In a beauty contest for companies, the winner is . . . General Electric. Or at least General Electric is the most admired company in America, according to Fortunemagazine’s annual survey. The other top ten finalists are Cisco Systems,Wal- Mart Stores, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, Home Depot, Berkshire Hathaway, Charles Schwab, Intel, and Dell do these companies have that separates them from the rest of the pack? | 1 1 An Overview of Corporate Finance and the Financial Environment In a beauty contest for companies, the winner is . . . General Electric. Or at least General Electric is the most admired company in America, according to Fortune magazine’s annual survey. The other top ten finalists are Cisco Systems, Wal- Mart Stores, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, Home Depot, Berkshire Hathaway, Charles Schwab, Intel, and Dell Computer. What do these companies have that separates them from the rest of the pack? According to more than 4,000 executives, directors, and security analysts, these companies have the highest average scores across eight attributes: (1) innovativeness, (2) quality of management, (3) employee talent, (4) quality of products and services, (5) long-term investment value, (6) financial soundness, (7) social responsibility, and (8) use of corporate assets. These companies also have an incredible focus on using technology to reduce costs, to reduce inventory, and to speed up product delivery. For example, workers at Dell previously touched a computer 130 times during the assembly process but now See . touch it only 60 times. Using point-of-sale data, Wal-Mart is able to identify and meet sur- com for updates on the . prising customer needs, such as bagels in Mexico, smoke detectors in Brazil, and house ranking. Fortune also ranks paint during the winter in Puerto Rico. Many of these companies are changing the way the Global Most Admired. business works by using the Net, and that change is occurring at a break-neck pace. For example, in 1999 GE’splastics distribution business did less than $2,000 per day of busi- ness online. A year later the division did more than $2,000,000 per day in e-commerce. Many companies have a difficult time attracting employees. Not so for the most admired companies, which average 26 applicants for each job opening. This is because, in addition to their acumen with technology and customers, they are also on the .
