CFO, The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives articles from May 2009

CFO, The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives archives from May 2009

Rule change lets banks reinvent the past.(Accounting)
May 1, 2009... In the end, it wasn't a change to fair-value accounting rules that gave bankers what they desperately wanted--a way to avoid booking losses during the credit crisis--but a change to a rule involving a more obscure accounting convention known as...

Most read articles.(Most Popular)
May 1, 2009... 1. Regulators Eye "Going Concern" Concerns 2. Why Didn't FASB Just Say So? 3. Going Green Means Saving Green 4. Guessing the Costs of IFRS Conversion 5. Some CFOs Are Ignoring the Credit Crunch

A CFO willing to predict '09 results.(Leadership in Finance)
May 1, 2009... Pegasystems CFO Craig Dynes feels like he's living in a parallel universe. While everyone else seems to be talking about bad news and bailouts, he's raking in record revenues and signing new deals with clients. The enterprise-software vendor...

FASB affirms fair-value principles.(Capital Markets)
May 1, 2009... Struggling to allay confusion spawned by its fair-value proposals, FASB approved an altered version of its proposed guidance on how to gauge whether a financial market is inactive. In response to a bevy of comment letters, the board admitted...

The CFO core concerns conference.(Don't Miss This)(Conference news)(Calendar)
May 1, 2009... The focus is on critical topics that CFOs are facing due to the current financial crisis--working capital, cash, cost of capital, and risk management. Boston (June 15) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Zone defense.(from the editor)
May 1, 2009... "IT IS THE MIDDLE GROUND between light and shadow... and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge." An apt description of the latest FASB pronouncement on fair value? Not quite, Fans of classic television may...

Country over politics.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... It's astonishing that "New Administration and Congress" ranks #4 on "Top External Concerns" of CFOs in your recent Business Outlook Survey (April). Would the prospect of eight more years of Bush Administration philosophy and leadership...

Delegating in hard times.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... "The Next Stage" (March) certainly points to one of the things we all struggle with, namely, learning to delegate and to rely on your staff so that you can focus on value added and driving business improvement. You learn that you have to...

Controlling legal costs.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2009... As a 21-year veteran of the business of managing law firms, allow me to give your readers my quick take on how they might better control legal costs ("Trials and Tabulations," December 2008). 1. Communicate with your general counsel and...

Correction.(letters)(Correction notice)
May 1, 2009... The photograph of J. Anthony Poleo in the April On the Record should have been credited to Katherine Lambert.

Fault lines.(OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN HIS FIRST 100 DAYS in office, President Barack Obama seemed to find at least 100 ways to deliver on his promise of change--or to try to. But while...

Lights, camera, finance!(ENTERTAINMENT)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN THE CAR-CHASE FLICK Fast & Furious set a spate of opening-weekend records last month, it gave a turbo boost to what has already been a very good year for the movie business. "People say the industry is...

Those Lucrative intangibles.(INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN HARD TIMES, finance chiefs extract value from every asset in sight. But what about the assets they can't see, like copyrights, patents, and trade secrets? Intellectual property (IP) may be intangible, but it...

Trouble for the other big three?(RATING AGENCIES)
May 1, 2009... FOR 30 YEARS, THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION has required securities dealers to evaluate investment risk using ratings from only a handful of providers, designated as "nationally recognized statistical rating organizations" (NRSROs)....

No questions asked.(MARKETING)
May 1, 2009... Companies have tong struggled to assess the effectiveness of their marketing budgets, and a recent survey by McKinsey & Co. suggests that there has been little progress. Asked whether, and to what degree, they review the impact of what they...

A losing formula: volatile financial markets can wreak havoc with your cost-of-capital calculations--and possibly skew your investment decisions and financial results.(credit & capital)
May 1, 2009... YOU COULD ALWAYS SAY THIS ABOUT YOUR company's cost-of-capital calculation: however complex it might be, you generally had to do it only once. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If only life were still so simple. Thanks to volatile financial...

Good sports: CFOs have to build teams and play on them. It isn't easy.(leadership)
May 1, 2009... ASIDE FROM THE occasional coaching stint, most CFOs' Little League days are long past, but the lessons learned on those distant summer evenings may hold the key to their future success. Two such lessons--learning to take a leadership role on a...

How healthy is your bank? With more failures expected in 2009, CFOs should subject their banks to a thorough checkup.(insight)
May 1, 2009... ON MARCH 27, OMNI NAtional Bank of Atlanta was closed by federal regulators. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency put the $956 million (in assets) bank in receivership because losses had depleted most of Omni National's capital, and...

Reaching deeper for savings: you may be able to squeeze more out of your IT budget than you realize.(in tech)
May 1, 2009... YOU'VE OUTSOURCED, YOU'VE consolidated data centers, you've decided that the usual three-year PC refresh cycle can be stretched to four years. All well and good, but what else can you do? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Given the current...

"It still hurts when you lose". In this economy, an NBA CFO has to make all the right moves.(ON THE RECORD)(Interview)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Charlie Mierswa is all over the court--or, more accurately, the arena. He's talking with fans, backslapping security guards, visiting with VlPs, even wiping up a coffee spill. He's highly visible, but then, so is...

World turned upside down: in the "insolvency zone," creditors exert a strong pull that often throws CFOs off balance.(Cover story)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE ECONOMY has weakened most companies, but it has strengthened the hand of one group: creditors. Marginalized somewhat the past few years, banks are once again imposing stiff covenants and pricing risk profitably....

The tax men cometh: beset by plunging revenues, states step up their pursuit of corporate taxes.
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A small furniture manufacturer based in Arizona recently received a nexus survey--a questionnaire about the company's business activity--from the state of Washington. With just two retail customers in the Evergreen...

Strong medicine: can a $19 billion spoonful of sugar help doctors swallow the cost of going digital?
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There is a ray of hope for CFOs who would like to upgrade the condition of corporate health-care plans from "critical" to "stable." Boosted by a substantial injection of cash from the federal stimulus bill,...

The 2009 401(k) providers guide.
May 1, 2009... ABOUT THIS BUYER'S GUIDE THE CHART OF 401(K) plan providers that begins on page 54 comprises companies whose names begin with the letters M through Z. Part 1 (A-L) appeared in the April issue. The data presented for each company represents...