Best Big Companies in the U.S.

Author: Scott DeCarlo

Online you will find tear sheets on all 400 companies; industry median charts; reports on stock market winners and losers, Platinum newcomers, drop-offs and long-term members; a slide show of the Best Managed Company in each of 26 industries and much more. Below: a look at 14 of the standouts from the list.

McDonald's
Hotels, Restaurants&Leisure | Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, and Chicken McNuggets-- McDonald's has served some of the world's favorite fast foods for more than half a century. The yellow letter M is the largest global food service retailer with more than 30,000 restaurants serving 52 million people in more than 100 countries each day. More than 75% of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by franchisees and affiliates.

Westinghouse Air Brake
Capital Goods | George Westinghouse founded an air brake company in 1869, shortly after he demonstrated that air pressure was a clever way to operate the brakes on a string of railcars. This 19th-century business lives on. After a series of owners, Westinghouse Air Brake Co. became Wabtec Corp. (nyse: WAB - news - people ) in a November 1999 merger with MotivePower Industries. Wabtec, with $1.5 billion in sales, manufactures a broad range of products for locomotives, freight cars and passenger transit vehicles. The company also builds new locomotives up to 4,000 horsepower in size.

Gilead Sciences
Drugs&Biotechnology | In a little over two decades after its start in 1987, Gilead Sciences has become one of the largest biopharmaceutical companies in the world, with a rapidly expanding product portfolio, growing pipeline of investigational drugs and operations on three continents. Primary areas of focus of the Foster City, Calif. company include antivirals (such as for HIV/AIDs and chronic hepatitis), cardiovascular conditions and respiratory diseases. Truvada, a drug used in the treatment of HIV infection in adults, is its sales leader with $1.54 billion in revenue for the first nine months of 2008.

Teledyne Technologies
Aerospace & Defense | In 1960 Henry Singleton and George Kozmetsky formed a company to capitalize on the coming revolution in which digital technology would replace analog technology. Teledyne has evolved considerably over the years; today it provides electronic components and subsystems, instrumentation and communications products in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Canada.

Amazon.com
Retailing | One of the survivors of the turn-of-century dot-com crash is the book retailer founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Bezos quickly expanded his e-commerce platform to music and video and now to auto parts, toys, tools, electronics and other goods and services. Revenues have been growing at a compound 64% a year over the past decade, to an estimated $19 billion in 2008. Among the attributes that put it on the Platinum list: an average five-year return on capital of 21% and an average four-year earnings growth rate of 50%.

Nasdaq OMX
Diversified Financials | Nasdaq OMX is the world's largest exchange company with trading, technology and public company service capability spanning six continents. Its technology supports the operations of over 60 exchanges in 50 countries, and it leads in worldwide listings, with more than 3,900 companies representing $5.5 trillion in total market value. Nasdaq omx offers trading across multiple asset classes including equities, derivatives, debt, commodities, structured products and exchange-traded-funds.

Nike
Household & Personal Products | With its Swoosh trademark and the slogan "Just Do it", Nike has become the world's top shoemaker. Besides footwear, Nike also sells athletic apparel and equipment. Brands of this $19 billion (sales) company include Cole Haan, Converse, Hurley, Nike Golf and Umbro. In all, Nike distributes its products in more than 180 countries.

Aflac
Insurance | Aflac is an acronym for American Family Life Assurance Company, a company founded in 1955 in Columbus, Georgia by three brothers--John, Paul and Bill Amos. Featuring the duck in its advertisements, Aflac sells supplement health and life insurance products, insuring more than 40 million people worldwide. Its biggest foreign market: Japan.

Altera
Semiconductors | Headquartered in San Jose, California, Altera invented the world's first programmable logic device (PLD) in 1983. The advantage of a PLD chip is that customers can program its circuits using Altera's software, rather than spending the time and money to develop and manufacture a custom-designed chip. Today it has over 2,600 employees in 19 countries providing custom logic solutions for customers in industries such as automotive, broadcasting, wireless communications and defense.

Hewlett-Packard
Technology Hardware & Equipment | With $118 billion in revenue, Hewlett-Packard is the world's largest technology company. HP's portfolio of products includes desktop and laptop computers, software, servers, printers and IT services. In 2008 HP bought Electronic Data Systems (nyse: EDS - news - people ) for $13.9 billion, its second-largest acquisition, next to its 2002 purchase of Compaq.

Verizon Communications
Telecommunications Services | With $96 billion in revenue, Verizon is one of the largest providers of communications services. Its wireline business offers telephone, Internet access and broadband video to residential, business and government customers. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture with Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ), provides service to over 70 million customers.

Hudson City Bancorp
Banking | Headquartered in Paramus, New Jersey, this community- and consumer-oriented retail savings bank holding company has been the model of consistency in its industry. Led by Chief Executive Ronald E. Hermance Jr. since 2001, Hudson City has grown to more than $51 billion in assets, with more than 125 branches in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. Its only wholly owned subsidiary, Hudson City Savings Bank (otcbb: CSFC.OB - news - people ), offers traditional deposit products, residential real estate mortgage loans and consumer loans.

Monsanto
Chemicals | Monsanto is a global provider of agricultural products for farmers, including seeds, biotech traits (genetically improved seeds) and herbicides. It recently reported record sales ($11.4 billion) and earnings ($2 billion) in fiscal 2008, a year in which it invested $980 million researching new crop hybrids and other genetic tools for farmers.

PPD
Health Care Equipment & Services | Started as a one-person pharmaceutical consulting business in 1985, PPD now has a staff of 10,500, offering a broad range of contract research and development services to the pharmaceutical industry and other medical organizations. In its operations across 33 countries the Wilmington, North Carolina firm helps drug companies develop new drugs, conduct clinical trials and with their applications for government approval.