Thursday, November 20, 2008

MIT CFO Summit yields suggestions for economic opportunities

By Galen Moore

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Chief financial officers and financial decision makers gathered Thursday morning at the Marriott Hotel in Newton for the MIT Sloan School of Management’s annual CFO Summit, hoping to learn how to deal with an increasingly volatile business environment.
 
Thursday morning’s keynote panel comprised Broadcom Corp. CFO Eric Brandt, Cardinal Health Inc. CFO Jeff Henderson, and Microsoft Corp. North America CFO John Rex. All advised the group assembled in the hotel’s large ballroom to look for opportunities in times of crisis.
 
“’09 is a mess,” said Brandt, suggesting CFOs should look ahead to how the company is going to look in 2010. “It won’t be long before investors forget about ‘09, because they can’t use it to value companies.”
 
Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM) began “hoarding cash,” at the beginning of 2008, Brandt said. The company is now using that cash to buy intellectual property and other investments that can be available on the cheap in the down market, he said.
 
Henderson suggested companies should recruit as much as they can afford to do so. Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) is recruiting at university campuses, and while they may not be hiring huge numbers, at each campus they have a shot at capturing the top students in the graduating class, he said.
 
“This is a wonderful opportunity to get the best and the brightest,” Henderson said.
 
Rex said companies need to turn attention inward, as well. “Don’t forget to take care of your own employees,” he said. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is keeping the “pedal to the floor” on professional development. In addition, the company is closely tracking its deal pipeline from week to week and has learned to use some of its own technology to cut costs.
 
For example, the company is using its own virtual meeting technology to replace the fly-in portion of upcoming conferences and meetings, he said. Looking around in the downturn, Rex said a lot of Microsoft executives have realized, “Gee, we’ve got a lot of technology we don’t leverage as well as we should.”