Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets.
I have been involved with the Mergers and Acquisitions marketplace for several years. I have seen my fair share of the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to the orientations, motivations, and activities of the various Private Equity firms (as well as some Hedge Funds) to whom I have been exposed and with whom I have…
Many people would rather have a root canal than undergo a tax audit – but it’s a fact that when the tax revenue declines as a result of a recession, tax audits increase. With the number of audits on the rise, increasing numbers of business owners and individuals may have to endure a visit from the taxman. So…
In December 1997, members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiated the Kyoto Protocol that established emissions reductions for the developed and developing nations that ratified the Protocol. The Protocol went into force in February 2005 after Russia ratified it in November 2004. The U.S. did not ratify the Protocol because it set no emission limits for China or India. The Kyoto Protocol…
When does a company become too big to fail and by what standards? How can the casual passer-by – not to mention the learn’d industry or government analyst – tell when a company poses too great a risk?Can a government or global / regional economy become too big to fail?If so, then what? In the United…
EnterpriseIn the January 1, 2009 edition of CFO Magazine , an article entitled Rethinking Riskreferenced a recent survey of 125 CFO’s. The survey reports that 62% of the respondents blame the financial crisis on “risk management’s inability to understand complex financial instruments”. It states that nearly 75% of the executives rank risk management ahead of many key issues facing the…
This is a question that I recently felt compelled to flat-out ask a COO of a publicly traded Fortune 500 company in response to a series of comments he made to me during an engagement interview. His shocked response was, “Of course not…!” There was obviously a disconnect someplace. To be sure, we are living…
