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The base salaries of CFOs across most European countries have increased by more than 15% on average (in US dollar terms).according to Mercer Human Resource Consulting's latest Global Pay Summary 2004/2005. The head of finance and accounting or the head of sales and marketing are usually the highest paid heads of a function in an individual country, but in several countries - including the UK and Hong Kong - the head of information technology is the best paid function head. While there has been a relative increase in European executive pay, this can be partly attributed to the depreciation of the US dollar. Salaries of Swiss executives when converted into US dollars rose nearly 10% in 2004 solely as a result of the Swiss franc's appreciation. Salaries in the Euro zone rose by 9% last year due to changes in exchange rates.

Adecco, the human resource provider, has received a boost in its bid to redress regulatory concerns after Moody's Investors Service upgraded its long-term debt ratings and its guaranteed subsidiaries to Baa3 from Ba1.

Last year was a record year for M&A in the CIS, according to a report prepared by professional services firm Ernst & Young. The report. Mergers and Acquisitions in the CIS, reveals that the Russian M&A market, the largest in the region, grew by 70% to $30 billion for 2004. Ukraine and Kazakhstan followed Russia with $2.6 billion and $ 0.7billion in M&A activity, respectively.

SunGard Treasury Systems and Danske Bank have announced a partnership to provide SunGard's customers with direct access, from their AvantGard treasury management systems, to Danske Bank's cash management services.

Alistair Rae, FD of Jarvis, has resigned from the company after refusing to join the head office move to York from London.

With cash to spare and shareholders to please, more companies have this week announced they are launching, or at least thinking about, share buyback programmes. Dell, the US technology company, has said it will use $10 billion to repurchase an additional 250 million shares. Since 1996, the company has spent more than $18 billion buying back 1.2 billion shares, reducing weighted average shares outstanding by 20%.

JPMorgan Treasury Services has launched an automated intraday investment sweeping service. The service moves surplus liquidity from notional cash pools to an investment vehicle such as a money market fund (MMF), enabling corporates to benefit from higher yield without the need to actively manage the pool. Automated investment sweeping adds further flexibility to JPMorgan's Global Book service, providing value over and above the established intraday, cross-border cash sweep network.

Yesterday CF reported the news that Uniq, the UK food company, had been strong armed by its pension trustees into backing out of bidding talks over fears that a deal might have harmful consequences for the pension scheme. But a new study shows that more often UK pension schemes are less assertive, routinely failing to take account of the risk of default by their sponsoring company when determining funding and investment policy. The Standard & Poor's study covers the 346 largest private sector defined benefit schemes in the UK, and examines the funding and investment profile of schemes relative to Standard & Poor's credit assessment of their sponsors.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has released a report from its Private Company Financial Reporting Task Force recommending changes to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for private companies. The task force conducted extensive research and based its conclusions on the input of more than 3,700 responses from those impacted. In response to the task force's findings, AICPA, Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have agreed to work together to explore possible changes to GAAP for private companies.

Nearly one third of worldwide corporate deals collapse or are drastically altered after background checks on potential new business partners uncover problems, according to research conducted by the Risk Advisory group, an investigations and security consultancy. The problems include companies and individuals having broken anti-corruption laws and, in the most extreme cases, having links with terrorism and other illegal activity.

And you thought 2004 was a great market for issuing corporate debt. Figures just released by iBoxx have shown that in the first two months of 2005 corporate bond spreads narrowed by almost as much as they did in the entirety of last year.

A survey reveals that pension schemes are having an adverse affect on 52% of UK companies, negatively impacting profitability, financial health and the ability to invest in new projects. The survey by SEI Investments, a provider of investment and technology solutions, is its 8th survey among pension funds globally.