The surging stock market rally not only is repairing personal balance sheets and 401(k) accounts. It is also defusing the corporate pension crisis.

The funded status of the typical US corporate pension plan in February rose 0.4 percentage points to 88 percent, according to monthly statistics published by BNY Mellon Asset Management.    

Controlling cross-border payments risk is ever more important, as companies deal with volatile FX markets in managing their global ventures. As they reach out to banking partners for help, businesses are demanding better solutions, greater STP, and a focus on security and regulatory compliance.

Companies with foreign interests are increasingly turning to their banking partners to help with risk management in international payments. Plus, they are demanding more from those banks that they choose to partner with on cross-border payments.

If you're a CEO, or would like to become one, looks like your best shot at longevity comes down to this: Be nice to the board.

That's one implication of a study done by a Wharton School of Business assistant professor.

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.

The federal government's efforts to address climate change may have slowed. But shareholders seem to recognize the risks that environmental concerns pose to business--and they're doing something about it.

Investors filed 66 climate and energy related resolutions with 41 coal, electric power and oil companies in the 2011 proxy season, according to Ceres , a nonprofit coalition of investors and environmental and public interest groups. That's up from 44 the year before.

It looks like most companies are not ready for the new lease accounting standards expected to be finalized as early as mid-year.

According to a recent Deloitte survey, just 7 percent of executives believe their companies are extremely or very prepared to comply with the new lease accounting standards proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

Chief financial officers at manufacturing companies seem a little schizophrenic these days.

On the one hand, despite daily signs of an improving economy less than a majority (45 percent) are actually forecasting expansion for their industry in 2011. What's more, this is down sharply from the 59 percent reported last year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch's recently released 2011 CFO Outlook.

Chief Financial Officers are more optimistic than they were three months ago.

According to the latest survey of CFOs conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, an index measuring CFO optimism for the US economy rose more than 10 points and the outlook for CFOs' own companies' also increased nearly four points.

If recent court decisions lead to the repeal of the Obama health care plan, don't expect chief financial officers to cry.

This is because most of them think it is a bad law.

The Chapter 11 proceedings of bond insurer FGIC has raised an age-old specter of US bankruptcy events—namely the high legal fees inevitably charged by lawyers involved in such cases and who is responsible for monitoring those fees.

The insurer listed $11.5 million in assets and $391.5 million in debt in its Chapter 11 filings last fall. Since then, the company has been moving forward through the Chapter 11 process.