The NY Times is reporting that CFO’s are disappearing, or at least quitting in large numbers:

E. Peter McLean, a vice chairman at Spencer Stuart, the executive search firm, said that this year through mid-November, 62 chief financial officers at Fortune 500 companies had left their jobs; by year-end, he expects that total to reach nearly 70, a number that would mirror last year’s. Over the last three years, more than 225 C.F.O.’s of the Fortune 500 companies have left.[...]

Nor will the pace slow down, said Gordon Grand, a managing director at Russell Reynolds Associates, an executive search firm. “When the economy was bad and Sarbanes-Oxley was new, many companies and C.F.O.’s didn’t want to risk change,” he said. “Now, there’s a greater willingness to make change on both sides of the equation.”

Some finance chiefs, of course, are just changing companies. But many are leaving the field entirely. Debby Hopkins, a career chief financial officer, recently switched to chief technology officer at Citigroup, while Thomas A. Madden, the chief financial officer of Ingram Micro, has announced that he will leave in April to teach at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California at Irvine.

Here’s what you need to understand. The whole title of “Chief (Insert here) Officer” was a creation of the original SEC acts, which require that companies have someone who signs off on the operations of the company (CEO) and someone who signs off on the finances (CFO). Sarbanes Oxley, in asking the CEO to sign off on the finances, creates instant conflict between a CEO who feels his ass is on the line for somebody else’s work, and a CFO who feels he can’t get his work done properly without having a CEO meddling with his work all the time. In other words, with two people personally liable for the same task, they both feel a need to get their hands all over that task, and thus, eventually, one of them has to leave. I don’t know what the long term implications of this are going to be, but I doubt they’ll be good.

Read more here.

(thanks adam)

Over at Lachlan Gemmell’s.

Baiting cybersex trolls can be fun.

Observe.

Can a deaf person (who only signs to communicate) have Tourettes syndrome? What would that look like? Would they be just walking down the street and suddenly, without warning, start gesticulating madly?

What about a blogger? What would a Tourettes afflicted blogger’s blog look like?

Would it look like this one?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I had a friend in college who sent a death threat to Bea Arthur. It was simple, just said, “Watch your back Bea, I’m gunning for you.” He just mailed it to care of NBC or whatever network Golden Girls was on.

Well, my friend wasn’t successful. Didn’t even try so far as I know. And look at what Bea Arthur is doing now.

All I can say is it makes me hungry for some chicken.

As in rip your DVDs on a Mac…

Although I suppose it could also mean RIP to to the movie industry…

And apparently that may soon include fast forwarding through commercials on your VCR/Tivo…

Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television program you’ve recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to jail if you’re caught doing it? If a new copyright and intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress’s desk passes, that may be the choice you’ll face.

How can this be possible? Because language that makes fast-forwarding through commercials illegal — no doubt inserted at the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry — was inserted into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already thought that was OK). And that’s but one, albeit scary, scenario that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act, or IPPA, is enacted into law. Deliberations on this legislation will be one of the tasks for the lame-duck Congress that commenced this week.

I can’t imagine it would pass, but you just never know.

Read more here.

Check it:

After finding out that a mobile porn studio is being used on the streets of South Florida, Local 10 wanted to find out if the business is legal.

Police spokesperson Delrish Moss also watched video trailers from Ox Ideas’ Web sites showing two men in a mini-bus offering girls money to get inside. Once in the van, the girls were convinced to flash their breasts, and the activities progress to hardcore pornography before the girls are dumped out of the van.

But Local 10 learned in an undercover investigation, the women are actually paid performers, and the incidents are all set up in advance. Ox Ideas producer Olivier Caudron told a Local 10 producer that the women are paid $700.

I’d wondered if those videos were real.

Read more here.
And in case you’re wondering who they’re talking about, visit Bang Bus.

(via fark)