite the fact that the new OS, code-named...

Capital without the venture: in today's static venture-capital markets, only the safest early-stage firms get the money.(new deals)
February 1, 2004... BIOWAVE CORP. seemed primed for its first venture-capital infusion a year ago. At the September 2002 annual summit meeting of Connecticut Venture Group, the Norwalk-based start-up had beat out 49 other companies to win the honor of...

Poor move? Property tax is one of the biggest tax expenses companies have-and the hardest to manage.(Spotlight: taxes)
February 1, 2004... FOR ALL THE IRE directed at state income and sales taxes, companies largely ignore the largest levy they pay--property tax. According to the Council on State Taxation, in Washington, D.C., American companies fork out more in property taxes than...

New terrain: governance reform is not just on the table, it's a (mostly) done deal. Where does that leave CFOs?
February 1, 2004... AS FORMER ENRON CFO ANDREW FASTOW negotiated the plea bargain that has landed him a 10-year prison sentence, many finance chiefs were quietly hoping that some stern justice would help restore investor confidence. "Jail time will be an effective...

Cheese it, the states! Corporate wrong-doers are finding state cops more aggressive than the feds.
February 1, 2004... Which should you fear more: a Formal Order of Investigation subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission, or a Martin Act subpoena from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer? Either would send shivers down the spine of any finance...

Everything in moderation: now that companies have successfully slimmed down, many are in a far better position to reinvest.(The 10th Annual Cost Management Survey)
February 1, 2004... ANYONE WORRIED THAT cost-conscious companies have eliminated muscle as well as fat should take heart from the findings of our latest Cost Management Survey. [paragraph] Ever since the New Economy bubble burst, companies have diligently and...

Sarboxing: finance executives continue to grapple with section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. So far, it's unclear who's winning.(CFO buyer's guide: compliance software)
February 1, 2004... WHEN LAST WE LEFT MARK THOMPSON ("Drowning in Data," November 2003), the senior vice president of finance and information technology at Crown Media Holdings was shopping for software. Specifically, he was looking for an application that would...

Judgment calls: recent shareholder suits may be opening cracks in the protection afforded by the business-judgment rule.(law)
February 1, 2004... PITY CORPORATE BOARDS. USED TO RUBBER-stamping the wishes of imperial CEOs, they have been ever more rudely assailed by politicians, regulators, and shareholder activists since the fall of Enron. Now, they are being challenged in courtrooms not...

Now hiring.(A Brighter Job Scene)
February 1, 2004... AFTER MORE THAN TWO YEARS OF GLOOM, THINGS ARE LOOKING up in the corporate-finance job market. CFOs are more cheerful about 2004--and their companies' hiring plans at last are beginning to show it. Recent studies have tended to bear out the...

Embattled Charter Communications Inc.(CFOs on the move)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... Embattled Charter Communications Inc. named Michael Huseby as CFO to replace Kent Kalkwarf, who was fired in 2002 and subsequently indicted for his alleged role in an accounting fraud at the company, Huseby was CFO of AT&T Broadband....

AMR Corp.(CFOs on the move)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... James Beer has been named CFO of AMR Corp., replacing Jeffrey C. Campbell, who joined McKesson Corp. as CFO....

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc.(CFOs on the move)(Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp.)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. has finally found a new CFO after an eight-month search. Michael Phalen, the company's new finance chief, was an executive director at CIBC World Markets. For more on CFO careers, visit www.cfo.com.

For whom bell toils.(grapevine)(Boeing Co's deal with the U.S. Air Force)
February 1, 2004... THE BOEING CO'S NEW CFO, James A. Bell, is stepping into a bit of a maelstrom, at the center of which lies the $21.5 billion KC-767A tanker leasing deal with the U.S. Air Force. The deal is currently in a state of official limbo while the...

Oracle's new business suite.(grapevine)(Oracle Corp.)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... Oracle Corp.'s Jeff Henley is going where few CF0s have been before-and analysts aren't quite sure why. In a surprise more in January, the software vendor announced that finance chief Henley was taking over as the company's new chairman....

10 surprises to stretch your thinking: 2004 through the looking glass.(Morgan Stanley)(Book Review)
February 1, 2004... I believe it is useful to start the year reflecting on how some of the key investment issues might be resolved in ways that are different from expectations. The challenge is to choose whether reality will be better or worse than the consensus....