Message-ID: <1793747.1075846381376.JavaMail.evans@thyme> Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 02:48:00 -0700 (PDT) From: steven.kean@enron.com To: maureen.mcvicker@enron.com Subject: Enron Mentions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-From: Steven J Kean X-To: Maureen McVicker X-cc: X-bcc: X-Folder: \Steven_Kean_Dec2000_1\Notes Folders\Sent X-Origin: KEAN-S X-FileName: skean.nsf Please forward to Advisory Committee ----- Forwarded by Steven J Kean/NA/Enron on 09/20/2000 09:47 AM ----- Ann M Schmidt 09/18/2000 08:59 AM To: Mark Palmer/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Karen Denne/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Meredith Philipp/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Steven J Kean/NA/Enron@Enron, Mary Clark/Corp/Enron@ENRON cc: Subject: Enron Mentions Manager's Journal: Heir to Greatness By Gary Hamel 09/18/2000 The Wall Street Journal A38 (Copyright (c) 2000, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) Sometime in the next few months, the board of General Electric will anoint a successor to the world's most celebrated corporate leader. Running GE may be, as Jack Welch claims, the best job in the world, but his successor may find it to be one of the toughest as well -- not because anything is going wrong at GE, but because so much is going right, and has been for so long. Mr. Welch's successor will inherit a company that is already stupendously valuable, that has already shed most of its unwanted pounds, and has already set a string of performance records. How do you do better than that? This is more than a rhetorical question for GE's next chairman. Pity, for a moment, a few other heirs to greatness. Doug Ivester was gone just 25 months after following the legendary Roberto Goizueta at Coca-Cola. Dale Morrison lasted less than four years at Campbell Soup after taking over from cost-cutter extraordinaire David Johnson. British Airway's Bob Ayling got pushed out after he had struggled unsuccessfully to fill the shoes of Colin Marshall. And Durk Jager prematurely stepped down as Procter & Gamble's chairman after failing to live up to the lofty standards set by earlier P&G leaders. Pretenders None of the pretenders succeeded in building greatness on top of greatness. In three of these cases, the board brought back a recently retired CEO or chairman to shore up investor confidence. Sadly, Goizueta, who died in October 1997, could not reprise his earlier success at Coca-Cola. GE's next chairman will have to exceed Mr. Welch's near-mythic accomplishments if GE is to continue to fly high. Like Cisco, Intel, Wal-Mart, Nokia and any other company that is exploring the outer atmosphere, GE must struggle ever harder to resist the laws that threaten to flatten the arc of success: the law of large numbers, the law of diminishing returns, and the law of averages. -- The law of large numbers: Over the past decade GE's market value has multiplied eleven-fold -- to more than $560 billion from $50 billion at the end of 1990. Sustaining such a breathtaking pace of value growth gets progressively harder as a company gets bigger. As the most valuable company on the planet, GE would need to grow its market cap to nearly $3 trillion over the next five years to match the 42% compounded annual growth rate it has achieved over the past half-decade. One way of escaping the law of large numbers is to divide big things into small things. One option for GE would be to spin out its low-growth businesses as separate companies. Over the past five years, profits in two sectors -- appliances and plastics -- were essentially flat. Holding these businesses may generate a positive return on invested capital, but no investor would keep them inside a growth portfolio. Why should GE? If GE's next chairman can't muster the courage to leave the dawdlers behind, perhaps he -- or she -- should spin out the stars. Of the eight large business segments for which GE reports results, two -- GE Capital and NBC -- account for nearly 50% of GE's five-year profit growth. Sure, GE Capital has benefited from its parent's dirt-cheap cost of capital, but from an investor's point of view, these advantages may be more than offset by the drag of laggardly earnings growth in other GE businesses. Looking beyond capital and broadcasting, there are probably a dozen other high-growth candidates for spin-outs in GE's other sectors. Mr. Welch's successor shouldn't be afraid to disassemble GE. After all, the goal is not to make GE the "world's most valuable company," but to make its shareholders the world's most richly rewarded. Shareholders don't care whether GE's stock appreciates or whether it's the stock of companies that GE has disgorged. Breaking up is hard to do. But Mr. Welch's successor may find that turning GE into the world's first $3 trillion company is even harder. -- The law of diminishing returns: Even the most successful strategies lose their potency over time. For most of Mr. Welch's tenure, GE's strategies of choice have been cost cutting and acquisitions. From its unflinching approach to downsizing in the mid-1980s, to its more recent dedication to e-business, Mr. Welch's GE has been imaginative and unrelenting in excising waste. At the same time, GE's top line has been buoyed up by a tidal wave of acquisitions -- more than 300 in the past three years, many outside the U.S. The payoff to all this cutting and deal making has been steadily accelerating earnings growth. Net earnings grew 10.8% in 1996, 12.7% in 1997, 13.3% in 1998 and 15.3% in 1999. Looking forward, power dieting and binge buying may not be enough to keep GE's earnings escalator rising ever skyward. There are already signs that GE may be nearing the asymptotic end of the efficiency curve. Between 1981 and 1990, GE's revenue per employee increased by 187%. Yet over the last decade, revenue per employee grew by a more modest 55%, and has been essentially flat since 1996. And while operating margins in GE's manufacturing businesses have been steadily improving, GE's net profit margin, after all adjustments, has remained pretty much unchanged over the past five years. What about acquisitions? While industry consolidation still has a way to run, particularly outside the U.S., it seems inevitable that it will become harder and harder for GE to find under-priced, under-managed fixer-uppers. After all, at the current furious pace of corporate coupling, the U.S. would be left with a single company by 2010. That leaves "e." E-commerce will drive new efficiencies into GE's business processes, but GE is not alone in striving to e-enable its businesses. E-commerce is rapidly becoming an information technology arms race -- with competitors making tit-for-tat investments to reap tit-for-tat efficiency gains. And while efficiency-besotted CEOs are counting on the Internet to shrink procurement costs, savvy customers will be just as creative in using the Net to beat down prices. Whether GE's enthusiasm for all things "e" produces long-lasting, peer-beating profit growth remains to be seen. GE's next chairman may want to borrow a lesson or two from Enron, which has been voted America's most innovative company five years running and displaced GE as the "best managed company" in Fortune magazine's last "most admired" survey. Forty percent of Enron's $63 billion market value comes from businesses the company wasn't even in three years ago -- all of them are homegrown. Forget acquisitions. With GE's powerful brand, global reach and fearsome capacity for execution, there's no reason GE shouldn't surpass Enron as a business-building champ. It is entirely reasonable to expect that GE could create 10 to 20 new businesses over the next few years -- with each adding an average of $5 billion to GE's market value. Sooner or later GE is going to need an entirely new genre of wealth-creating strategies -- and a much more aggressive commitment to internally generated new business development may well be the most promising candidate. -- The law of averages: Over the past five years, GE's price/earnings ratio has tripled, from just over 16 to more than 48. The company is currently selling at a 65% premium to the market average P/E. But being a standout performer for more than a few years at a time is a daunting challenge for any company, large or small. It seems that no company can forever escape the steady tug of mediocrity. At the end of 1999, the Standard & Poor's 500 included 326 companies that had been in the index for the entire decade. Fifty-five of these companies, among them GE, managed to deliver top quartile shareholder returns in as many as four years out of the previous 10. GE's top quartile results came in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999. If GE's new chairman manages to extend this streak for another four years, GE will set a new world record, for none of the 326 S&P veterans achieved top quartile returns in as many as eight years out of 10 during the '90s, and only four companies -- Oracle, Home Depot, Intel and Cisco -- cleared the bar seven years out of 10. If GE can fire up the entrepreneurial spirit in each of its employees, it just might beat the odds. Like most large companies, GE seems to be reluctant to encourage employees to start new businesses by giving them equity stakes in new ventures. While this isn't the only way to build businesses, it's one that can't be ignored in a world where talented employees are often lured away by the promise of a big chunk of equity in a start-up. GE already invests in start-ups via GE Equity -- to the tune of $1.5 billion in 1999. Last year GE also repurchased $1.9 billion of its own stock. One wonders just what kind of new wealth GE's own employees might have been able to create if they had been backed by this kind of capital? To have any hope of escaping Mr. Welch's shadow, and matching his success, GE's next chairman will have to keep a simple truth in mind: If you're trying to achieve unprecedented ends, you're going to need unprecedented means. A break-up, a few major spin-outs, a bottom-to-top initiative focused on making GE as good at creating bold new businesses as it is at improving existing businesses, an absolute commitment to doubling or tripling GE's internal growth rate -- these are all potential candidates for the next big thing at GE. Maybe, just maybe, GE will continue to fly high with its current success recipes. One could argue that as long as there are companies around the world that aren't as well-managed as GE, Mr. Welch's magnificent buy-and-improve engine will have plenty of fuel. Or that GE's Web-smitten executives will discover Net advantages no one else has yet dreamed of. After 20 years under Mr. Welch, GE is habituated to meeting new challenges. Moreover, GE has a long history of organizational and managerial innovation -- it was among the first to decentralize along business unit lines, embrace disciplined strategic planning, delayer its hierarchical organization, and commit itself to becoming Webified from stem to stern. Like the Internet, GE is diverse, global, flat, meritocratic and non-hierarchical. Maybe all of this will help GE to become one of the first companies to marry the rule-busting, business-building ethos of the "new economy" with the "old economy" virtues of scale, efficiency and quality. If GE succeeds, there will be no more talk of new economy and old economy, for GE will have managed to create a perfect synthesis of old and new. And the most perfectly developed specimen of the industrial age will have become the archetype for the post-industrial corporation -- a company that uses its size and operational excellence to crush the upstarts, and its industry-transforming innovation to constantly surprise the old farts. This is a worthy, and necessary, aspiration for the next leader of America's pre-eminent corporation. Mr. Hamel is chairman of Strategos, a consulting company based in Menlo Park, Calif. He is author of "Leading the Revolution" (Harvard Business School Press, 2000). Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Spiraling energy costs creating near-crisis situation The heat is on consumers Monday, September 17, 2000 By DAVID IVANOVICH Copyright 2000 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/topstory/670583 Abreast of the Market S&P Index Seemed Tranquil This Year, but... By E.S. Browning Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal 09/18/2000 The Wall Street Journal C1 (Copyright (c) 2000, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) Amid the storm that has swept the Nasdaq Composite Index this year, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index looks like a sea of tranquility. Since Jan. 1, it has gone almost exactly nowhere, starting the year at 1469.25 and closing Friday at 1465.81. But beneath the quiet surface, a furious battle is raging among the S&P's components, with some of last year's losers becoming this year's winners. Some of the most amazing performers are the natural-gas companies, which are up about 70% as a group so far this year. "The natural-gas index looks like an Internet stock from a year ago," says Richard Bernstein, chief quantitative strategist at Merrill Lynch. El Paso Energy is up 70% so far this year. KeySpan Energy is up almost 60%. On top of its stock gain, KeySpan offers something some investors aren't familiar with: a 5% dividend. Now the big question is, should investors be plowing their money into the recent winners, which also include drug stocks, brokerage-firm stocks and bank stocks? Or is their surge a flash in the pan that will evaporate as investors get over their jitters in the fall? Higher oil prices helped send utility stocks up on Friday, and most other stocks down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.45%, or 160.47 points, to 10927.00, leaving the blue-chip index down 2.62%, or 293.65 points, for the week. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 2.01% on the day and 3.6% on the week. The Dow Jones Utility Average, however, rose 1.52%, or 5.94 points, on Friday to a record 397.04, leaving it up 2.78% on the week. The S&P 500, still the broadest of the major market indexes, dropped 1% on Friday. But it is just 4% off its record of 1527.46, set March 24. In contrast, the technology-heavy Nasdaq index is down 24% from its March 10 high. Within the S&P 500, though, there have been some dramatic moves. Utilities are up an astounding 40%, just in the time since the S&P peaked on March 24, according to Ned Davis Research. Financials and drug stocks are up about 16% each -- again, since the S&P hit a record. Communications stocks, on the other hand, have fallen 25% in that period. The S&P 500's big tech stocks are down more than 19%. Some analysts think the move that is under way is broader than a sector rotation. Some of the least-wanted stocks of 1999 have become desirable this year. As huge stocks, such as Qualcomm and Yahoo!, have sagged, smaller, once-neglected S&P companies, such as Reebok and Allied Waste, have soared. The switch can be seen in an index called the Value Line Arithmetic Index. That index tracks about 1,700 companies and doesn't give any extra weight to the ones with a larger market value. It is a closer reflection of the average company, rather than the biggest companies. So far this year, it is up 13%, eclipsing the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is weighted according to its members' market value, which means that it is dominated by the larger stocks. The Value Line index's strength compared with the S&P 500 is a clear indication that some of the smaller stocks are making a comeback, at least for now. Some of the gains do seem to reflect special circumstances. Utilities have been helped by an explosion in natural-gas prices and by a search for stable investments in a turbulent stock market. Many banks and brokerage firms have benefited from takeover speculation: Merrill Lynch is up 66% so far this year; Lehman Brothers is up 69%. If takeover expectations fade, the brokerage stocks risk a slide. And energy companies depend on oil and gas prices, which can make them volatile. Natural-gas bulls note, however, that natural-gas prices are expected to remain high for some time, which could keep propelling that group ahead. "Very few people thought energy prices would remain this high for as long as they have," notes Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette investment strategist Thomas Galvin. "So you still have people underweighted both areas, energy and utilities." That means that there still are plenty of skeptics out there. If gas prices stay high, the stocks have room to rise as skeptics are won over. But the real trick during the coming months may not be to be in the right sector, but to be in the right stock, both men say. At a time when the economy is slowing and earnings growth will be more difficult, "you probably want higher-quality stocks, because they have more stable earnings," Mr. Bernstein says. When tech stocks or utility stocks are in favor, it is enough to buy a stock from the group and your stock will go up. Now investors need to be more selective. "El Paso and Duke Energy are extremely well managed," says Mr. Galvin, "as is Enron. But the rising tide in utilities has lifted all boats, and not all utilities are well enough managed to take advantage of all opportunities." The key is choosing the stocks that will withstand the more difficult times to come, and that won't be easy. People who bought Intel or Oracle at the start of this year probably feel as if it wasn't that bad a year for tech. Both, despite a recent sag, still are up almost 40% this year. Those who chose Microsoft or Dell, however, took a bath: Microsoft is down 45% since the year began, and Dell is down almost 30%. Mr. Galvin thinks tech stocks will stage a fourth-quarter rally, as investors look for companies that can continue to build profits in a slowing economy. He points out that analysts expect tech to post 38% earnings growth next year, only a bit less than this year's 41%. But benefiting from any rally would require picking the stocks that will have the good earnings. Another way of looking at the uncertain future, says Bob Bissell, president of Wells Capital Management, is that there could be some unexpected events. Companies whose stock prices have fallen could be acquired, or forced to restructure, which could provide a payoff for investors. "I am thinking of companies like AT&T," he says. "Something has got to give there. The stock is down to the low 30s," 47% down from its 52-week high of 61. "Something has got to happen. Do you fragment the company?" He also points to midcap stocks, another of the year's strongest performers. "I call the category `the forgotten prince,' " he says. The S&P Midcap 400 index is doing even better than the Value Line index, up 22% since the year began. Some midcap companies deserve to be forgotten, of course. But the index also contains some smaller banks that could be takeover targets, and it has some fast-growing tech companies too. "It is getting stronger as the technological revolution moves companies rapidly from smallcap to midcap," Mr. Bissell says. --- Friday's Market Activity Soaring energy prices knocked market averages sharply lower. American Express lost $1.50 to $59.31, Chase Manhattan dropped 1.66 to 49, and General Electric, which has an exposure to the group through its financial-services operations, gave up 2.13 to 56.69. The group also suffered from a cooling in takeover speculation. Lehman Brothers, for example, fell 8 to 142.50, Goldman Sachs lost 4.25 to 124.75 and Bear Stearns gave up 4.75 to 65. Higher oil prices helped Exxon Mobil rise 3.60 to 88.88. It reached a 52-week high, its first since Dec. 9, while Amerada Hess climbed 4.56 to 73.25, and touched a 52-week high of its own. Database software company Oracle (Nasdaq) fell 6.63 to 78.31, with 60 million shares changing hands. Despite Oracle's announcement of strong quarterly earnings Thursday after the end of normal trading, some analysts said they were disappointed with the company's revenue growth. Siebel Systems (Nasdaq), an Oracle competitor, added 4.19 to 99. However, i2 Technologies fell 3.69 to 172.19, while Ariba lost 5.13 to 152.44, both on Nasdaq. Red Hat (Nasdaq) lost 4.06 to 21.19. The Research Triangle Park, N.C., developer of open-source software products posted a narrower-than-expected second-quarter loss, but left some analysts disappointed. Avon Products eased 50 cents to 41.19. The New York beauty-products marketing concern said late Thursday the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating a $10 million charge the company took in 1999 related to the write-off of computer software. Adobe Systems (Nasdaq) moved up 7.25 to 132.63. The San Jose, Calif., software developer reported fiscal third-quarter earnings that topped forecasts. Maytag fell 2.19 to 33.63, after the Newton, Iowa, home-appliance maker warned about second-half earnings. Ivax rose 2.38 to 43.63. The Miami pharmaceutical maker received final approved from the Food and Drug Administration for its generic equivalent of Bristol-Myers Squibb's cancer drug Taxol. Carnival Corp. gained 1.75 to 22.88, while rival Royal Caribbean Cruises advanced 1.75 to 24.50. The stocks rose on hopes that the withdrawal from the market of a smaller competitor will ease excess capacity. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Politics & Policy The Homestretch By Gerald F. Seib 09/18/2000 The Wall Street Journal A40 (Copyright (c) 2000, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) The Gore and Bush campaigns will argue over which did better in the debate over debates, but one winner is clear: PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer. Not only will he moderate all three presidential debates sponsored by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, but, under an agreement completed over the weekend, he will do so under rules giving him more flexibility than ever before. He will be free to bore in on a specific subject and extend discussion of it, rather than simply move on to other questions as in the past. Under the debate agreement, the two candidates will stand behind lecterns at the opening debate Oct. 3, sit around a table in talk-show fashion on Oct. 11, and debate in a town-hall format on Oct. 17. In other campaign developments: -- Housing policy? In the closest thing yet to a campaign debate on housing issues, the Republican party's Web site is trying to entice listeners to dial in to radio talk shows and charge that Democrats are running "The Slumlord Ticket." Why? On top of a recent controversy over complaints by tenants of a rental house in Tennessee owned by Vice President Gore, the Web site touts the story of a similar headache now faced by running mate Joseph Lieberman. An immigrant mother was evicted when she was injured and fell behind in rent payments at a property owned by the estate of Mr. Lieberman's wealthy late uncle; Mr. Lieberman is executor of the estate. -- A fish story: To the list of the perils of holding public office, now add the danger of flying fish. Just ask Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, an Idaho Republican, who was pelted with rotting salmon thrown by a 20-year-old protester at a hearing on Western wildfires held in Montana over the weekend. The protester cried out that the conservative congresswoman is "the greatest threat to the forest" and uncorked the salmon. She wasn't hurt, but the Associated Press reports that "the hearing was recessed while she cleaned salmon from her hair and jacket." --- Money Watch Top "double givers" -- donors of soft money to both parties In millions DONOR DEMOCRATS REPUBLICANS TOTAL AT&T $1.1 $1.8 $2.9 Microsoft 0.8 1.0 1.8 Enron 0.4 1.2 1.7 Freddie Mac 0.6 1.0 1.5 Philip Morris 0.2 1.4 1.5 SBC Comm. 0.7 0.5 1.2 America Online 0.6 0.6 1.2 Source: Common Cause Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. GE Tops Fortune's Ranking of the World's Most Admired Companies; Key To Staying Ahead of the Pack Is Innovation 09/18/2000 Business Wire (Copyright (c) 2000, Business Wire) NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 2000--For the third straight year, General Electric, on the strength of its management team and innovative global strategy, is No. 1 on FORTUNE's ranking of the most admired companies in the world. FORTUNE's third annual list of Global Most Admired Companies consists of 379 companies in 27 industries, with 25 selected as "all-stars" for exemplifying leadership on a global scale. Cisco Systems came in at No. 2 on the all-star ranking (up from No. 8 in 1999); other repeat performers in the top ten include Microsoft, whose battles with government regulators on one flank and perceptions of a foundering Internet strategy on the other caused it to slip to No. 3 from No. 2; Intel (No.4); and Wal-Mart Stores, which moved up to No. 5 from No. 7. The complete list of FORTUNE's Global Most Admired Companies appears in the October 2 issue of FORTUNE and is available at www.fortune.com as of Monday, Sept.18, at 8:30 a.m. According to Nicholas Stein's article, "The World's Most Admired Companies," the schizophrenic market conditions of the past year offer one reason why the Most Admired list looks so different this year. As Stein writes: "The winners are companies that demonstrated a new-economy style growth strategy while maintaining an old-economy approach to fiscal responsibility." And, as Vicki Wright, global managing director of the Hay Group consultancy that helped produce the list with FORTUNE notes: "There is something new this year in how we perceive companies. It is the emphasis on how much companies are capable of looking forward. In a year when old-economy companies have not seen their share price perform, those that have managed to weather both the old- and new-economy storms will flourish." Notable changes among this year's Global Most Admired list include Home Depot leaping from No. 20 to No. 9, Toyota moving up from No. 16 to No. 10, and Citgroup advancing from No. 25 to No. 18. Strong demand for Sony's flat-screen TVs, digital cameras, and PlayStation game consoles helped the company move up from 14 to 6. Newcomers to this year's list -- Enron, Nokia, Charles Schwab, UPS, and Goldman Sachs -- all embody business strategies that bridge the old and new economic worlds. Companies that lost their all-star status -- IBM, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, DaimlerChrysler -- have been plagued with difficulties integrating new business concepts. Many of the industry categories also experienced significant turnover. Among airline companies, Singapore Airlines, which didn't even make last year's list, took the top spot from Southwest. British Airways, hobbled by internal conflict and heightened competition, fell from third to seventh. Though Intel held on to the top ranking in the computer hardware and software category, Sun Microsystems rode the dot-com revolution to second place, up from sixth last year, while Dell, facing a wireless (and PC-less) future, fell from fifth to eighth. And in the white-hot network communications and Internet technology sector, all-star newcomer Nokia edged Cisco Systems for top billing. To find out what unique management qualities set these companies apart from their peers, the Hay Group surveyed the Most Admired Companies and their less admired peers about the performance measures they use to chart the progress of their companies. According to their findings, Most Admired companies set more challenging goals, link the compensation of their executives more closely to the completion of those goals, and are generally more oriented toward long-term performance. To complete the list of the world's most admired companies, FORTUNE consulted the experts: the business executives who run companies, and the analysts who study them. Global companies were rated according to eight criteria: quality of management; quality of products or services; innovativeness; long-term investment value; financial soundness; ability to attract, develop and retain talent; community responsibility; and use of corporate assets. To reflect this list's international scope, a ninth category was added: global business acumen. A company's overall ranking is the average of the scores of all nine attributes. Companies are ranked within their industry, and the top 25 -- the All-Stars -- are culled from across all industry groups. The October 2 issue is available on newsstands beginning September 25. For more information, or to schedule an interview with a FORTUNE writer or editor, contact Nyssa Tussing at 212/522-6724. The 2000 FORTUNE Global Most Admired All-Stars 2000/1999 Company Industry Rank 1/1 General Electric Electronics, electrical equipment 2/8 Cisco Systems Network Commun., Internet Tech. 3/2 Microsoft Computer hardware, software 4/4 Intel Computer hardware, software 5/7 Wal-Mart Stores Retail: general, specialty 6/14 Sony Electronics, electrical equipment 7/9 Dell Computer Computer hardware, software 8/NR Nokia Network Commun., Internet Tech 9/20 Home Depot Retail: general, specialty 10/16 Toyota Motor Motor vehicles 11/22 Southwest Airlines Airlines 12/11 Lucent Technologies Network Commun., Internet Tech. 13/NR Goldman Sachs Securities, diversified financials 14/5 Berkshire Hathaway Insurance: property, casualty 15/3 Coca-Cola Beverages 16/NR Charles Schwab Securities, diversified financials 17/17 Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals 18/25 Citigroup Securities, diversified financials 19/15 Ford Motor Motor vehicles 20/13 Pfizer Pharmaceuticals 21/10 Merck Pharmaceuticals 22/21 Walt Disney Entertainment 23/19 American Express Securities, diversified financials 24/NR United Parcel Service Mail, pkg., freight delivery 25/NR Enron Energy transmission providers NR = not ranked in 1999 CONTACT: FORTUNE, New York Nyssa Tussing, 212/522-6724 08:33 EDT SEPTEMBER 18, 2000 Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.