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IJIIliJIIJHIINIIJ MM ??i ipras II I J ' ?½ B ^ liii itoi ma To U. S. business today, tough financial controls have suddenly become synonymous with not merely success but survival, and the corporate controller has moved from the backroom right to center stage. At companies that once stressed growth and expansion beyond all else, the job of measuring the costs of doing business?╟÷and cutting them?╟÷gets the highest priority today. Elaborate budgets have been devised and are being strictly enforced. New investments must promise bigger returns than ever before?╟÷which is one reason why the pace of capital spending is so sluggish?╟÷and old projects that fall below expectations are being lopped off. Corporate debt, taken on in gigantic amounts in the past to finance growth, is being paid down rapidly, and companies are loath to take on heavy loads of new debt. Indeed, in a dramatic turnabout from the strategies of the late 1960s and early 1970s, corporations today are far more interested in improving profit margins than in building up market share or new business. And if that raises serious questions about the future growth of IL S. business and the economy, it nonetheless is the way corporations believe they must go. "Sheer economic pressure has dictated that we have to get more out of things already in place?╟÷that is, people, bricks, and mortar," says Robert E. Northam, controller of J. C. Penney Co. Nowhere is this new management focus?╟÷some observers call it an obsession?╟÷more palpable than in the recent rise of the controller (derived from the French compte, for "account"). Only 10 years ago, most controllers were relegated to obscurity, to adding the debits and credits and reporting what had already happened. In the past few years, however, former controllers have ascended to the top of such mammoth companies as General Motors Corp., fmc Corp., Fruehauf Corp.. and Pfizer Inc. Controllers are now getting involved with the operating side of the company, where they give advice and influence production, marketing, and investment decisions as well as corporate planning. Moreover, many controllers who have SPECTRUM 77