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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 Corp. in the Southern Hemisphere. But which were the best at converting all of that revenue growth into shareholder value? Harvard Business Review asked G. Bennett Stewart III, senior partner of the consulting firm Stern Stewart & Co., 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, whereas 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 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 although there are four telecom companies represented among the European high-growth value adders, there is 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.

In the 1990s, funding pension obligations by investing in stocks looked smart. By 1999, the bull market had poured a collective $260 billion surplus into the pension coffers of the S&P 500, permitting the companies to record the year-to-year increases as additional income. But just two years later, the bear market had obliterated those gains, replacing them with a cavernous $240 billion deficit--which had to be offset by the unlucky firms' ongoing cash flows, wreaking havoc on their earnings, debt levels, and stock prices. Corporate executives may be blamed for this debacle. But they were only following the rules. Current accounting guidelines keep companies from recording pension liabilities and assets on their balance sheets, instead relegating them to the footnotes. That makes it hard to see the risk to which market drops expose companies. Board members and top executives need to look beyond distorted accounting numbers to the economic realities of pension plans. Once they do, they may be surprised to find that they would gain far greater value and flexibility by passively investing their pension funds entirely in bonds. A bond portfolio can be designed to meet precisely, and with virtual certainty, a company's pension obligation, thus eliminating the chance of a funding gap. The predictability of bond investments also stabilizes earnings and cash flow. The expanded corporate debt capacity that results can then be used to fuel growth or reduce the firm's overall cost of capital.

An emerging synthesis of financial strategies, organizational structures, and operating philosophies is revitalizing the publicly held corporation by addressing deep-seated structural weaknesses. This synthesis reflects three insights: the power of entrepreneurial motivation, the impact of balance-sheet restructuring and strict financial discipline, and the benefits of decentralizing authority and ownership.