Sara Lee is the latest company to break itself into two or more separate companies.

The split announcement comes in the same month that Motorola divided into two separate companies.

More promising developments in the area of borrowing.

An important just-released indicator of business health and activity reveals some upward trends--specifically, that companies increased their borrowing to invest in operations and more firms are keeping up with payments on loans they've taken out previously.

With costs varying greatly for different bank services, companies are seldom given insight into what drives their banks’ fee structures and often can feel held hostage to high bank fees with no mechanism to address it.

Particularly since the crisis began and liquidity became tight, companies have often focused more on simple liquidity availability than in bartering for the best fee structure for that access to capital.

Verizon Communications has changed the way its accounts for pensions and other post-employment benefits.

The telecom giant said the new policy recognizes gains and losses in the year they are incurred, rather than amortizing them over time. This will result in $20.2 billion in charges to prior earnings.

Most CFOs of large companies believe health care reform will raise costs and reduce quality.

According to a new survey, more than 90 percent expect benefits cost per employee to rise. What's more, half of the respondents expect the quality and/or breadth of offered benefits to decline.

So, here is the upside to stubbornly high unemployment and slow job growth.

US labor productivity surged to 2.4 percent in 2009 and 2.8 percent in 2010, according to The Conference Board. This compares with just 0.8 percent in 2008.

Corporate taxes may finally be receiving the attention it deserves.

The decision by Illinois to raise its personal income tax rate to 5 percent from 3 percent, and its business income taxes to 9.5 percent from 7.3 percent led New Jersey governor Chris Christie to appeal to Illinois businesses to move east to the Garden State.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Kansas company that manages government websites, as well as four current and former executives, including two finance executives, for failing to disclose more than $1.18 million in perquisites to the former chief executive officer.

The Commission alleges that NIC filed false and misleading proxy statements, annual reports and registration statements that failed to disclose Jeffrey Fraser's benefits and falsely represented he worked virtually for free from 2002 until 2005, and continued to materially understate the benefits Fraser received in 2006 and 2007.

Finance pros have another explanation for why they are not hiring.

Seems multinational companies feel they have little incentive to bring cash back from overseas operations because US tax rates are too high. This has adversely impacted hiring and investing in US operations.

Merger mania is back.

On Monday alone, two announced deals alone were valued at nearly $20 billion. Both of them are characterized as strategic.