Big Fat Finance Blog

About This Blog Updated daily by members of the Business Finance Expert Network, The Big Fat Finance Blog is intended to arm finance professionals with innovative ideas and best practices that help finance organizations create value.

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Three Questions for BNY Mellon’s Steve Lipiner

The following is an edited interview with Steve Lipiner, CFO, BNY Mellon Asset Management:


BF: Tell us how your finance organization inside BNY Mellon Asset Management operates today …

Lipiner: The organization has about 135 people today. There are 15 investment management boutiques under the BNY Mellon umbrella, and our team is spread out globally to support each of these boutiques. From early on, the philosophy has been to get as close to the customer as possible, and when I say “customer,” from a finance perspective I mean our internal customers, individuals who run our lines of businesses. more

Sales Tax Rates Hit 28-Year High

Corporate tax solutions provider Vertex has been tracking the U.S. average sales tax rate since 1982. Last year, the average hit a new record — 5.468 percent — according to the firm’s latest report, published this week.


Seven states increased their standard rate in 2009 (also a record).


More worrying, perhaps, for the companies that have to collect and remit these funds, is the fact that tax authorities are levying more and more new sales and use taxes, and they’re changing the ones they’ve already established more frequently. more

Preview Business Finance’s Latest Cover

Business Finance’s Latest Cover





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Companies Cut Costs, Employees Cut Ethical Corners

Do enterprise cost reduction efforts cause ethical misconduct among employees?


This question poses a potentially troubling connection … and a new survey report provides a dispiriting answer: quite possibly.


The report is an addendum to the 2009 Ethics Resource Center’s recent update to its ongoing National Business Ethics Survey, which I blogged about here.


Here’s the jarring introduction to this research brief:

“In order to address changing needs and to weather financial struggles, companies often have to make difficult decisions that impact employees’ lives at — and outside of — work.

“Companies use a variety of tactics (adjusted work schedules, layoffs, reductions in compensation and/or benefits, hiring freezes, early buyouts, production slowdowns, and plant closures). Research conducted as a part of the 2009 National Business Ethics Survey reveals that all of these tactics are related to significant increases in the number of employees observing misconduct.”


The five-page brief offers five findings and five related take-aways based on an analysis of responses to the Business Ethics Survey data. more

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UPS CFO Says Upturn May Challenge Finance’s New Relevance

Insightful Words

It’s no secret that the recession has helped to raise the organizational profile of the finance function. Finance executives are now routinely participating in strategy discussions that had often excluded them in the past. And yet, certain finance leaders wonder whether finance will keep its seat at the table once a recovery is under way.

“It’s been almost too easy these last two years,” explains UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn. “CFOs and finance managers took a lead during the financial chaos because they had to help their companies navigate, and there are some people who think that this is the new normal and finance is now enshrined as a critical strategic function, but I think that this can be lost as easily as it was gained if functions don’t continue to stay attuned with the business, when growth maybe becomes a higher focus as opposed to cost management, and so I think that’s the challenge facing finance over the next year. It’s remaining relevant.” ###

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