Tim Harcourt’s a smart guy. He’s the chief economist at Australia’s Austrade and has a very acute sense of export opportunity for Australian businesses both big and small. In an interview he used Donald Horne’s title The Lucky Country to underscore how, this time, we have made our luck by forging great linkages with Asia-Indo China; where Indonesia, India, China are all expecting 8-9 per cent growth rates for 2012.
Calculating the impact of a carbon tax is relatively easy if you are one of the 500 ‘polluters’; it is more problematic if you are one of the remaining 2 million Australian businesses
Traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers may secretly wish the Internet didn't exist, but uncertainty about interest rates, rising utility costs, consumer caution, global recession and other financial issues are also contributing to the grim offline retail scene.
Short-term cuts are easy; but making them stick is more difficult. Sales, general and administrative (often grouped as ‘SGA’) prove to be particularly intransigent. While manufacturing efficiencies have improved in recent years, SGA has remained more or less at same levels.
Short term cuts are easy; but making them stick is more difficult. Sales, general and administrative (often grouped as ‘SGA”) prove to be particularly intransigent. While manufacturing efficiencies have improved in recent years, SGA remained more or less at same levels.
In privately held companies the role of the CFO is often extended far beyond treasury and finance matters. With Australia’s two million family businesses being are valued at up to $1.5 trillion, it is inevitable that the CFO will become pivotal in any exit strategy and succession planning.
Choosing new accounting software can be a daunting task. CFO World's guide to which small business accounting software you should buy aims to help you in the early stages of the buying process. It includes descriptions of the various types of accounting software out there, including packaged and online or SaaS versions and provides an overview of the Australian small business accounting software market.
In Australia the concerns of CFOs were until recently around balance sheet rebuilding and cost cutting. Defensive actions may continue at the fringes but all up, 2011 looks set to be the year in which corporate start spending again
Deals don’t get much bigger than the now scrapped plans between mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto which intended a $US116 billion joint venture in the Pilbara.
The recent news that the Commonwealth Bank had written down its investment in Victoria's Hazelwood Power Station to only $1 million would certainly have shocked its owners, International Power, which paid $2.35 billion for the plant in 1996.
Why would any self respecting CFO take an $80,000 gig at a start-up?
Tackling the bank squeeze head on: negotiating with the banks, finding new sources of finance
How does a CFO determine whether a new venture is a good investment decision or not? Most CFOs applied internal rate of return (IRR) or net present value (NPV) calculations. But ROI calculations based on those are only as good as the assumptions of risk. A new paradigm is emerging.
With the advent of groups such as the Chinese-owned Alibaba group, a diverse business which facilitates B2B and sources production and logistics solutions for companies around the globe, the buyer has gained the ascendency.
“If you can’t forecast well, forecast often,” is a well worn adage for people in markets and for economists. The adage has been - somewhat cruelly - referenced to former US Federal Reserve chairman, , Alan Greenspan, who’s forecasting record was less than prescient. He did however forecast often. In the public arena bank economists are paraded out each month to make forecasts on interest rates, inflation, unemployment.