In 2023, the SEC charged Vidul Prakash, former CFO of smart windows company View, with “negligence-based fraud and violations of disclosure and books and records,” as CFO Brew previously reported. Prakash was ordered to pay civil penalties and, after the firm cooperated with the SEC, he was prohibited from serving as an officer or director for a company.

This lawsuit was unusual in that it named a CFO personally. In recent years, that’s only happened a handful of times. There were 24 cases where individual CFOs were sued by an array of plaintiffs in 2023, compared to 14 in 2022, according to Datarails’s CFO Lawsuit Tracker 2024.

The most frequent charge against CFOs in 2023 was breach of fiduciary duty. There were 10 such cases in 2023, up from three in 2022. The second-most frequent charge was fraud, which featured in nine cases in 2023, up from six in 2022.

Such cases may be on the rise, law professor and litigation attorney Jed Chedid, who compiled the CFO Lawsuit Tracker with Datarails, told CFO Brew. “What I am starting to see is a closer personal attack on the officers of the corporation itself,” he said. More plaintiffs are “trying to pierce the corporate veil and sue the corporate officer directly,” he said.

For more on the rise in CFO lawsuits, click here.—CV

In the world of retail, one word echoes above all others: profitability.

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After climbing out of a fall slump, new single-family home sales dipped slightly in February, but that’s probably not enough to dampen the vibe that home builders are enjoying, as other signs point to a (figuratively) sunny spring.

First, the ugh news. Sales of new single-family homes fell 0.3% from February to March, the Census Bureau and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Monday. That’s 662,000 homes, 2,000 fewer than January’s seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 664,000. Analysts had expected annualized new home sales to hit 675,000 in February. It would have also continued the recovery from a steep drop in new sales from September to November.

The sales dip could cause concern for makers and retailers of appliances, furniture, and other big-ticket items that people buy when they move into a new home.

All right, now to the happier stuff.

Despite the dip month over month, new sales in February were still 5.9% higher than the same time last year, the Census Bureau reported, when new sales bottomed out following a boom in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Click here for more on housing and the economy.—GD

Here’s your latest reminder that, right now, the economic vibes are good. CFOs showed their strongest optimism for the US economy in nearly three years, according to a quarterly Fed survey.

According to the survey from the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta and Duke University released on Wednesday, CFOs expected 2.2% real GDP growth over the next four quarters, up from 1.7% the previous quarter and 1.4% the same period last year. CFOs also rated their optimism of the overall economy at 61 on a scale of zero to 100, which was the highest level since Q2 2021, according to the Fed.

“CFOs have improved their economic outlook amid stronger realized growth in the U.S. economy,” Atlanta Fed economist Brent Meyer said in a news release. “Firms still face many challenges, including a tight labor market and persistent pricing pressures, but there is less concern over a downturn in economic growth compared to previous quarters.”

Finance chiefs have an even rosier view of their own firm’s financial prospects, at the nice score of 69. Meanwhile, more than half of organizations “expect price growth in 2024 to remain above pre-Covid levels, suggesting that for many firms, pricing pressures remain above what they consider normal,” according to the survey.

For more on what CFOs are thinking about the economy, click here.—AZ

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