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• But the ominous inflation of the dot-com bubble wasn't the only major issue we were tracking as a new century dawned. For all of the recent twists and turns in the GAAP vs. IFRS debate, it's interesting to note that a decade ago we devoted a cover story to the promises and pitfalls of accounting-standards convergence. Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker had just been charged with restructuring the board that set international accounting rules, a move intended to align them more closely with GAAP and level the playing field between the two standards. Ten years on, much has transpired and many issues have been resolved, yet this topic will almost certainly land on our cover again.
• Indeed, IASB alum and newly minted FASB chairman Robert Herz graced our cover three years later, as we parsed the many complexities of fair-value accounting. "I think it's hard to argue with the conceptual merits of fair value as the most relevant measurement attribute," Herz said at the time. But others worried that "income numbers can…become so volatile as to be meaningless." The financial crisis that hit five years later would provide a test case, the impact of which is still hotly debated.
• Freud famously asked, "What do women want?" In 2006 we sought the answer — in terms of finance careers, anyway. Since 1995, we've examined the progress that women have made in advancing to the CFO position, and 11 years into that effort we noted that while the number of female CFOs in the Fortune 500 had more than tripled between 1995 and 2006 (to 35), that number seemed to pale in comparison to the high percentage of women who entered the finance pipeline at entry-level positions.
• As part of our multistory look at the unfolding financial crisis, in March 2008 we described a bankruptcy hearing in which lawyers asked creditors for an additional 15 minutes to review a just-hatched debtor-in-possession financing agreement, and were turned down. Talk about a rough-and-tumble credit market — was it really just a year before that we ran an article describing easy credit conditions and the warm, fuzzy feelings that CFOs had for their bankers?
• Finally, last year we decided that amid the doom and gloom there must be something good to say, so part of our look at "The Year Ahead" included a list of economic bright spots. Among them: the finance-talent crunch was easing, as were energy prices, while the stock of the CFO was rising. But we weren't overly optimistic: this issue also included the worst confidence scores in the 12-year history of the Duke University/CFO Business Outlook Survey. We must have gotten the mix right, because this issue won Folio magazine's Gold "Eddie" Award for the Best Business/Finance/Banking coverage among business-to-business publications. — S.L.
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