Champions of profitable growth

Many companies have posted impressive top-line growth over the past two decades in their respective economic regions--for instance, Wal-Mart in North America, BP in Europe, Toyota in Asia, and News Corporation in the Southern Hemisphere. But which were the best at converting all of that revenue growth into shareholder value? Harvard Business Review asked C. Bennett Stewart III, the senior partner of the consulting firm Stern Stewart & Company, and his colleagues to come up with the answer. For the period 1983 to 2003, they assembled a list of the top 20 high-growth value adders (and laggards) in each of the four regions cited above. Their calculations gave equal weight to companies' revenue growth and market-value-added scores, revealing the important effect of region on the performance of companies in the same industry. For instance, while automakers are positioned high on the Asian list of high-growth value adders, U.S. carmakers GM and Ford--each of which reported revenue growth in excess of 100 billion dollars between 1983 and 2003--are among the value laggards on the North American list, as are DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen on the European list. The Japanese win through better efficiency, higher quality, and narrower product mixes, the author says. And while there are four telecom companies represented among the European high-growth value adders, there are none on the North American list. That's probably because the European telecoms enjoyed more protective regulation, made fewer high-priced acquisitions, and didn't bet as big on the overblown dot-com economy, the author says.