Category: Strategic finance
New report: What high-growth CFOs need to thrive
CFOs at high-growth companies are in a whirlwind. Everything around them is moving fast and the pressure is on to keep the positive figures moving upward and get a hold of the huge amounts of data the company is taking in …
See More2014 will be a busy year for finance teams
It’s New Year’s Eve—as so many people do, I’ve taken the time to reflect on 2013 and look ahead to the next year. 2014 should be a good year—the economy is improving, a lot of bigger companies are preparing for g…
See MoreHardware is dead in Silicon Valley. (Not)
A recent PBS documentary on the roots of Silicon Valley was really a story about Fairchild Semiconductor and the birth of the microchip industry. However, over the past 10 years, the Valley has continued to transform, bec…
See MoreEvaluating an acquisition target: pay attention to the gray areas
What’s more shocking: HP’s $8.8 billion (yes, billion!) impairment charge recorded in its recently completed fourth quarter, or the fact that it blames the charge on the “accounting improprieties and disclosure failu…
See MoreTime for a heart-to-heart with your audit firm?
In my pre–Sarbanes-Oxley days, I worked with companies where it was tough to get audit committee members to attend meetings, and many of those meetings were check-the-box exercises without real value. The Sarbanes-Oxley …
See MoreBucking tradition: is stock-based comp expense a worthy performance measure for Facebook?
U.S. accounting standards require companies to recognize expense based on the fair value of the stock-based compensation awards issued to employees; most commonly these are stock options and restricted stock units. Some kn…
See MoreEquity compensation: the devil is in the details
Equity compensation can be a significant factor in attracting and retaining talent. Lately a lot of attention is being given to effective compensation strategy, investor expectations and shareholder dilution. Philosophies …
See More‘Investing in the business’ doesn’t have to mean embracing chaos
Have you ever been at a well-controlled company and heard at a company meeting that the board wants to accelerate the company’s development by “investing in the business”? These days, statements like this send shiver…
See MoreNo crystal ball? No worries—AICPA report crowdsources the future
What lies just around the corner? What skills do you need to be successful tomorrow? My crystal ball isn’t any less fuzzy than yours, so I turned to the AICPA report, CPA Horizons 2025, which provides excellent advice ab…
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