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Fortune 500's Biggest Losers
We are in a depression, or darned close to it. Fortune notes that a retirement account invested in the top 500 companies shares would have dropped 37 percent during the last 12 months. More alarmingly, the combined earnings of the 500 dropped 85 percent, from more than $645.2 billion to $98.9 billion. Think about that profit number again: One company, AIG, lost more than the combined profits of the other 499 companies in the Fortune 500.
Consumer confidence—as measured by profits on this year’s Fortune list—is reflected in companies that provide inexpensive products that people need to have as they swing into economic-survival mode.
So what to think about the Fortune 500 list this year? Well, I am not a stock picker, nor a Wall Street wizard of any sort. But if I had to make a show bet at the $2 window, I would say read the Fortune 500 sidebar on top women executives. Together, the top 10 women made less than the $124.7 million in total compensation that Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial collected for 2007. My bet for the next year is that if you create a portfolio of the companies run by these top testosterone-free executives, that stock index will outperform the Fortune 500 next year.
The only way I change my thinking on that is if, by some miracle, the banks and other companies see that only by mandatory full disclosure of risk to shareholders will that risk-taking be held to acceptable levels.
Allan Dodds Frank is a business investigative correspondent who specializes in white-collar crime.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Allan Dodds Frank is a business investigative correspondent who specializes in white collar crime. He also is President of the Overseas Press Club of America, one of the many journalism organizations that protests the arrests of journalists abroad and repression of freedom of speech.
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Allan Dodds Frank is a business investigative correspondent who specializes in white collar crime. He also is President of the Overseas Press Club of America, one of the many journalism organizations that protests the arrests of journalists abroad and repression of freedom of speech.
