Wealth Creators Index

The problem with growth at any cost is that it often disguises mistakes and bad managerial hygiene. To grow profitably in real economic terms, without unsustainable leverage and without mucking up the balance sheet, is the mark of strong leadership.

For more on this year's wealth creators click here.

Our ranking is based on the performance of companies in the S&P 500 index (and their CEOs) for the three years ending on June 30, 2015. Only companies for which the CEOs were in their roles for the entire July 2012 through June 2015 period were ranked.

In publishing this list, Chief Executive, in partnership with Great Numbers! and EVA Dimensions, aims to show CEOs where they stand with respect to their peers as well as how to go about improving one’s standing. Getting better will require several actions that the company’s CEO, division heads and general managers can take.

In seven years of best-wealth-creator profiles, never has a company seemed so well led, in so many areas.

Our ranking is based on the performance of companies in the S&P 500 index (and their CEOs) for the three years ending on June 30, 2014. Only companies for which the CEOs were in their roles for the entire July 2011 through June 2014 period were ranked. Not ranked are the 18 REITs in the June 30, 2014 S&P 500 Index. (Also, Facebook, which went public in May 2012, was not ranked due to incomplete data for the measurement period.)

For Chief Executive's seventh annual index, we ranked the top 100 public companies of the S&P 500 where the CEO has been in place for at least three years. Similarly, we also ranked the top 40 mid-market companies (see p. 43) from the Russell 3000 in two tiers: upper mid-market companies with revenues between $500 million and $1 billion, and a lower mid-market tier of companies with revenues between $100 million and $500 million.

Again this year, we’ve profiled companies in the top and bottom ranks that we haven’t written about previously, to provide a fresh set of management insights. The write-ups to follow reflect company events and performance up until June 30, 2013.

In the sixth annual ranking of the Chief Executive/Applied Finance Group wealth creators, more and more leaders are showing that they have both the discipline and staying power to sustain real value creation.