Thomson Reuters
Pfizer is attempting to acquire Allergen and move its corporate headquarters overseas to Ireland.
New corporate anti-inversion rules issued (Journal of Accountancy)
On Thursday, the IRS announced new corporate anti-inversion rules.
The rules are "designed to curtail the ability of an inverted company to access foreign subsidiaries' earnings without paying US tax," according to the Journal of Accountancy.
Corporate inversion occurs when a multinational company based in the US acquires a foreign company in order to move its corporate address overseas.
The new rules will apply to deals completed on or after November 19, 2015.
"Among the new rules will be one requiring the foreign acquiring corporation to be subject to tax as a resident of the foreign country in order to be deemed to have substantial business activities in the foreign country," the Journal of Accountancy reports.
The IRS also issued rules to deal with post-inversion deals and other types of corporate transfers.
Siemens CFO: We're going to stop wasting money (Reuters)
Siemens CFO Ralf Thomas promised to "get a grip" on problems surrounding big projects that have caused "hundreds of millions of euros worth of charges in the past."
"We have set up 'guard rails' for new projects to make the risk structure of projects transparent. Transparency of margins and risks in our order book is bigger than ever in the history of Siemens," German newspaper Boersen-Zeitung quoted Thomas as saying in an interview published on Saturday.
The tech company "booked one-off charges of 900 million euros ($958 million) in its financial year through the end of September 2014."
Why CFOs need to pay attention to blockchain technology (CFO.com)
"Bitcoin is beginning to disrupt the old establishment not only as a currency but also as a means of securely tracking and verifying transactions," according to CFO.com.
The publication argues that bitcoin's central technology, known as blockchain, should be watched closely by CFOs.
"This public ledger uses a decentralized, mathematically encrypted network of computer nodes to verify and record transactions," reports CFO.com. "Through this medium, a distributed ledger is updated in real time, allowing for an immutable forensic audit trail of all transactions - potentially a CFO's dream."
Goldman Sachs and Citibank are already deploying teams to eventually incorporate blockchain technology, and other companies are likely to follow in their footsteps.
"The technology allows for a scalable and secure ledger with unlimited account creation and programmable, trackable money. Thus, CFOs would have access to a record of each cent that moves through their systems in real time," CFO.com adds.