Editor's page.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Editorial

Mergers and acquisitions are a staple of growth, but the impact on revenues and jobs draws a lot more attention than the attendant accounting issues. Yet for financial executives and investors, the accounting is important--and now, it is changing. In our cover story, Cheryl Graziano of the Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) and Executive Editor Ellen M. Heffes get preparers' and standard-setters' views of the new FAS 141R on business combinations and how it may be altering the rules of the game.

The plaintiff's bar, which went after the advisers to Enron and other scandal-plagued companies in a big way a few years ago, got a significant rebuff earlier this year in the Stoneridge case. As writer Cynthia Waller Vallario explains, the U.S. Supreme Court is sending a clear business-friendly tone, signaling that so-called secondary actors may be harder to collect from when they are named in securities lawsuits.

Anger over "excessive" executive pay--especially that of dismissed CEOs--is a story that refuses to fade away. Washington continues to probe a number of related aspects, with Congressional hearings and continued scrutiny of corporate pay disclosure by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Even the Internal Revenue Service is in the fray, as writer Stephen Barlas reports.

Finance and accounting (FAO) outsourcing continues to mature, and as it does, CFOs are increasingly getting involved in determining metrics and shaping contracts. Writer Bruce McCracken examines new research about the evolution of the FAO market and details a big outsourcing project at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline plc.

Fiber optic cables are largely responsible for the explosion of Internet communications, but they remain vulnerable to something as unintended as getting sliced by a ship's anchor. The results can be calamitous. Garden-variety problems like storms and other natural disasters are more likely but can be equally damaging, and...