Steady as they go: in a year of chaos, the CEOs of CE's fifth MVA ranking added value to their companies by being just a little bit dull.
Chief Executive (U.S.) › Nbr. 2002, July 2002
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Performance Measurement - Chief Executive (U.S.
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Steady as they go: in a year of chaos, the CEOs of CE's fifth MVA ranking added value to their companies by being just a little bit dull.
Humility, dependability and consistency weren't CEO personality traits sought by investors in the late 1990s. Yet those are exactly the characteristics cited by CEOs in this year's Chief Executive Top 25 Market Value Added (MVA) ranking as reasons for stellar performance.
"Maybe it's because I come from the Midwest where people tend to be more unassuming, but my father taught me the value of being humble," says Fred Bauer, CEO of Gentex, maker of high-tech automobile parts and No. 2 on this year's list. "Arrogance is death," he adds. MVA is essentially a measure of the efficiency with which a CEO has used the capital at his or her disposal (see "MVA Methodology" p. 30). A quick comparison of the 2002 list with the 1999 rankings shows how rapidly the corporate world has changed. Three years ago, WorldCom, Microsoft, Yahoo! and America Online took the top four spots. WorldCom has since declared bankruptcy and America Online is in trouble. CMGI, an early leader in the Internet revolution, occupied the No. 23 spot in 1999 and boasted a share price of nearly $140. Now, the stock hovers around 50 cents. This year's top CEOs are the kinds of leaders who would make any mother proud- stalwart, upstanding and wealthy to boot. Stryker, a medical equipment manufacturer and No. 8 on the list, is a model of "consistency and reliability," according to an analyst with Zacks Investment Research. Managers of hot Internet companies during the boom years would have cringed at such a description. Not that the companies on this list are boring. A number are headed by risk-taking entrepreneurs--some you might not know--who have been with their companies since they were founded. Those include Dane Miller of Biomet, the medical equipment maker at the top of the ranking; Bauer of Gentex; and Michael Dell of Dell Computer in the No. 6 spot. Still, many say they place a premium on being trustworthy and have gone out of their way to instill a sense of ethics in their organizations. "The important thing is not to make promises you'll have a hard time fulfilling, because the...See the full content of this document
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