1173 Posts Found

As the economy bounces between recession and recovery, financial executives have to make a bet between whether the economy, their industry and their business will experience rising prices going forward or whether they will have to grapple with the balance sheet and operational effects of deflation. They will have to choose wisely as this has the potential of being a bet-your-business risk. The decision is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Carl Steidtmann, Dan Latimore, Elisabeth Denison | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Economics, Finance

Risk-averse midlevel managers making routine investment decisions can shift an entire company’s risk profile. An organization-wide stance toward risk can help.

Content: Article | Authors: Dan P. Lovallo, Tim Koller, Zane D. Williams | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management, Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

The hallmark of financial performance in today’s digital age is an expanded ability to earn “rents” from intangibles. Profit per employee is one measure of these rents. ROIC is another. If a company boosts its profit per employee without increasing its capital intensity, management will increase its rents, just as raising ROIC above the cost of capital would. The difference is that viewing profit per … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance

[In comparing the performance of companies,] to learn something useful, we must decompose each company’s ROA, which exposes the underlying structure of the relevant profitability advantages. Specifically, ROA is the product of two very different elements of a company’s operations—return on sales (ROS = income/sales) and total asset turnover (TAT = sales/assets). One company’s ROA advantage over another need not be a function of advantages … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Michael E. Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed | Source: Deloitte Review | Subject: Finance

The largest companies eventually find size itself an impediment to creating new value. They must recognize that not all forms of growth are equal.

Content: Article | Authors: Jean-Hugues J. Monier, Nicholas F. Lawler, Robert S. McNish | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management

In the aftermath of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, NOVA presents “Mind Over Money”—an entertaining and penetrating exploration of why mainstream economists failed to predict the crash of 2008 and why we so often make irrational financial decisions. The program reveals how our emotions interfere with our decision-making and explores controversial new arguments about the world of finance. In the face of … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Source: PBS | Subjects: Economics, Finance

What characteristics do successful “serial acquirers” often share? One is the vital role of the finance function in post-merger integration. Following a survey of executives at merger and acquisition (M&A)-focused companies in 12 countries and 21 industries, Accenture identified five critical M&A attributes, each of which demands top performance from finance people and systems.

Content: Article | Authors: Aneel Delawalla, Jeff Bezos, Jeff East, Oksana Kukurudza, Sara Cima | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Finance, Mergers & Acquisitions

The present policy of operating industry for [the benefit of] stockholders is unreasonable… The usual absentee stockholder contributes nothing to efficiency. He buys today and sells it tomorrow. He often doesn’t even know what the company makes.

Content: Quotation | Author: James Lincoln | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Finance, Management

Money is like manure. Pile it high and it stinks. Spread it around and it nurtures growth and well-being.

Content: Quotation | Subject: Money

The Industrial Age was based on a new relationship with time. Instead of paying people for the things they produced, we began to pay people for their time. The Industrial Age also brought a new kind of time-based money. In order to transact, merchants and companies needed to borrow coin, and then pay it back with interest. In a sense, it is money with a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Douglas Rushkoff | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, History, Money, Time Management

Economic growth over the past 250 years is best understood as the product of a “three-player game.” In this game, the market economy and the state compete to direct the allocation of resources to new technologies—to canals and waterpower in one century, to steam and electricity in the next, and to computers after that. Financial capitalism, the third player, which includes bankers of every sort, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Warsh, William H. Janeway | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, Finance

In football, there is a rigid separation of the real market — the games played on Sundays — from the expectations market, or the betting that takes place prior to the game. No participant in the real market is permitted to participate in any way in the expectations market. If they do, they risk a lifetime ban for even one infraction. There is an even … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Roger L. Martin | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Economics, Finance

For the last two decades, Aswath Damodaran has dedicated the first two weeks of each new year to a ritual. He obtains/collects/downloads data on all publicly traded companies listed globally, using a variety of data sources, and then analyzes and presents the data, aggregated at a number of different levels: by country, by region (US, Europe, Emerging Markets, Japan, Australia & Canada) and by industry. … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Author: Aswath Damodaran | Source: NYU Stern School of Business | Subjects: Economics, Finance, Free Stuff / Tools, Reference / Search

We now know that the shareholders and the financial industry won that battle for corporate control. In the business schools, the finance function emerged as top dog and the economists began to apply the teachings of their discipline to the firm via organizational economics (agency theory and transaction cost economics). The resulting shareholder value model of the firm has dominated for the last thirty years … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David K. Hurst | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Economics, Finance, Leadership, MBA Related

In order to deal with business fluctuations, efforts to develop strategic resilience should extend to financial decision making, approached in a systematic manner.

Content: Article | Authors: Dillard Tinsley, Garland Simmons | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Finance

In football, there is a rigid separation of the real market — the games played on Sundays — from the expectations market, or the betting that takes place prior to the game. No participant in the real market is permitted to participate in any way in the expectations market. If they do, they risk a lifetime ban for even one infraction. There is an even … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Roger L. Martin | Subjects: Compensation, Corporate Governance, Economics, Finance

At one end of the budgeting spectrum is the struggling business unit that unveils the miraculous “hockey stick” trajectory their sales and profits are just about to take…again. (Don’t bet on it.) At the other end are high-performing business units that are starved of the resources they need in order to fund growth because they are subsidizing another business unit’s hockey stick.

Through hundreds of sessions … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jason Green | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Finance, Management

Every financial model has several parts that need to be put together. It also requires many assumptions, which act as the glue holding the parts together. The model allows us to contemplate what the future of our business will look like, a projection of what might be. Every financial plan needs, at a minimum, the following components, or worksheets:
– Marketing
– Sales
– Cost of Goods Sold … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Ken Kaufman | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Finance

What would you rather have, a big list with dismal conversion rates or a smaller list targeting a highly engaged audience? Thought so.
For a healthy opt-in email list, quality always trumps quantity, and here are 19 budget-friendly ways to get the list you want. What you’ll find here are a few new twists to familiar tactics, along with real results and examples, to help you … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Hunter Boyle | Source: MarketingProfs | Subject: Market/Investment

A premium multiple is hard to come by and harder to keep. Executives should worry more about improving performance.

Content: Article | Authors: Anand Mehta, Susan Nolen Foushee, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance