In this panel, part of The CFO Summit 2010, the speakers discussed issues associated with M&A targets, joint-venture partners, financial/tax/legal risk, and the transparency issues associated with operating in emerging markets.

In this session, part of The CFO Summit 2010, the panelists discussed how CFOs should deal with the short-term aftermath of the recession while maintaining a viable long-term strategy and what should be their working capital priorities.

In this video, Charlie McCreevy, previous European Commisioner for Internal Markets and Services, delivers the closing keynote address at The CFO Summit 2010.

As part of The European Retail Banking Summit 2011, Patrick Foley, Chief Economist at Lloyds Banking Group, unpicked the key economic trends shaping the future of banking.

“It was a wake-up call,” says E. Gerald Corrigan, managing director at Goldman Sachs, when describing the US$550m fine the firm was issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2010 for misleading investors about a product tied to subprime mortgages. “The reputational damage required great attention which we attempted to address through the Business Standards Committee report (BCS).”

Cemex recognises the core challenge for a Mexican cement maker that has expanded rapidly across the globe through acquisitions: meshing an international network of organisations with different cultures and different areas of expertise. However, the company, which adopted e-mail as a mode of internal communication in the early 1990s, long before many other companies, is not afraid of using new technologies to enhance collaboration and raise productivity.

DuPont, the US chemicals group, spent six years driving Six Sigma, the management excellence techniques, through the company. Then, in 2006, it launched its own productivity initiative—the DuPont Production System (DPS). The system uses process tools and techniques for changing mindsets and behaviours to implement comprehensive production improvements throughout its operations.

As CEOs go, Siki Giunta is one of a kind. An Italian woman who can speak four languages and has a background in the arts and humanities, she has presided over the transformation of US software company Managed Objects from a start-up with eight employees to a global business with 150 employees and revenues of US$30m.

When Perween Warsi set up S&A Foods in 1986, she was 30 years old and had two sons aged eight and 10.

ICICI Bank is India’s second largest and fastest-growing bank and perhaps the country’s best example of how to assimilate women throughout an organisation.

KV Kamath, the company’s (male) Managing Director and Chief Executive, has made it company policy to encourage the recruitment and development of women and, as a result, females hold about a dozen of the top 40 management posts, two out of five executive board seats, run two out of five subsidiaries, and account for about 30 per cent of total staff.