World’s Most Admired

FORTUNE Magazine has just published its list of the “World’s Most Admired Companies”. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the electronic publishing of this survey data for many years … when it was called “America’s Most Admired Companies”.) Even though this survey was done last Fall, it is quite revealing in which companies are leading in their industries and which companies are lagging:

Megabanks: Bank of America (#1, of all things! BAC stock now sells for $3.50))
Megabanks: Citigroup not even in the list of 7
Motor Vehicles: General Motors (#7, just ahead of Renault … stock sells for $1.60)
Computers: Xerox (#1, yes Xerox! When was the last time you saw a Xerox computer?)
Electronics: General Electric (#1, GE recently hit a 17 year low in the stock market)
Insurance: AIG, the world’s largest insurance company is no longer in the top 8
Infotech Services: IBM (#1, right ahead of Accenture)
Software: Microsoft (#5, behind Intuit, Adobe, Electronic Arts and Autodesk)

Now tell me that U.S. industries are not going through performance paroxysms.