A BizTaxBuzz guest blog by Brad J. Monterio, chair of the XBRL Committee for IMA, a worldwide association for accountants and financial professionals working in business.

Extensible business reporting language (XBRL) is a global information standard that makes business and financial information readable by computers easily, accurately, and quickly. It’s already impacting millions of corporate tax departments around the world today. It will affect your company soon, if it hasn’t already. more

How does a company’s decision to buy back its stock or pay a dividend, or both, impact its stock’s performance? Several analysts at S&P, using data from Capital IQ, studied the companies in the S&P 500 in order to find out. Their research covered the period from June 2007 through June 2010.

During these 3 years, 353 companies, or nearly three-quarters of the S&P 500, both repurchased their shares and issued dividends. Just under 20 percent (95 companies) engaged only in buybacks, while 39 companies only issued dividends. Thirteen companies did neither.

The top average returns – although they still were in negative territory – belonged to companies that only engaged in buybacks. Their stocks returned 10.5 percent over the period. That compares with 12.7 percent for the companies that only issued dividends. These groups handily beat the firms that did both, which returned 21.3 percent over the time period. more

You can be sure you will find cloud computing on every IT analyst’s top things to watch for in 2011. It certainly made wiredFINANCE’s list in 2010 and may be on the 2011 list, too.

It topped Gartner’s list of top 10 strategies for 2011, along with mobile apps, social media, and other topics already covered here. All this cloud enthusiasm, however, should not distract the CFO from assessing the risks.

The cloud certainly can deliver significant benefits — cost savings, speed, flexibility, new capabilities — to the organization in general and to finance in particular. However, there are significant issues and risks involved, some of which wiredFINANCE previously noted back in January. Roy Hadley and John Watkins, partners in the Cloud Computing and Cyber-Security Practice at Barnes & Thornburg, Atlanta, address those issues here. Every CFO should take a moment to review the risks. more

A longtime buddy of mine, who is rocketing his way toward the promised executive land in one of the world’s largest companies, recently asked me what corporate directors earn.

I guessed that the average amount was roughly his annual salary minus incentive compensation. And then I asked him to consider appointing a nontraditional director, one with loads of risk-management and corporate governance research and writing experiences, once he starts floating director candidates to boards in a few years.

It turns out that my estimate was on the money – and so was my suggestion to rethink the type of person who should serve as a corporate director. more

A new talent crisis is about to hit corporate finance. The word “new” is deliberate. This time, the challenge is not about the rising cost of good people. It’s about what good people do.

About 5 years ago, CFOs and controllers were complaining about the rising cost of accounting talent. In the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley, the proverbial work/life balance became unbearable, and the work itself grew highly technical, in the classic sense of applying accounting rules and controls testing. People who yearned for the excitement of swashbuckling M&A deals exited quickly. In just about every major American metropolitan center, the market for experienced corporate accountants tightened. Turnover soared, as did the salary requirements of finance folks on the move.

That was then. What I have been hearing lately as part of my research at APQC is that senior finance executives are deeply concerned about a dearth of people in the market who possess the so-called “soft skills.” Those include critical thinking, problem-solving, negotiation, communication, and collaboration. Apparently, finance professionals with soft skills in abundance can name their price. more