World’s Most Admired Companies: Top 50

I would place GE as one to indicated how we as a country are going to rebound from this recession.

As an employee of GE, I can share with you, from personal experience, that this is a great company to work for.
GE has demonstrated, especially during the last few turbulent months, the ability to adapt to change, innovate and its ongoing commitment to recognise top talents/leaders.
I am proud and feel fortunate to have been given the opportunity to be part of the global GE community as I know we are working towards a common goal – i.e. using our imagination to make a measurable difference to individuals, communities and our world, every second of the day.

GE #9? Are you kidding? I wouldn’t buy a can opener from them

Our country is in the midst of the greatest economic crisis/tragedy of our generation. I want to thank Fortune for putting together this list, and showcasing companies like FedEx for making difficult decisions to ensure the future health and recovery of our economy. I am a bit disturbed by the reader comments because it is apparent to me that some Americans are blaming their employers instead of working harder on the solutions. Negativity will only impede progress. Take personal responsibility for what YOU can control. Look ahead, not back.

To Len from NY.
If you are so disenchanted with the company you work @ Fedex, why are you still there. It seems to me a man of your ilk could find another company to complain to.

This list is so ridicilous! Why on earth there are Bank of America,J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs?! These days it’s hard to find people who admire those companies! And then NESTLE! Social responsibilities? Do they even know what that means!

UPS not sure were you got your information but I would take UPS’ balance sheet and inovation and put it against any other company out there.

Innovation 2
People management 2
Use of corporate assets 2
Social responsibility 1
Quality of management 2
Financial soundness 2
Long-term investment 2
Quality of products/services 2
Global competitiveness 2

According to this list, I have worked my way DOWN from BofA to Nokia. Laughable! Nokia is a great place to work, BofA, well, not so much.

I admire none of these companies.
Wal-Mart? Procter and Gamble? MCDONALD’S? These are literally THE MOST CORRUPT companies of all time. The only thing these companies are good at is exploiting workers and manufacturing most of the products in China.
And McDonalds offering healthier options and shedding their “Supersize Me” reputation? No way. Anything “healthy” from their is loaded with chemicals and calories, it merely mimics a healthy diet.

While the list has many questionable rankings, “all” the companies listed are not American. Seven of the top 50, including Toyota at #3, are not American.

To those that this is intended, and you know who you are, are you BLIND or just selfish. When it comes down to it, a company first exists because of the founders, whomever that may be, and anybody employed beyond that is a bonus. If YOU were losing $$ would you not cut so you could continue to pay YOUR bills? Grow up, a job is not a right, its a privilage. I took the 5% pay cut at FDX and its the best thing FDX could have done, IM STILL EMPLOYED. So I had to give up something that FDX has allowed me to enjoy through my employment, whether it be a toy, eating out, or cable. Hats off to the Leadership at FDX for doing the right thing so we could still employee our workforce. Sure there are hrs reductions. How would YOU expect to pay the same wages when there is less work…. ITS SIMPLE PEOPLE. FDX is an Admirable Company.

GM and Chrysler are struggling because of poor management, poor product quality, and an out of date UNION. You blame people for buying the best product, thats not hipocryts that is smart

“canada is one big bailout”

Thank you Mr Anonymous. Have the courage to even post your name.

I also happend to mention Australia and its companies i.e. Quantas – their safety record and financial results – McQuarie – their financial management results. Perhaps the entire Austrailian mining sector overlooked?

As noted by another poster HSBC among the Banks?

Is Embracer – the Brazilian aerospace compny here. I could not find it.

Perhaps the most ammusing comment is a South Carolina resident who stated ” shorting this list”; maybe apt.

The low level of informed journalism in this article is overly apparent to anyone who has even a brief concept of how the international landscape has changed since 2001 – let alone last quarter.

This is one of the most ridiculous ranking I’ve ever seen. The companies that are ranked high must have been paying a fortune to get the ranks. For example, Walmart… Innovation #2? What innovation? People management #3? They suck. They don’t treat their people well. Another one, BMW quality is #1? Their electrical components break all the time. Very few of their vehicles are recommended by the Consumer Report.

This is just ridiculous. Absolutely deceiving.

you people are hipocryts. you wonder why GM and chrysler are struggling, its because u people buy foreign cars.

I think that this list should have been called America’s Most Admired and not World’s. It leaves out many of the highly admired companies of Europe and Asia.
But that’s obvious because Fortune is much better known in US than in other parts.And readers who would have voted were solely americans.

Shorting this list.

Interesting that Accenture is designated a US industry, while their whole business is outsourcing US jobs to other countries. Criminals.

How can Wal-Mart receive a score of 2 for Social Responsibility when it has been widely recognized as a company that employs exploited foreign workers? Find the pulitzer prize winning articles that were written in the LA Times a few years back if you don’t believe me…

Target is a far superior employer and company in general. I also don’t feel like a redneck when I shop there. That helps too…

Target and ‘people management’ should be way way…way down the list. And this was before the layoffs at corporate. They don’t develop their people at all as a whole and their HR processes are horrid.

General Mills should be now where near the top of any list. This company has no respect for its workers (the actual factory workers, not office staff) and treats them horribly. They work 7 days a week for months at a time, leaving very little to no time for family or personal time. In the summer, the factory is not air conditioned and temperatures reach well over 100 degrees F on any given day. Please look closer in depth before awarding this company any recognition.

As a vendor at Microsoft, I can only say the admiration must be from the outside, not the inside.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. This is a joke, right? MSFT has given most of their “contigent” staff a 10% paycut… This is NOT a good place to work.

Not sure how ANY company can beat Sun at “Social responsibility”! First computer company to promote “green”, biggest contributor of open source software, data centers that post massive economical and ecological efficiencies…where was HP when “cool thread” CMT’s came out? Stone ages, that’s where! Why is HP now selling Solaris on ProLiant servers? Because Sun rocks, that’s why! They don’t spend their hard earned money on PR campaigns – they spend it on R&D!

Fedex admired by who ? Not the people who work there. I am a 20 year employee and I can tell you that moral is at an all time low,no 401k,no pension,no hours,no repspect,now we don’t don’t even get coffee. I don’t know who these people are asking thjeses questions to but it sure as heck is not the work force. Don’t get me started on best places to work because that is a complete farce.

where is Lockheed?
How can you compare a search engine or an automobile to building the stealth bomber?

to bad Spencer of Chicago doesn’t know everything about GE, GE got out of consumer electronics , not all electronics. Go push the electronic buttons on your appliances and tell us where they came from ?

I am assuming that the person who wrote this article never worked for HP. If they had they would never have put them in the top 1000 let alone #3.

Hmm. #1 in Quality of products? I’ve bought a couple of pretty defective BMW products, and have had a terrible time trying to get replacements – of course, letting petty bureaucrats manage your brand in Mexico won’t do it any good.

Bank of America – Admired? Atre you kidding me. I can see maybe most mis-managed companies in the world. Lewis is a Jack-*^$ his decision to acquire Countrywide and Merrill was his doom. This list carries no Merit !

I agree that Toyota is great but it is not GM and Ford but GM and Chrysler that went asking for bailout money. Ford is still holding it own…

canada is one big bailout

HP has announced a 5% salary reduction across the board (effective March 6), with Mark Hurd (CEO) “graciously” taking a 15% reduction. BUT it is only on his base salary of 1.4 mil, so about $210k. He made $42.5 million last year! Another half truth from a corporate CEO. Employees with the recently acquired EDS are being laid off by the tens of thousands! Remember this the next time you go to buy anything HP!

yeah cuz they are keeping their layoffs quiet

Fascinating that an american media group would pick so many american companies as the world’s most admired. Just out of curiosity where did CNN place itself on this list? Considering the world media competition I can’t see CNN being in the top 1000.

How in the world can Circuit City be anywhere close to the top of this group. I guess it is a great place to work until they actually lock the doors for good?

Rubbish 50 most most rated American companies. The World is bigger.

Ford did not go crawling back to Washington for help. Ford denied a bailout and is the strongest of the American auto makers.

HP ranked number 3. Apparently, you haven’t spoken to any HP employees.

Great company but the stocks are Too high for the business that it is in. Big downfall ahead.

Drivel. “Worlds” Most Admired Company! Odd they are all American. Who compiled this nonsense.

P and G had so much profits due to cutting back in millions on product development and research. Look out for the fall in 10 years.

More like America’s Most Admired companies. This is like calling the MLB Finals – the MLB World Series. Stop making everything in US sound as the world’s.

I was one of those 1400 that got let go, on a conference call no less, half of it spent verifying peoples addresses so they knew where to send the termination paper work. It really put the human in “HR.” A company I grew up and wanted to retire at now has a workforce that feels like the left doesn’t know what the right is doing. How FDX could lose the LLBean account in the middle of this depression should speak volumes to the shareholders about the state of the company. FedEx Office (fmr. Kinko’s) has never been used to it’s potential and has been managed by the shareholders and analysts instead of the people that know operations.

Obsolete before you even posted it.

Impressive that GE is ranked number 1 in an industry it does not even participate in: electronics. They got out of electronics ages ago to get into medical systems when they traded their consumer electronics group to Thompson in teh early ’90s (late ’80s?).

Yet again the “World” revolves around the USA!!! Amazing – it’s like reading People magazine’s most “beautiful” people – in Hollywood maybe but certainly not the World!!

Why bother spending so much money looking for “other Worlds” – why not just look for other countries on your own planet!!

Why is Walmart admired? They won’t let their employees form unions! What is so admirable about that?

Caterpillar just laid off more than 20,000 workers. How is that admirable?

What a joke! Does someone take this list seriously? Unfortunately we Americans tend to equate the “World” with America. Sure, there are a few foreign companies on the list, but only the ones that most Americans have heard of (but probably think are American firms). Go to any other part of the WORLD, and most people have never heard of Nordstrom, Lowe’s, Northwestern Mutual, or even Costco (or many others on the list). This list is almost as laughable as Sport’s Illustrated’s list of the World’s greatest athletes, which is actually a list of America’s greatest baseball players.

Wal-Mart is admired? By who? Maybe in a parallel universe.

Where is HSBC in the megabanks mix! ?

You mean GM and Chrysler went to the government to ask for money? Ford was there to support the auto industry NOT to take government funds. Please get your facts straight.

GE is the oldest company in the DJIA. It is the only original company remaining in the DJIA. And at $7.50 a share, it has a P/E ratio of only 6x. Something’s amiss here. GE Capital is going to make “only” $5 billion in 2009 rather than the $9 billion they made in 2008. The banks are generating losses, but GE is tagged with them.

Yet again – a dismal Euro-American focused list lacking even basic Canadian Companies that are featured as some of the worlds most fiscally, and socially responsible companies. Some of them even dominate their industry. Hmm.. lets look at Potash Corp of Sask and its economic and safety record. CN Rail, CP Rail – their financial results and safety records. 5 Candian Banks (RY, TD, CIBC, BofM, BNS) and 3 Life Insurance companies NOT on the government bailout plan for success. Hmmm Research in Motion – perhaps the 1 true competitor to Apple. Hmmm Maple Leaf foods and the way executives handled a bacteria outbreak – say in comparison to the Peanut Company.
Australian firms equally missing off the list.

The majority of former Pfizer Consumer Health Care employees who joined Johnson and Johnson after the merger would disagree strongly with the rankings. Nearly all found it a stifling, political heavy organization that treated it’s employees nearly uniformly bad.

How is it that Starbucks is rated higher than Intel?

Intel numbers:
Innovation 2
People management 1
Use of corporate assets 1
Social responsibility 1
Quality of management 2
Financial soundness 1
Long-term investment 1
Quality of products/services 1
Global competitiveness 1

Starbucks
Innovation 2
People management 4
Use of corporate assets 4
Social responsibility 1
Quality of management 4
Financial soundness 4
Long-term investment 5
Quality of products/services 1
Global competitiveness 3

This is but one example. There are others that make no sense… Starbucks is just another overhyped company that was more about marketing than actual product.

One thing wrong in the FDX article about why they are in the top 7. The 5% pay cut was not across the board. It was in exempt, management positions. We hourly employees were not asked to take a cut, only the 401k matching funds. As always, Fred Smith does the smart thing & we thank him.

How can Aflac be ahead of Northwestern Mutual in the Life and Health Insurance Industry. Northwestern is first in every catagory but Global copetitiveness because they only work in the U.S. and in innovation because they have the best products in the market already. Aflac is not number 1 in any category. Northwestern has won the title the last 25 years and for a company that is not even a competitor to take it this year is terrible. Northwestern Mutual is the best Life Insurance company in America! HANDS DOWN!

What a joke… Fortune lists are not worth the paper they’re printed on. Starbucks is listed ahead of Intel. What??? The way I see it Starbucks is a purveyor of overpriced coffee that requires little to no innovation on a product front. The company is all about marketing. Intel on the other hand has made some of the most fundamental technologies possible. Intel has designed some of the most complex electronic circuits in the history of man and then mass produced them so they can fit in the area of a penny. This list is useless.

The idea of holding GE in esteem is truly laughable. Surely the stooges at CNBC and the senior management of GE are supporters. There is not high regard elsewhere. The current management(??)has erased 1/5 Trillion of the value of GE and should go away.

Fortune should consider list of companies , those who have not laid off their employees , during the turmoil , in fact have managed the crisis , by either lowering the salary , or cutting on management costs.. Reader vote will go to the company , who has managed to withstand the turmoil ,, without laying off a single employee.

What do you think of the corporations on Fortune’s top 50 Most Admired Companies list?

Have you worked for any of the companies, or bought their products or services?

Which – if any – companies do you admire in this economy?