Today, Fortune reveals its 15th annual list of the World’s Most Admired Companies. This year’s list of the top 50 is led by tech companies with Apple taking the No. 1 spot for the fifth year in a row, followed by Google at No.2, Amazon (No.3), Coca-Cola (No. 4), and IBM (No. 5).
To say it was another big year for Apple would be a gross understatement. With the passing of Steve Jobs, questions swirled around the company’s future. But under new CEO Tim Cook’s guidance, Apple continues to prosper. The company’s annual revenues climbed to $108 billion, led by an 81% increase in iPhone sales — a jump that doesn’t factor in the runaway success of the iPhone 4S — and a 334% spike in iPad sales, due in no small part to the revamped iPad 2. Increased sales across the board explain why shares soared.
The Most Admired list is the definitive report card on corporate reputations. Our survey partners at Hay Group started with approximately 1,400 companies: the Fortune 1,000 (the 1,000 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue), non-U.S. companies in Fortune’s Global 500 database with revenue of $10 billion or more, and the top foreign companies operating in the U.S.
They then sorted the companies by industry and selected the 15 largest for each international industry and the 10 largest for each U.S. industry. A total of 698 companies from 32 countries were surveyed. (Due to an insufficient response rate, the results for 11 companies in the scientific, photographic, and control equipment industry were not published. In addition, due to the distribution of responses, only the aggregate scores and ranks for the 10 companies in the oil and gas equipment/services industry were published.) To create the 58 industry lists, Hay asked executives, directors, and analysts to rate companies in their own industry on nine criteria, from investment value to social responsibility. This year only the best are listed: A company’s score must rank in the top half of its industry survey.
To arrive at the top 50 Most Admired Companies overall, the Hay Group asked 3,855 executives, directors, and securities analysts who had responded to the industry surveys to select the 10 companies they admired most. They chose from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25% in last year’s surveys, plus those that finished in the top 20% of their industry. Anyone could vote for any company in any industry. The difference in the voting rolls is why some results can seem anomalous—for example, although FedEx is one of the top 10 Most Admired Companies, it is second in the Delivery industry behind top-ranked UPS, which ranked 29th on the top 50 overall.
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple tops Fortune’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’ list for 4th straight year – March 3, 2011
Fortune’s 2010 World’s Most Admired Companies List: Apple Inc. #1 for third consecutive year – March 4, 2010
Fortune’s World’s 50 Most Admired Companies 2009: Apple Inc. #1 – March 2, 2009
Well deserved!
Google is #2?
Their methodology is suspect.