VideoFinance, Well-Covered
The good, the bad, and the regulatory, as chronicled in a dozen cover stories
As we mark our 25th anniversary, a trip through our archives reveals much about what has — and hasn't — changed in the world of corporate finance during the past quarter century. Over the course of 300 issues, we have produced roughly 5,000 articles spanning 25,000 pages, totaling somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million words. That's the equivalent of writing Moby-Dick every year for 25 years, plus an additional half-million words for good measure. Add to that the thousands of original articles we've produced for our Website, www.cfo.com, over the past decade, and it's clear that we've covered the world of finance from "accounting" to "z-scores." A look back at some notable cover stories offers a quick and occasionally quirky take on the recent history of finance:
• Our first issue, in February 1985, offered a cover story that we could almost run again: an inside look at turnaround experts, and the empathy they have for beleaguered CFOs. This inaugural issue was notable in other ways: we wrote enthusiastically about a range of new Dictaphone products (less than $5,000 for the reel-to-reel version!) and, in a curious sign of the times, we ran a full-page photograph of an executive replete with cigarette in his hand and an ashtray at his side (to be fair, he was under a lot of pressure).
• A year later, we described "The New Ruling Class," an emerging contingent of CFOs-turned-CEOs. That career path has been a topic we've revisited many times over the years, most recently in November 2009, when we looked at the stock performance of companies whose CEO had worked as a CFO at some point in his or her career, versus those whose hadn't. Results suggested an edge for companies helmed by former CFOs.
• In 1987, we offered what would become the first of several cover stories devoted to the rise of China specifically or Asia more generally. The need for CFOs to adopt a global perspective was a constant refrain among those we interviewed for this 25th anniversary story, and with good reason: between 1985 and 2009, trade with China increased almost 40-fold.
• Then again, sometimes we got it wrong. In 1991 we devoted a cover story to IT giant Unisys, which was floundering at the time, as ailing hardware giants Sperry and Burroughs tried to figure out how to make their merger work. As it turns out, they did make it work, despite our suggestion that the company's future was not bright. Today Unisys, focused on IT services rather than gear, ranks 456 on the Fortune 500.
• We were a good deal more prescient about the need to take a hard look at derivatives, or, as we called them in 1994, Derivatives! This cover story noted that "derivatives are tools for managing risk. That means, of course, that they are tools for taking risk, which is appropriate when done consciously and carefully." Today, the matter of what constitutes a careful and conscientious approach remains very much up for debate — in Congress, among other places.
• Long before Y2K hysteria created a booming market for ERP systems, we chronicled the complexities and frustrations associated with SAP's then-new R3 system. The company hit a home run when it offered clients a chance to run a powerful ERP system on machines other than mainframe computers, but there were plenty of devils lurking in the details. The problem was compounded by a rare phenomena: a dearth of consultants.
• Technology trends have had a profound influence on Corporate America, of course — sometimes for the good. In June of 1999, as the dot-com bubble inflated, we examined the "New Attitude" of the CFOs at Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and other dot-com giants in the making. What characterized that new attitude? "If we don't have to invest in inventory or receivables," said one CFO, "we really don't care if we sell $100 and make $10 on it or sell $200 and make $10 on it." Another company profiled in that article had a market cap of $500 million, with revenue of $5.5 million and a recent annual net loss of $14.7 million. Ah, the good ol' days.
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