TOP 10 COMPANIES AND THEIR CHIEFS
1 GLAXOSMITHKLINE DR JEAN-PIERRE GARNIER
The CEO-in-waiting for the GlaxoSmithKline empire, Jean-Pierre Garnier, has been seen as the facilitator for the merger. He recently said his ambition was to create the 'passion and enthusiasm' to conquer diseases.
2 BP SIR JOHN BROWNE
BP has joined the world superleague since Sir John Browne took over as CEO in 1996 and engineered the acquisitions of Amoco and Arco. The oil company has watched its market capitalisation rise to more than pounds 140 billion.
3 SHELL SIR MARK MOODY-STUART
Trained as a geologist, Mark Moody-Stuart joined Shell in 1966 and rose to become chairman in 1998. Since then, Sir Mark has transformed a stodgy corporate culture, streamlining Shell's management network and encouraging technological development.
4 CADBURY SCHWEPPES JOHN SUNDERLAND
Cadbury's share price has doubled since 1996, when John Sunderland became CEO, and he has committed himself to doubling it again over five years. His shopping trolley now includes Snapple and he is in pursuit of Orangina.
5 TESCO TERRY LEAHY
There was a history of innovation to carry forward at Tesco when Terry Leahy replaced the architect of its transformation, Sir Ian MacLaurin, as CEO in 1997. Leahy has since introduced loyalty cards and developed the hugely successful Tesco Metro concept.
6 EXEL JOHN ALLAN
With the rise of Exel out of the merger of Ocean and NFC, John Allan finds himself CEO of the second-largest logistics firm in the world, with a market value of nearly dollars 3 billion.
7 ASTRAZENECA TOM McKILLOP
Since becoming CEO in 1999, when Zeneca merged with Astra of Sweden, Tom McKillop has kept corporate activity humming, recently putting AstraZeneca's agribusiness together with Novartis. He says his aim is to create 'a pure pharmaceutical play'.
8 SAGE PAUL WALKER
After taking over as CEO of Sage Software in 1994, Paul Walker watched its shares soar as he guided it through five years of 30%-plus growth. This year the 43-year-old ex-accountant acquired Peachtree and Best Software and saw Sage enter the FTSE-100.
9 UNILEVER NIALL FITZGERALD
Invigorating the monolithic Unilever has been the mission of Niall Fitzgerald since he became joint chairman and CEO in 1996, after 30 years with the company. He instigated a cull of more than 1,200 brands and set up the imminent merger with Bestfoods.
10 GKN SIR CK CHOW
Appointed CEO in 1997 after only a year with the company, Sir CK Chow has steered GKN through the recent problems in the car industry, and has expanded into Japan by buying Nissan's driveshaft operations.
These days we are surrounded by rankings, ratings, awards and indexes. You cannot see the wood for the league tables. Now in its 11th year, Management Today's Most Admired Company survey, however, remains unique because its virtue is an acknowledged subjectivity. Where other rankings measure profits, sales, productivity, pay and capitalisation, the MT line-up of British companies calculates the esteem in which they are held by their competitors. It is a system that depends on nous - on tacit or inside knowledge. Wisdom, even.
This is not to say it isn't rigorous or is lacking in clout. Your enemy in business, as in war, is your harshest judge, but at the same time is probably the one closest to the truth about your real strengths and weaknesses. So the Britain's Most Admired awards are truly the UK's business Oscars. Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco, last year's winner, summed it up: 'Learning that you work for Britain's most admired company matters very much to a workforce. It's priceless. It makes all the effort worth it.'
This sort of admiration can take years to establish. Take, for example, the Most Admired perennial Cadbury Schweppes. Although it merged within recent memory, its sweeties division dates back to 1824. And Jacob Schweppes began bottling mineral water in 1728. Shell and BP are hardly spring chickens. Only Sage could be described as still having the flush of youth, and we have nothing in this country along the lines of a Microsoft, which is in its mid-20s. It is significant that the noisy stripling dot.com industry, the sector that attracted most media attention over the year, has only two representatives in the Most Admired list - lastminute.com at number 221 and QXL at number 235.
Indeed, one could conclude from this year's list that you are more likely to get into the Top 10 if your company is mature and massive. This does not imply that complacency leads to success. Age can mean smart and experienced. Things change at the top, and that hard-earned admiration can turn quickly to derision or, even worse, indifference. A decade ago, the 10 Most Admired Companies ran as follows: Shell, Glaxo, Marks & Spencer, Bass, Sainsbury, ICI, Greycoat, BP, Unilever and GrandMet. Only four of that Top 10 survive in the Most Admired 2000, so 60% of the mighty from a decade ago have fallen back.
It is interesting that the companies that are truly international in their outlook, then and now, have largely stayed at the top. Those that concentrated on home markets rather than expanding successfully abroad have paid the price. If, in that home-market bias, the area in which they operated was the high street, that has proved a deadly place to do business - as shown by the fate of Bass (number 55 this year), Sainsbury (77) and M&S (206). And what of Greycoat, that tiger of the 1980s property boom? It's still going, but its name is hardly on everyone's lips.
The new millennium has brought a new top dog. After two years at the top, Tesco has been dethroned as Britain's Most Admired. It had been an extraordinary run - three number one placings in four years. And it took last year's number two and number three together to knock the supermarket chain off its perch. This year's winner is not yet a single entity, but a wedding-in-waiting: GlaxoSmithKline.
And although Tesco was toppled, it's wheels haven't fallen off. It was rated fifth among the 239 companies evaluated in the annual study. In second spot was BP, a company that also rose in stature through a merger, with Amoco. And its chief executive, Sir John Browne, in a remarkable achievement, has been judged to be Most Admired Leader for the second year in a row. Rival Shell was third, followed by Cadbury Schweppes.
The marriage of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham has been on and off for a long time. Their respective bosses - Jan Leschly, a swashbuckling Danish one-time Wimbledon quarterfinalist, and Sir Richard Sykes, a dour Yorkshireman who always seemed most at home in a lab coat - were not, on a personal level, a match made in heaven, even though Sykes also enjoyed a couple of sets of tennis at the weekend. Here was proof again that the fate of international commercial empires with tens of thousands of employees often remains in the hands of individuals.
With Leschly now departed and Sykes approaching retirement, the banns were finally read last January. Combining Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham creates a true Leviathan: the world's largest drugs company, with combined capitalisation of pounds 120 billion - more than the GDP of Greece, Finland and Portugal together. Understandably, the Americans are not keen to see their drugs industry eclipsed and the latest objection raised on the other side of the Atlantic concerns a dominance in the anti-smoking market. The US Federal Trade Commission doesn't like the fact that the new company will own Nicorette, Nicoderm and the wonder pill Zyban, designed to alleviate tobacco withdrawal.
But what, precisely, is the point of the deal? (One would hope the company is admired for more than simply its prospective bulk.) The reason put forward by Jean-Pierre Garnier, the SKB chief executive who will head the new group, was the urgent need to exploit 'the brief window of opportunity' that has been opened by the mapping of the human genome.
With DNA codes finally cracked, there is now scope to develop hundreds of new drugs and vaccines. But nothing in the drugs business ever gets to market fast and this R&D push will suck up vast amounts of cash. The annual research budget for the new company is set at pounds 2.4 billion and eight or more newly created research units will be forced to compete against each other for cash. Insiders think the merger will be sewn up by the end of the year and the lengthy and painful process of setting up home together will begin in earnest. Meanwhile, the suspense is enough to start reformed smokers back on the tobacco road to ruin.
BP and Shell rank second and third at a time when Britain's relationship with oil, from the consumer's point of view, is not a happy one. World crude prices remain high, and ugly protests have disrupted petrol supplies across Europe. For Big Oil, however, business is good.
The knights Browne at BP and Mark Moody-Stuart at Shell have both been indulging in belt-tightening and asset-selling over the past two years.
This is now paying real dividends and in the third quarter of the millennium year BP's net profits rose by 94% to pounds 2.7 billion. Third-quarter takings at Shell this year were up 80% to pounds 2.25 billion. Their PR departments will be hard pressed over the next year assuaging public discontent at this supposed 'profiteering'.
Cadbury Schweppes, steady at number four, is a company that may never sweep you off your feet but it is the epitome of reliability and good business sense - the cultural polar opposite of a dot.com. Cadbury's score of 70 in the food-manufacturing sector was a long way ahead of its nearest rival Unilever, with the rest trailing far behind. These are Britain's two world-class food organisations.
It is a desperately competitive sector in which to operate, and Cadbury has undergone big changes over recent years as it offloaded its international drinks businesses outside America to Coca-Cola. Anxious to make waves and spend some of its huge war chest, Cadbury in September bought Snapple in the US. Although these groovy new-age fruit-based drinks are the rage at the moment and are sold at big margins, pounds 1 billion was thought by many to be more than a snip for Snapple.
It is hard to see after Tesco's soft landing at number five that the supermarket chain is doing anything wrong. It is streets ahead of Iceland, which was number two in the food-retailing sector. Tesco's share price hit a record high in September, its progress towards becoming an international retailer is gaining pace, its non-food sales are on the rise, and its CEO Terry Leahy looks leaner and hungrier than ever. (It cannot be long before he puts in an appearance in the Most Admired Leader category.)
The hope that Tesco might be interested in bidding for bombed-out Marks & Spencer persists. However, as we said last year, British food retailing is more mature than an overripe Brie.
Sainsbury is showing signs of dragging itself out of the doldrums, and now the spectre of Wal-Mart looms. It promises a tough year ahead - which, for the supermarket chains, is business as usual.
The dot.com world has yet to produce clear-cut winners (except perhaps insolvency specialists and dealers in fire-sale PC networks), but the logistics companies are coming on strong. As they will never cease telling you, delivering products to customers is a more sophisticated business than loading a white van, tearing round streets and motorways, then stuffing a postcard in the door when the recipient happens to be out. Nowadays they are an end-to-end 'soup-to-nuts' service. When Ocean Group and the National Freight Corporation merged to form Exel in early 2000, they aimed to create a world leader in global supply-chain management and, in recognition of this, they are this years number six.
AstraZeneca, another drugs company, is next. These are nervy times for the British-Swedish combo, as its top-selling Losec, the anti-ulcer pill, comes out of its protection by patent. AstraZeneca has responded to the prospect of losing the revenue generated by Losec - nearly pounds 4 billion a year - by bringing out Nexium, a new anti-ulcer wonderdrug.
Sage Group is up nine places to number eight, entering the Top 10 for the first time. Hardly a household name, but no matter. Its customers, nearly 2.5 million small and medium-sized businesses around the globe, think the products of the Newcastle-based company are terrific. Accountancy software may lack the glamour of other technology innovations in the marketplace, but it helped Sage to become the share of the decade in the 1990s, posting an incredible rise of 28,000%.
Sage wasn't rated highly in its sector for commercial innovation, but boffins with brains the size of planets are not what you want for your accounts package. You want it to work and keep working. Sage's mantra of 'reassurance, security and clarity' is a winning formula in its market. It has expanded successfully in Europe and America and has proved a worthy competitor for market leader Deutsche Poste.
Unilever comes in at number nine this year, the same position it occupied 10 years ago. It can never be a dull moment running the foods-to-soap combine. One minute you're selling Dame Elizabeth Taylor's perfume range, the next you're in hot pursuit of Skippy peanut butter, by afternoon you close the deal to buy the Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia ice creams from Ben & Jerry's, and by evening you're applying marketing CPR to bring Horlicks back to life.
Niall Fitzgerald is a restless fighter in keeping his company up with the best and rarely accepts defeat. Of his wooing of Ben & Jerry's, he remarked: 'They didn't want to sell their business to a satanic multinational but it became clear they were misunderstanding our company and that made me mad. I was really fed up with hearing us being painted as some awful, monstrous, polluting, community-destroying, evil, sinister business, 'cause we're not.'
Fitzgerald may have justification. For community and environmental responsibility, Unilever scored 6.9, just pipped by Cadbury.
Squeezing into the top rank is GKN, a true British manufacturer with the added piquancy of being led by Sir CK Chow. He drew admiration after winning out against the strong pound, a depressed automotive sector and the overall oppressed state of British manufacturing. Chow successfully resisted demands by Rover, a major customer, for a 20% price-cut for parts, but more turmoil can be expected after a major restructuring of its aerospace interests.
The good news for Chow has been the 'chep', a wooden or plastic platform used to deliver everything from car parts to fresh vegetables. Sales have benefited from the phenomenal growth in home delivery and logistics.
There have been intriguing developments outside the Top 10. Few businesses are ostensibly more alluring than Manchester United, which topped the leisure-and-hotels sector over Granada. Now it has added business admiration to glamour and is up to number 34 overall. But just what is Man U? An argument could be made to put it in the general retailing or media sector.
Its brand has astonishing worldwide recognition, as shown by flourishing supporters' clubs from Ullapool to Ulan Bator.
Now at Old Trafford there is the mouth-watering prospect of a pounds 300 million deal with Nike to provide shorts and shirts. However, to ensure they advance up the Most Admired list, Sir Alex Ferguson and his business team might keep a weather eye on overheads, particularly staff costs. Ferguson has previously refused to be held to ransom by players demanding astronomical wages but club captain Roy Keane called his bluff and trousered pounds 52,000 a week from his new contract. When David Beckham's contract comes up for renewal next summer, a rights issue may be in order.
One of the remarkable risers is Iceland, up 10 places to number 16. Although it claims to be on the trail of posher customers, its perception is not great among the chattering classes, who view with disdain its frozen ranks of mega waffles, croquettes and Stringfellow chips. The news that it was going all-organic and was aiming to buy up 40% of the world's organic vegetable crop prompted the Daily Telegraph to write that the news 'has created as much surprise as Kentucky Fried Chicken would if it had announced it was going for a Michelin star'.
Iceland scored high for its capacity to innovate, topping even Tesco.
The jury is out on Iceland's takeover of Booker, the ailing cash-and-carry business, but observers seemed to agree that the best part of it was Booker boss Stuart Rose taking over as Iceland's CEO. Then in November Rose abruptly left to join Arcadia, throwing a king-size spanner into Iceland's works.
A notable faller was The Daily Mail and General Trust, last year's number four and now at 64. One reason is that its sector is now a broader media rather than simply news and publishers. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of WPP and BSkyB has proved bruising as these new peers turned out to be harsher critics than the old print crowd, who held the Mail in awe.
Many observers were less than impressed to see it throw its hat in the ring for the purchase of the Express. However, some of its rivals have nothing to crow about. Lord Hollick at United News & Media scored a lamentable 3.9 for quality of management and Sir Michael Green at Carlton did the same. The star in this sector was Pearson, which tops the media group and is just outside the overall Top 10 at number 14 - up from last year's 106.
Media is a confident sector, coming sixth in the overall list of sector points totals. By contrast, the retailers - with the possible exception of the reborn Selfridges, which has leapt nearly 100 places to 68th spot - have got the blues big time at the moment. Food and general retailing are right at the bottom, surpassed in their collective gloom only by construction.
Another one-company misery zone is BT, which only just gets into the top 100 this time, down a further 27 places to 93. Who would have thought they'd witness the day when the mighty BT came 53 places lower than Pizza Express in the MT Most Admired? But BT is unlikely to remain a single entity next year.
Another big faller was Whitbread, down 72 places to number 92. As it gives up on the booze industry, its prospective teetotal existence amid the healthy surroundings of the David Lloyd Clubs seems to have won it little admiration.
When you are down, though, the only way is up. Canary Wharf makes an impressive appearance at third in the property section. The company epitomised the slump of the early 1990s. It went into receivership in 1992 after companies turned their noses up at the windswept Docklands and employees greeted the news that they were being posted there with the same enthusiasm as if they were being sent to the dog house. Now in 2000 it has become one of the most obvious beneficiaries of the shifting global economy with a buoyant share price, a place in the FTSE-100 and tenants who have to leave because they cannot afford the rent.
As old-economy stocks attempt to maintain competitiveness through consolidation, Canary Wharf is one of the few areas with sufficient office space to house these vast new companies.
Although it is still not exactly Notting Hill, the area has achieved a cachet as a raft of smaller businesses, shops and restaurants have arrived to cater for the wealthy bankers and lawyers. And after such a year of mergers and acquisitions, it is the bankers and lawyers who have enjoyed the biggest bonanza of all.
HOW THE WINNERS WERE CHOSEN
In conjunction with Nottingham, Derby and Aston Business Schools, MT asked Britain's 10 largest public companies in 24 sectors to evaluate their peers. (In one sector there were only nine public players.) Participants rated each company in their sector on a scale of one to 10, with a score of one representing poor, five average and 10 excellent. Performance was rated against nine criteria: quality of management; financial soundness; ability to attract, develop and retain top talent; quality of goods and services; value as a long-term investment; capacity to innovate; quality of marketing; community and environmental responsibility; and use of corporate assets. Analysts at 15 leading investment companies were also polled. On the basis of the individual scores assigned to each company for each criterion, three separate analyses were produced: an overall ranking of all 239; a ranking of the 10 companies in any one sector (nine in one instance); and top league tables in each performance category.
The academics were D Michael Brown (Nottingham Business School) and Stuart Laverick (Derby Business School).
ENOUGH RESPECT: TOP 125 COMPANIES
FIGURE IN BRACKETS IS CHANGE FROM 1999 POSITION
1 (2,3) GlaxoSmithKline * 73.6
2 (6) BP 71.1
3 (47) Shell Transport & Trading 70.8
4 (5) Cadbury Schweppes 70.0
5 (1) Tesco 69.0
6 (-) Exel * 68.6
7 (10) AstraZeneca 66.1
8 (17) Sage Group 65.5
9 (7) Unilever 65.1
10 (13) GKN 65.1
11 (18) Smiths Industries 64.6
12 (133) Ocean Group * 64.6
13 (34) Next 64.2
14 (106) Pearson 64.1
15 (8) Vodafone Group * 63.9
16 (26) Iceland 63.8
17 (87) Nycomed Amersham 63.8
18 (27) Legal & General Group 63.4
19 (39) BBA 63.3
20 (61) 3i 63.3
21 (12) BAE Systems * 63.2
22 (96) Rio Tinto 63.2
23 (35) Centrica 63.1
24 (15) Rolls-Royce 62.9
25 (67) National Grid 62.8
26 (41) CMG 62.4
27 (19) Logica 62.4
28 (16) BSkyB 62.4
29 (46) HSBC 62.0
30 (53) Dixons 62.0
31 (29) Boots 61.8
32 (115) Amvescap 61.4
33 (76) Thames Water 61.3
34 (-) Manchester United 61.3
35 (31) Wetherspoon (JD) 61.2
36 (154) Provident Financial 61.2
37 (28) Lloyds TSB 61.2
38 (210) Aggregate Industries 60.6
39 (9) Granada Group * 60.4
40 (-) Capital Shopping Centres 60.3
41 (11) WPP Group 60.0
42 (68) Hanson 59.9
43 (44) Reuters 59.9
44 (65) BG 59.7
45 (32) Diageo 59.6
46 (22) Hays 59.6
47 (23) Scottish Power 59.6
48 (14) Morrison W 59.6
49 (103) Energis 59.4
50 (83) Pizza Express 59.4
51 (162) BPB Industries 59.4
52 (24) Scottish & Newcastle 59.2
53 (40) Severn Trent Water 59.1
54 (50) Royal Bank of Scotland 59.1
55 (33) Bass 59.1
56 (36) Compass 0 59.1
57 (57) CGNU 58.7
58 (90) Wolseley 58.7
59 (91) Millennium & Copthorne 58.6
60 (163) Capita Group 58.5
61 (114) Serco Group 58.1
62 (60) Bank of Scotland 58.0
63 (43) Prudential Corporation 57.8
64 (4) Daily Mail & General Trust 57.8
65 (64) BOC 57.6
66 (-) Meggitt 57.4
67 (116) Johnson Matthey 57.4
68 (173) Selfridges 57.4
69 (95) Cobham 57.3
70 (-) Hilton Group 57.3
71 (149) Woolwich 57.2
72 (-) Kewill Systems 57.1
73 (81) Kingfisher 57.1
74 (55) Wilson Bowden 56.9
75 (38) Anglian Water 56.7
76 (59) EMAP 56.6
77 (88) Sainsbury (J) 56.5
78 (-) Kingston Communications 56.3
79 (111) Alliance UniChem 56.3
80 (98) Standard Chartered 56.1
81 (54) PowerGen 56.0
82 (58) London Bridge Software 55.9
83 (112) COLT Telecom 55.9
84 (97) Scottish & Southern Energy 55.7
85 (-) Travis Perkins 55.4
86 (157) Britannic Assurance 55.3
87 (194) Man (ED&F) 55.3
88 (143) First Choice 55.3
89 (99) Close Brothers 55.2
90 (25) FI Group 55.1
91 (-) Britax International 54.9
92 (20) Whitbread 54.7
93 (66) British Telecommunications 54.7
94 (-) Thus 54.7
95 (74) United Utilities 54.6
96 (215) Billiton 54.5
97 (45) BAA 54.5
98 (180) Cookson 54.3
99 (93) Allied Zurich 54.2
100 (21) Airtours 54.2
101 (102) South Staffordshire 54.2
102 (78) TI Group 54.1
103 (-) Independent 54.0
104 (198) Liberty International 54.0
105 (-) Croda International 53.9
106 (63) Misys 53.9
107 (214) Anglo American 53.8
108 (-) Canary Wharf 53.8
109 (190) FKI 53.5
110 (-) French Connection 53.4
111 (62) Sema 53.4
112 (148) Smith (WH) 53.4
113 (92) Perpetual 53.4
114 (-) Celltech 53.4
115 (220) Halifax 53.2
116 (104) M&G Group 53.1
117 (-) Berkeley Group 53.1
118 (-) FiberNet Group 52.9
119 (82) Northern Foods 52.7
120 (160) Blue Circle Industries 52.6
121 (120) P&O 52.5
122 (228) Shire Pharmaceuticals 52.4
123 (94) Bodycote 52.3
124 (204) Barclays 52.3
125 (101) Bovis Homes 52.3
- NEW ENTRY
* MERGED, ACQUIRED, NAME CHANGED OR MERGER PROPOSED
MOST ADMIRED LEADER
1 SIR JOHN BROWNE
BP
2 CHRIS GENT
VODAFONE GROUP
3 GERRY ROBINSON
GRANADA
Sir John Browne (left) is again Most Admired Leader and he achieves this accolade with a huge margin to spare. He is an unlikely hero: a workaholic ex-physicist with a powerful intellect and elegantly ascetic lifestyle. Unlikely, maybe, but the clear choice of those polled by MT - his peers.
In second place is Chris Gent (centre) of the now enormous Vodafone Group, who is currently engaged in the lengthy process of bedding down all his recently acquired assets.
Third is Gerry Robinson (right) of Granada, who has been busy dividing up his empire - to widespread approval.
The big news in this poll was that no fewer than three of last year's four shortlisted finalists failed to make it into this year's list. Those who fell from grace were Sir Richard Branson of Virgin, Sir Brian Pitman of Lloyds TSB and Sir Geoff Mulcahy of Kingfisher. Sir Richard has had his image battered by the twin problem areas of Virgin Trains and his lottery bid; Sir Brian probably lost out because Lloyds TSB appears to be getting left behind as the banks all start getting together; and Sir Geoff failed first to acquire Asda, losing out to Wal-Mart, and then got a lukewarm reception for his demerger plans.
WHAT THE BRITS ARE BEST AT
Which elements do British companies excel at in the overall business mix? If you look at the top 10 companies in each of the nine individual judgment categories and add up the total number of points scored, you develop an idea of what British business views as its strengths. We most admire ourselves, it would appear, for Financial Soundness. With a total of 87.7 points, this is some way ahead of Quality of Management, which comes second with 83.4 points. Capacity to Innovate was sixth with 79.1. What this says about our national levels of entrepreneurship is hard to pin down. Right at the bottom with 73.1 points is Community and Environmental Responsibility. This would suggest that, although this is an increasingly important topic in the eyes of the public, British companies do not feel that they are doing very well in responding to this challenge. Or do they just cynically disregard it?
WHERE THE WINNERS SCORE
QUALITY OF MANAGEMENT
1 (2) BP 8.7
2 (10) Vodafone Group * 8.5
3 (5) Sage Group 8.5
FINANCIAL SOUNDNESS
1 (1) Land Securities 9.4
2 (2) GlaxoSmithKline * 9.0
3 (3) Shell Transport & Trading 9.0
QUALITY OF GOODS & SERVICES
1 (7) Cadbury Schweppes 9.1
2 (68) Shell Transport & Trading 8.4
3 (2) Rolls-Royce 8.4
ABILITY TO ATTRACT, DEVELOP AND RETAIN TOP TALENT
1 (2) GlaxoSmithKline * 8.9
2 (13) BP 8.2
3 (30) BSkyB 8.2
VALUE AS A LONG-TERM INVESTMENT
1 (1) GlaxoSmithKline * 8.3
2 (6) Shell Transport & Trading 8.2
3 (32) National Grid 7.9
CAPACITY TO INNOVATE
1 (1) BSkyB 8.5
2 (12) Iceland 8.2
3 (-) Celltech 8.1
QUALITY OF MARKETING
1 (1) GlaxoSmithKline * 8.5
2 (11) Cadbury Schweppes 8.1
3 (2) Tesco 8.1
COMMUNITY & ENVIRONMENTAL
RESPONSIBILITY
1 (2) Iceland 8.4
2 (-) Exel * 7.3
3 (8) Anglian Water 7.3
USE OF CORPORATE ASSETS 1 (1) BP 7.9
2 (32) National Grid 7.7
3 (175) Pearson 7.7
* MERGED, ACQUIRED, NAME CHANGED OR MERGER PROPOSED
PEER PRESSURE: BEST IN EACH SECTOR
AUTO & AUTO ENGINEERING
1 (2) GKN 65.1
2 (4) Smiths Industries 64.6
3 (1) BAE Systems * 63.2
4 (3) Rolls-Royce 62.9
BANKS
1 (2) HSBC 62.0
2 (1) Lloyds TSB 61.2
3 (3) Royal Bank of Scotland 59.1
4 (4) Bank of Scotland 58.0
BUILDING MATERIALS & MERCHANTS
1 (8) Aggregate Industries 60.6
2 (1) Hanson 59.9
3 (4) BPB Industries 59.4
4 (2) Wolseley 58.7
BUSINESS SERVICES
1 (1) Hays 59.6
2 (8) Capita Group 58.5
3 (5) Serco Group 58.1
4 (2) Rentokil Initial 52.0
CHEMICALS & PLASTICS
1 (1) BOC 57.6
2 (-) Johnson Matthey 57.4
3 (-) Croda International 53.9
4 (9) ICI 52.3
CONSTRUCTION
1 (2) Wilson Bowden 56.9
2 (-) Berkeley Group 53.1
3 (3) Bovis Homes 52.3
4 (1) Redrow 50.7
DRINKS
1 (3) Wetherspoon (JD) 61.2
2 (4) Diageo 59.6
3 (7) Pizza Express 59.4
4 (2) Scottish & Newcastle 59.2
ELECTRICITY
1 (2) Centrica 63.1
2 (4) National Grid 62.8
3 (1) Scottish Power 59.6
4 (3) PowerGen 56.0
ENGINEERING & METALS
1 (-) BBA 63.3
2 (9) Cookson 54.3
3 (2) TI Group 54.1
4 (-) FKI 53.5
FINANCIAL SECTOR
1 (1) 3i 63.3
2 (5) Amvescap 61.4
3 (8) Provident Financial 61.2
4 (9) Man (ED&F) 55.3
FOOD MANUFACTURING
1 (1) Cadbury Schweppes 70.0
2 (2) Unilever 65.1
3 (3) Northern Foods 52.7
4 (8) Dairy Crest 51.6
FOOD RETAILING
1 (1) Tesco 69.0
2 (3) Iceland 63.8
3 (2) Morrison W 59.6
4 (4) Sainsbury (J) 56.5
HEALTH & HOUSEHOLD
1 (1) GlaxoSmithKline * 73.6
2 (3) AstraZeneca 66.1
3 (4) Nycomed Amersham 63.8
4 (5) Alliance UniChem 56.3
INSURANCE
1 (1) Legal & General Group 63.4
2 (3) CGNU 58.7
3 (2) Prudential Corporation 57.8
4 (8) Britannic Assurance 55.3
LEISURE & HOTELS
1 (-) Manchester United 61.3
2 (1) Granada Group 60.4
3 (5) Millennium & Copthorne 58.6
4 (-) Hilton 57.3
MEDIA
1 (-) Pearson 64.1
2 (2) BSkyB 62.4
3 (1) WPP Group 60.0
4 (-) Reuters 59.9
OIL, GAS & EXTRACTIVE SECTOR
1 (1) BP 71.1
2 (2) Shell Transport & Trading 70.8
3 (4) Rio Tinto 63.2
4 (3) BG 59.7
PROPERTY
1 (-) Capital Shopping Centres 60.3
2 (-) Liberty International 54.0
3 (-) Canary Wharf 53.8
4 (2) Hammerson 51.8
RETAILERS (CLOTHING)
1 (1) Next 64.2
2 (5) Selfridges 57.4
3 (-) French Connection 53.4
4 (-) Matalan 48.6
RETAILERS (GENERAL)
1 (2) Dixons 62.0
2 (1) Boots 61.8
3 (3) Kingfisher 57.1
4 (4) Smith (WH) 53.4
SOFTWARE & COMPUTER SERVICES
1 (1) Sage Group 65.5
2 (2) Logica 62.4
2 (4) CMG 62.4
4 (-) Kewill Systems 57.1
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
1 (1) Vodafone Group * 63.9
2 (3) Energis 59.4
3 (-) Kingston Communications 56.3
4 (5) COLT Telecom 55.9
TRANSPORT
1 (-) Exel * 68.6
2 (5) Ocean Group * 64.6
3 (1) BAA 54.5
4 (3) P&O 52.5
WATER
1 (4) Thames Water 61.3
2 (2) Severn Trent Water 59.1
3 (1) Anglian Water 56.7
4 (3) United Utilities 54.6
- NEW ENTRY
* MERGED, ACQUIRED, NAME CHANGED OR MERGER PROPOSED.
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