Cover story
The sport industry is beset by challenges, most notably a tough climate for corporate sponsorship and increased competition for their audience. A few CFO champions are transforming small players in to big business.
Industry insight
Australia needs to create a lot of infrastructure but aversion to the user-pays model and government reluctance to go into further debt means banks will require new funding models.
Management
With new powers to hand, executive salaries have been under the microscope again, but once again accounting rules have been blamed for misleading the punters.
Analysis by CFO magazine shows boards appear to be heeding the call to link pay to performance on one measure at least. Plus Speed of change calls for flexible targets
For most businesses, the carbon price will be in the goods and services they buy but few have a handle on the emissions in their supply chains.
Australia must accept that simple forms of manufacturing cannot be sustained here and focus our efforts on innovative manufacturing.
The world is on a knife-edge between two very different possibilities and both worlds hold challenges for finance chiefs but the long-term outlook for Australia remains better than in most wealthy countries.
Finance & treasury
The linchpin of reforms to the R&D tax rebate scheme has a greater onus on companies to prove the expenses claimed are genuine research and development.
Companies have diversified debt sources so they have more power as credit tightens, but they must seize opportunities, finance chiefs told the Financial Review CFO Conference.
CFO professional
Valuing goodwill is one area where the US accounting approach is moving away from international practice, but the American way may prove to be better.
Companies claim analysts rarely ask the right questions to determine a company’s long-term viability but it’s corporations that may need to lead the change.
Opinion
What’s next? Despite all the volatility and uncertainty it seems it’s not all black swans but a few grey ones perhaps – in other words, it seems many can clearly see what’s coming and, at the moment, it is centred on Europe.
After many years in larger organisations, Patrys chief financial officer Roger McPherson has found the rewards of working in a small biotech are far greater.
Be careful who you trust in times of crisis, the highly paid experts with titles after their names could be just as baffled as you. Even experienced business leaders are easily duped.
To uphold the quality and viability of print media, should direct public funding go beyond broadcasting? And if such a proposal were adopted what would be at stake for the winners and losers?
ING Direct chief financial officer Glenn Baker is working with data analysts to get business banking customers out of the the big four’s branches and win them online.
News
Former Talent International chief financial officer Michael Dalton has swapped recruitment for sport as Cricket NSW‘s inaugural CFO. CFO in | CFO out
The debate at this year’s CFO conference centred on how to plan for both a two-speed economy and the possibility the slow side will drag the fast side down.
The boy scouts motto should be at the top of every chief financial officer’s daily to do list, just in case they forget it.
The higher funding costs that a number of privately funded infrastructure projects now face may require them to raise equity in the near future, Moody’s says.
Finance jobs and senior management CFO roles continued to track the national average wage growth of 4 per cent in the 2011 financial year, according to a survey.
Two quarterly surveys of CFOs and CEOs confirm the anecdotal evidence that for most the twin focus on growth and cost has swung decidedly to cutting.
The continent is shaping up to be a land of opportunity for the aggressive, as Irish government bonds show.
