2001 CEO Directory

Return to Virginia Business - July 2001

CEO Directory

How they performed
The annual list of how well CEOs ran their companies

The annual list of how well CEOs ran their companiesWith all the turbulence in the airline industry these days, Kerry B. Skeen is having a very smooth flight. The chairman and CEO of regional jet carrier Atlantic Coast Airlines Holdings has produced compounded annual returns last year of 697.6 percent, making his company No. 5 among the best-run companies surveyed by Virginia Business for 2000. "We are very proud to hold this ranking," he says from his cell phone as he gets ready for a trip to Europe. "Over the last five years we’ve had a compounded annual growth rate of 35 percent."

Notes:
• Sources: proxy statements and individual companies.

• Calculations are for the top 100 Virginia public companies, by market capitalization.

• Compound annual return (CAR) includes stock appreciation plus reinvested dividends.

• If a company has not yet filed a proxy statement, N/A appears in its entry. In these cases, the date of the company’s IPO appears by its name. If a company provided specific partial year information, then these figures were used. N/A also appears if a company is not required by the SEC to provide a stock performance graph.

• If a CEO has been incumbent for less than a year, CAR is calculated for the longest period covered in the stock performance graph. In this case, the symbol * indicates that the CEO is recently appointed and the CAR is not attributable to his or her stewardship.

• CEO’s stake is the percentage of shares under his or her voting control.

• The year-end closest to each CEO’s appointment is used when calculating CAR.

Not bad for a year when many dot-coms are road kill and the downturn in the economy has left many other firms with anemic profits. Besides Atlan-tic Coast Airlines, the high-fliers on our list are more meat-and-potatoes firms than high-tech dazzlers. Leading the survey is home builder Dwight C. Schar of NVR Inc. of McLean followed by Dennis W. Bakke, president and CEO of AES Corp., a global power company in Arlington. Also among the leaders is Richard D. Fairbank of Capital One Financial, a bank and credit card issuer that also made the Fortune magazine list of the best companies to work for.

What does it take to manage a company exceptionally well? Skeen says he’s lucky to be located in Northern Virginia, giving him access to Dulles International Airport. His regional carrier is part of both the United and Delta Airlines empires and uses Dulles as a hub to fly to 55 cities in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

As larger carriers are be-sieged with consumer complaints about poor service and tardy flights, ACC is able to grab more market shares by turning to regional jets and improving service. By replacing turboprops with jets, ACC can make faster connections to middle-sized cities from large airports such as Dulles, Chicago O’Hare, New York’s LaGuardia and Boston’s Logan. Jets also can fly above nasty weather and give passengers smoother rides. After starting to switch to jets two and a half years ago, ACC now has 67 aircraft and will have 158. Its current work force of 3,600 is expected to grow to 4,000 by 2002 and 5,000 by 2003, says Skeen, 49. Our list follows.

Return to Virginia Business - July 2001