Nooyi-led PepsiCo more admired than rival Coke: Fortune

Beverages major PepsiCo, led by India-born Indra Nooyi, has been placed higher than its arch rival Coca-Cola on a list of 20 most-admired global companies prepared by US business magazine Fortune.

The list, published in the latest issue of Fortune, ranks PepsiCo at 13th position as against Coca-Cola at 19th spot.

The list has been led by Apple Computer, the maker of digital music player iPod and Mac personal computers. PepsiCo shares the 13th position with IT services major IBM.

PepsiCo is the only company run by a person of India origin to have figured on the list of most admired firm.

Apple is followed by diversified industrial conglomerate General Electric at the second position and Japanese auto major Toyota at the third place.

Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company of legendary investor Warren Buffett who was crowned the world's richest man last week by another business magazine Forbes, has been ranked at the fourth position on the list of 20 most admired global companies.

Others ranked higher than PepsiCo include consumer goods major Procter & Gamble (5th place), courier and logistics firm FedEx (6th), consumer goods maker Johnson & Johnson (7th), retail giant Target (8th), luxury car major BMW (9th), software giant Microsoft (10th), retail firm Costco Wholesale (11th) and another logistics firm UPS at the 12th place.

PepsiCo has, however, outscored companies like networking solutions major Cisco Systems (15th rank), aircraft maker Boeing (16th), world's largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores (17th), Japanese auto maker Honda Motor (18th) and industrial and farm equipments maker Caterpillar (20th).

A total of 622 companies in 65 industries were surveyed for making the list. Fortune partnered with global management consulting firm Hay Group for the study.

According to Fortune, to pick the 20 most-admired global firms overall, businesspeople were asked to vote for the companies from any industry.

"To create the top 20, an overall list of Most Admired Companies, the Hay Group asked 3,721 executives, directors, and securities analysts who had responded to the industry surveys to select the ten companies they admired the most."

They chose from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25 per cent in last year's survey, plus those that finished in the top 20 per cent of their industry, the magazine added.