Free Subscription to CFO Magazine

Metrics

You are here: Home : Topics A-Z : Metrics

Bankruptcy's Buoyant Crystal Ball

In the current crunch, smart CFOs need to gauge how overextended their companies are before taking on a new client or embarking on an expansion, a turnaround expert says.

October 22, 2008

Few 40-year-olds can boast the ongoing success of the Z-score, a bankruptcy-prediction model introduced by New York University professor Edward Altman in 1968. The model, which assigns weighted values to five financial ratios to assess the likelihood of bankruptcy for manufacturing and industrial firms, has become an industry standard for detecting trouble before it happens. Read more...

Follow this topic

More Metrics Articles

  • Who Moved My Cheese? Kraft Joins Dow

    With AIG taken over by the feds, Kraft Foods takes the insurer's former slot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. September 18, 2008

  • Counter Attack

    As phony goods flood the market, companies fight to protect their brands. June 1, 2008

  • ROC Solid

    Why return on capital could be the metric that best helps companies achieve higher returns. June 1, 2008

  • Still Processing

    CFOs still spend too much time on transactions and too little on analysis. When will this change? February 22, 2008

  • ROI of Humans

    Companies still struggle to measure the value of employees. October 1, 2007

  • IHOP's Thomas Conforti: The Right Mix

    The week that IHOP acquired Applebee's in a $2 billion deal, finance chief Tom Conforti talked to CFO about why the target company's business model is a thing of the past, and what it's like to swallow an elephant. September 1, 2007

  • What's Your Fraud Score?

    Receive the wrong grade on this test, and your auditor may be scouring your company's financial statements for evidence of earnings management. August 17, 2007

  • Growing with the Flow

    A new metric shines a light on whether growth needs to come at the expense of free cash flow. July 11, 2007

  • Measuring Up

    Many companies still struggle to use metrics effectively. It may be that fresh thinking is what really counts. June 1, 2007

Print Edition

Small Companies Will Lag, but By How Much?

Switching to IFRS is inevitable for private companies — eventually.

advertisement

advertisement