 With 2021 winding down it’s a good time to look back at the news stories that shaped your work as finance professionals. The major one is the persistence of the pandemic that has kept people working remotely, leading some to leverage their big-city paycheck by moving to a lower-cost area. A growing number of towns are encouraging these moves by offering remote workers incentives to put down roots.
This paycheck arbitrage, as some call it, is just one facet of a growing number of issues arising from the battle over talent. CFOs are being asked to pay for wage and salary increases, which in turn is helping to fuel inflation.
In the technology space, more software companies are moving away from the dominant subscription model to some variant of usage-based pricing, a move intended to better tie value to what customers pay.
In its own way the government is encouraging this pricing transition, by raising concerns over the way some companies make it hard for subscribers to leave. The Federal Trade Commission in June said it was hearing a lot of complaints about this.
The other agency of importance to companies, and to their finance people in particular, is the Securities and Exchange Commission. The year was a year of records for it, in enforcement actions, penalties assessed and whistleblower rewards paid out. Part of its success was driven by its EPS initiative, which uses big-data analytics to spot reporting anomalies.
One company that was under the microscope of state and federal prosecutors is the Trump Organization. The company’s alleged use of double books to track employee benefits caught the attention of investigators, who say in the lawsuit they brought against the company the practice was intended to side-step tax laws on compensation they were paying the CFO and others.
Other big stories concern the transition to LIBOR and the rise and fall of SPACs. You can read those and other top 2021 news stories in today’s newsletter. We hope you find them useful as you plan for 2022.
 Robert Freedman
Editor, CFO Dive
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An internal spreadsheet the company kept treated expenses in one way while the expenses were treated another way in the general ledger. |
CFOs face persistent challenges from inflation as Federal Reserve policy-makers meet to discuss the future for record stimulus. |
Although the Federal Trade Commission is focused on consumer abuses, the business-to-business side of recurring revenue could be affected if rule changes result. |
The tight labor market and high raw material costs are top challenges, the National Association of Manufacturers says. |
The prevalence of the number serves as a proxy for whether companies are improperly rounding up their earnings ratio. |
The availability of a forward-looking term rate for the Fed’s preferred LIBOR replacement will boost acceptance, but the LIBOR phase-out still has far to go. |
A recent flurry of federal cautionary statements signals the hands-off days of special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) IPOs are over. | | |
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