CFOs around the world are feeling good--good enough to start spending some money.

But they're going to do so carefully.

In the past week alone, two companies completed distressed exchange offers--US-based Liz Claiborne and Canada-based Cinram International.

This brings the total number of corporate defaults so far this year to six, including four based in the US, according to Standard & Poor's.

Potential ethical issues are playing a major role among US companies that conduct business overseas.

According to a new survey, the number of companies claiming to have lost business due to competitors acting unethically has surged to 40 percent from just 10 percent as recently as 2009.

Limited Brands said it will sell $750 million in 10-year notes. The company said it intends to use the proceeds to repurchase $500 million of stock under a new share repurchase program and for general corporate purposes.

The move seemed to surprise some commentators. But investors applauded the move, bidding up the stock by more than 1 percent when it began trading Tuesday morning.

Three-way proxy battles are very unusual. In fact, they are so unusual dissidents frequently go out of their way to avoid them.

This is what happened in a single day last week.

It seemingly happens every Friday evening.

Federal regulators announce that some small bank cannot continue on its own and a rival is brought in to take over the assets and continue as if nothing had happened.

As the US outlook brightens and US companies look to spend some of their hoarded cash on acquisitions abroad, they have many things to ponder and prepare for, not least how takeover rules differ in other jurisdictions.

This came to the fore again recently when two UK takeover targets managed to give their respective suitors—one from the US and one from France—the cold shoulder.

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.

It is not exactly happy days here again in the venture capital world.

Sure in 2010 the number of deals rose by 6 percent, to 2,799 over 2009 and the amount of capital invested in those transactions climbed 11 percent to $26.2 billion, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

Li Ka-Shing's Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa (known locally as Hutch) always tops the list of the best managed companies in Asia. This is less to do with its operational management and always to do with its financial management. Its success also flies in the face of conventional wisdom that conglomerates dilute shareholder value through a lack of focus.