Parachuting into a struggling company isn't for everyone, but it didn't faze Chuck Chokel, the subject of this issue's cover story. As the CFO of Conseco Inc., the Indiana-based insurance and financial services firm, Chokel is joining with legendary GE Capital Corp. CEO Gary Wendt in working to nurse Conseco back to robust health. Restructuring the company balance sheet is high on his list of challenges.

Nasdaq has been buffeted by the dramatic slide in technology stocks in recent months, but the world's largest exchange is still moving ahead with plans to expand overseas. Writer Ramona Dzinkowski sat down with outgoing Chairman Frank Zarb and drew him out about Nasdaq's plans, including its intent to do a public offering, as well as about issues like financial transparency and international capital flows.

The balanced scorecard has drawn a lot of attention in the 1990s, and quite a few companies have extolled its benefits. In a pair of articles, the concept's originators and an FEI Research Foundation study look at the BSC and its evolution. Robert Kaplan and David Norton argue that the scorecard is not just a performance measurement tool, but an instrument for driving change. In its study, the Foundation researchers looked at a series of BSC-related effects on organizations, including culture, non-financial information, linkage and implementation.

Outsourcing real estate management functions can be a highly effective way of managing non-core financial areas, argues Craig Lindsay, a CFO himself at a business process outsourcing firm. Web-based technology, he argues, has created hosted processes that give client companies the ability to hand over management of tangible assets yet actively monitor everything related to them.

Turning to the financing and investment arena, money management consultant and writer Barclay Leib looks at the use of synthetic debt - specifically, "putable/callable bonds" that are being actively hawked by Wall Street investment banks. Treasurers should study them carefully and understand the full ramifications of using such instruments, he says. And investment writer Michael Dubes examines the potential advantages of adding hedge funds to a corporate portfolio - not the least of which is relative outperformance in the past few years, compared to other asset classes.

And in a special section devoted to the Internet, we asked a series of experts and companies involved in working and thinking about cyberspace to talk about how to harness its capabilities. Ed Rodriguez, global chairman of KPMG's electronics practice, looks at the current depressed state of the industry and sees hope, especially since companies have been forced to clear out old inventory, trim costs and focus on meaningful innovation. An executive from SRC Software examines how corporate planning and budgeting processes are well-suited to benefit from Internet and Web-enabled collaborative tools. And Edgar Online CFO Greg Adams details how much information about competitors and markets is available for those willing to click their mouse through a series of SEC filings.

We're also launching a new feature called Chapter Spotlight that will profile individual FEI chapters, giving others around the country an opportunity to compare practices. Look for it in the FEI News section. First up: Twin Cities.