TopGun^® Press

Brendan Wood Announces The 2019 SuperGun CEO’s Of The World… As Selected By Shareholders.

October 30th, 2019 by TopGun Press

SUPERGUN CEOs

Brendan Wood Announces The 2019 SuperGun CEO’s Of The World…
As Selected By Shareholders.

For Immediate Release – New York, NY, October 29^th, 2019 (TopGun Press)

The Brendan Wood Shareholder Confidence Index is a scale of ownership related performance metrics which measure CEO’s, Boards, Strategies, Value Growth Forecasts, Momentum, Reporting Transparency, Senior Managements and CFO’s, of 1400 big cap companies worldwide. Common to virtually all TopGun companies is a TopGun CEO. “About ten percent of the 1400 companies on Brendan Wood’s index employ a CEO rated by shareholders as a TopGun. If a nominee maintains that level of shareholder confidence over three years, they enter the TopGun Club by acclamation. About two percent of CEOs are rated in a SuperGun class. This means investors expect these CEOs to most widely outperform their sector peers in the year ahead, and they do,” explains Jordan Novak, Partner, Brendan Wood International.

Brendan Wood’s 25 SuperGun CEOs, selected by investor consensus in January 2019, delivered a 37% rate of return YTD versus 17% in the DJIA and 22% in the S&P ex-Commodities. Likewise, Brendan Wood’s SuperGun CEOs in the Technology / Communications Sector outperformed the DJIA by 85% and beat the S&P companies by 66%. When compared with the Tech / Communications Sector as a whole the SuperGuns outperformed by 22%. The SuperGun CEOs in the Financials Sector selected New Year’s Day have outperformed the Financials Sector by 78% year to date.

2019 Global SuperGun CEOs:
(In alphabetical order by last name):
Ajaypal Banga – Mastercard Inc.
Jeffrey Bezos – Amazon.com Inc.
Andrew Cecere – US Bancorp
James Dimon – JP Morgan
Daniel Glaser – Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc.
John Hayes – Ball Corp
Robert Iger – Walt Disney Co.
Craig Jelinek– Costco Wholesale Corporation
Thomas Joyce Jr. – Danaher Corp
Gale Klappa – WEC Energy Group Inc
Alfred Kelly Jr. – VISA Inc
Dr. Thomas Kennedy – Raytheon Co.
Robert Kotick – Activision Blizzard, Inc.
Jeffrey Martin – Sempra Energy
Michael McGahan – InterRent REIT
David McKay – Royal Bank of Canada
Craig Menear – Home Depot
Satya Nadella – Microsoft Corp.
Shantanu Narayen – Adobe Inc.
Lawrence Page – Alphabet Inc
James Robo– NextEra Energy, Inc.
Thomas Rutledge – Charter Communications, Inc.
Ernest Scott Santi – Illinois Tool Works Inc
Kathy Warden – Northrop Grumman Corp* (Ms. Warden is a newly appointed CEO replacing a long-standing TopGun.CEO. TopGun Shareholder confidence ratings continue and apply to Kathy Warden)
Peter Wennink – ASML Holding NV

“The key to identifying TopGun CEOs is to monitor the confidence of TopGun investors who study corporate cultures closely and target them as longer term or what we call anchor investments. Risk management and the avoidance of volatility are critical criteria of TopGun investors in selecting anchor holdings. Another critical selection criterion is the ability of a CEO to manage exceptional investor communications which build confidence and trust. TopGun CEOs run exceptional companies but that will not necessarily be well known amongst investors unless the CEO communicates effectively with investors who make anchor bets. TopGun CEOs know how to attract and retain a deep shareholder base overtime,” says Brendan Wood, Chairman, Brendan Wood International.

“TopGun investors want to be sure that not only is a company target exceptional according to fundamental investment analysis but also an exceptional attractor of investors. We make it our business to know how strong a company’s investor franchise is and why. We can only get such deep insight by talking to investors, large and small, and especially investors in the TopGun class. On the 1400 companies BWI tracks, it is often necessary to talk with more than the voting majority before classifying them in the TopGun category. Professional investors have a tight grip on analysis and their own investment thesis. However, they also need to know the depth and strength of a company’s investor franchise. Do other important investors see the same dynamics and does a target company have sufficient shareholder understanding and support to materialize its value,” says, Wood.

What about boards? It is very rare for a CEO to win the Brendan Wood TopGun accolade without a TopGun Board in place. According to Brendan Wood partners there are less ornamental board selections in a TopGun CEO’s company. What comes first in the shareholder mindset is a Board which drives a business as opposed to one which is focused primarily on the rituals of governance. The latter are expected as part of a Board’s standard routine but not the raison d’etre of a Board. TopGun CEOs are prone to attract Board members who are taskmasters of exceptional performance and vice versa.

In the Brendan Wood Reports TopGun CEOs cut across three constituencies of excellence, namely the attraction of capital, top people and customers. According to Brendan Wood, TopGun CEOs are individuals who exceptional senior managers want to work for, however challenging it may be.

About Brendan Wood International:

Brendan Wood International (BWI), formed in 1970, is a private partnership generating independent confidential performance audits throughout the world. Relying on real time intelligence, the firm advises public companies, institutional and activist investors, investment banks and broker dealers on strategy, performance and recruitment of TopGun talent. The firm’s partners have formally presented at 1000+ C level strategy meetings and corporate off sites in fifty cities. Brendan Wood founded the exclusive TopGun Club.