Meet Canada's best managers and top performing companies. These executives have stickhandled their way through serious business challenges and come out winners.
The Panel
Debi Andrus, Haskayne School of Business
Craigg Balance, the CIO Summit
Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS National
Tom McDowell, Oliver Wyman-Delta Organization & Leadership
Elspeth Murray, Queen’s School of Business
Mark Rosen, Rosen & Associates Ltd.
Carol Stephenson, Richard Ivey School of Business
Michael Stern, Michael Stern Associates Inc.
Our 6th annual look at Canada’s best managers began with Bain & Co.’s Profit from the Core approach to setting financial performance benchmarks. We screened the 277 companies on the S&P/TSX Composite Index (as of Dec. 31, 2006) for profitable growth. Companies had to pass a series of 3-calendar-year hurdles: the compounded annual growth rate of net sales and net income had to exceed GDP growth, and the annualized total shareholder return (including dividends and distributions) had to exceed the company’s cost of equity.
We then researched the recent histories and senior executives of the qualifying companies, with a focus on businesses that outperformed peers. Our panel of experts, as well as our own staff, provided comments on the executives, and the companies were also given the opportunity to nominate senior leaders of their choosing.
In the end, Canadian Business selected the best managers in 5 categories — chief executive, finance, operations, sales and technology. A 6th category, most innovative executive, was chosen through an open-nomination process, with submissions then judged by a panel of experts.
How to use the list
The list can be sorted in ascending and descending order by clicking on the name of the column of interest. Clicking on a company name loads a profile page with all of our information about that firm.
Sections of the list can be emailed, printed out in a printer-friendly format, or downloaded into a spreadsheet. We invite you to share our survey on Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon and other social media sites.
The 10 best performing companies
These 10 firms had the best overall net sales growth, net income growth and total annualized shareholder return during the three years ending Dec. 31, 2006.
