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An Overview of Corporate
Finance and the Financial
Environment
In a beauty contest panies, the winner is . . . General Electric.
Or at least General Electric is the most pany 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 puter. What do panies 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.
panies 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 puter 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 panies are changing the way
the Global Most Admired. business works by using , 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 merce.
panies have a difficult time attracting employees. Not so for the most
panies, 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 leading
edge when es to training employees and providing a workpla