Corporate Cashflow Magazine articles from May 1996

Corporate Cashflow Magazine archives from May 1996

Politics of bounty pay for downsizers.(Editorial)
May 1, 1996... The political-economic-cultural wave that has energized and directed America for the past 16 years is crashing up against some rocks, endangering some of corporate America's most prized gains. Financial executives face hard choices. Yes, of...

Unfasten pension surplus to substitute for partial pay raises.
May 1, 1996... Excess pension assets, boosted by the 1995 stock market run-up (+37.58% for the S&P 500), can be used by enterprising corporations to reduce compensation spending. Dennis Coleman, principal of Kwasha Lipton LLC, Fort Lee, says that companies...

401 (k) benchmark fees show sponsors when they overpay.
May 1, 1996... Buyers of defined contribution plan services don't always get what they pay for. Indeed, plan sponsors with the same number of participants and similar assets sometimes pay very different fees, and whoever pays the most doesn't always get the...

New program turns bad checks into ACH debits. (automated clearinghouses)
May 1, 1996... Bounced checks cost U.S. businesses as much as $10 billion a year in lost revenue, according to industry sources. Bad checks account for about 2% of the 65 billion checks written annually in the United States. If even some of those losses could...

Digital image systems speed return items, exceptions.
May 1, 1996... Digital image systems, some experts say, will one day revolutionize the check collection system, perhaps even to the point where images replace paper checks. Image systems already give banks an extra day to detect bad checks, reducing bad check...

Early calls of high-yielding bonds draw investor ire.
May 1, 1996... Redeem no bonds before their time? Not when they bear a costly coupon in a low-interest debt market. So reasoned Texas-New Mexico Power Co. as it recently called back $29.2 million of its 11.25% Series T first mortgage bonds 15 months early....

Carve-out or spin-off? Make the best divestiture choice.
May 1, 1996... Carving equity from the corporate corpus through spin-offs is hot right now. "Companies have found that if they want to shed assets, a split-off is a terrific way to do it," says Rothschild Inc. analyst Barbara Goodstein, who tracks corporate...

When to purchase a special event liability policy.
May 1, 1996... This spring, as many marketing departments promote events like 10k runs, musical or sporting events and festivals, savvy risk managers will be looking into whether these liabilities are covered under the company's general policy. Getting the...

Practitioners challenge FASB over rule-making process. (Financial Accounting Standards Board)
May 1, 1996... The 6-10 plus years it takes the Norwalk, CT-based Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to develop and adopt rule changes is too long, admits FASB chairman Dennis Beresford. He thinks three years is a reasonable goal. Try one, suggests...

Financial staff puts skills to work on cost controls.
May 1, 1996... Financial pros at Baldwin Filters in Kearney, NE, might suggest developing a new filter component as part of a cost-control program that is breaking down traditional lines between finance and operations, says Dewey Norton, vice president-finance....

Bring in outside experts for higher-yielding A/R harvest. (accounts receivables)(Cover Story)
May 1, 1996... With their high-tech collection factories and dispute-resolution sharp-shooters, outsourcers are raising credit & A/R productivity. Few treasury areas invite anti reward re-engineering and outsourcing more than credit/accounts receivable, and...

Avoiding a payment outsourcing fiasco.
May 1, 1996... When the re-engineering team at X Corp. (a large manufacturer of automotive components which does not wish to be publicly identified with outsourcing) reviewed the company's accounts payable operation, it began to suspect that the company's...

Mezzanine: efficient financing for recapitalization or rapid growth.
May 1, 1996... Pricier than senior debt but cheaper than equity, mezzanine financing offers the flexibility to fit coupon, amortization and covenants to specific cash-flow needs. Over the past five years, more and more corporate treasuries have turned to...

Integrating FX hedging with global cash management. (foreign exchange)
May 1, 1996... Efficient cash managers and risk managers develop a common information stream to serve their overlapping needs. Risk management has dominated the business press for much of the past three years. Partly in response to these well publicized...

New tools streamline funds concentration.
May 1, 1996... Innovation in cash management has lagged recently, and within cash management, funds concentration has earned its reputation as a plodding, routine sort of activity that hasn't changed much since many corporations learned to concentrate through...

A technological (not geographical) solution. (funds concentration)
May 1, 1996... One recent trend that relies on technology more than geography has encouraged treasury managers to decentralize the funds concentration process and place more of it under the control of subsidiary managers. Some are even putting in place a...

More firms turn to do-it-yourself M&A.
May 1, 1996... For engineering the $29.6-billion leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in 1989, six Wall Street investment banks and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. walked away with fees totaling $203 million. In rude contrast, last year's $19-billion Walt...

DOL cracks down on employers for holding 401(k) funds too long. (Dept. of Labor)
May 1, 1996... Robert Feldman, president of Greylock Industries, a Cherry Hill, NJ, chemical and machinery manufacturer, pled guilty last year to embezzling his employees' pension money, in addition to bank fraud and filing false documents. He is now serving an...