Business Week's Top 50

The companies that make up the BusinessWeek 50 represent our picks as the top performers in each of the 10 sectors that make up the S&P 500. To select this year's overachievers, we ran the S&P 500 through a proprietary screen that ranks those companies within sectors by two key metrics: return on investment and sales growth over the past three years, and for financial-service firms, their returns on equity and growth in assets. To provide the analysis and perspective that computers can't, BusinessWeek's editors and reporters then reviewed each company on the list, making a limited number of changes and deletions where warranted.

Each day (for the next 50 days) I will highlight each company. Highlighted tomorrow will be Coach.