AMERICA'S MOST ADMIRED COMPANIES

To create the top 20 for our 25th annual rankings, Fortune and its survey partners at Hay Group asked 3,322 executives, directors, and securities analysts to select the 10 companies they admire most. Having fresh ideas and being green are among the qualities that distinguish this year's winners.

Top 20 Most Admired Companies

General Electric

Top 10 Rank: 1

Rank among: Electronics: 1

GE's much-publicized "Ecomagination" campaign is aimed at supercharging revenues while doubling its $700 million R&D budget to come up with solar-energy hybrid locomotives, lower-emission aircraft engines, more efficient lighting, and ever more sophisticated water-purification systems. Evidently conservation begins at home: GE cut its own energy bills by about $70 million last year, partly by installing new lighting in more than 100 of its plants, and reduced its greenhouse-gas emissions by about 150,000 tons.

And for sheer adaptability over time, GE is hard to beat. Of the 12 companies Charles Dow chose to make up his original Dow Jones industrial average in 1896, GE is the only one still in the index.

Starbucks

Top 10 Rank: 2

Rank among: Food Services: 1

For years now Starbucks has paid fair-market prices to Third World coffee farmers and helped develop ecologically sound growing practices. Starbucks is also a regular on FORTUNE's annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. It's green, it's humane, it's politically correct, it sells a popular product and provides a comfy place to hang out and consume same - what's not to like?

Certainly investors have no complaints: If you had put $1,000 into Starbucks stock when the company went public in 1992, you'd have been $52,718.10 to the good at year-end 2006, vs. just $3,515.30 for the S&P 500.

Toyota Motor

Top 10 Rank: 3

Toyota has become America's best automaker. Its Camry has been the best-selling car in the U.S. since 2002, and the Lexus LS 430 has been the leading luxury-car brand for seven straight years. The company's long-term strategy is as green as anyone's. Sales of the Prius, which runs on a gas-electric hybrid engine, passed 100,000 units in 2006. The Prius is today as de rigueur in Hollywood as the hydrocarbon-swilling Hummer used to be.

Berkshire Hathaway

Top 10 Rank: 4

Rank among: Insurance: Property and Casualty: 1

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it." The man who coined this aphorism, Warren Buffett, knows a thing or two about great reputations: His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has long been a fixture on our list of America's Most Admired Companies.

Buffett burnished his reputation even more in June 2006, when he announced plans to give away the bulk of his $40 billion fortune, much of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Southwest Airlines

Top 10 Rank: 5

Rank among: Airlines: 2

Despite the turbulent fuel prices of the past several months, Southwest's 2006 earnings soared 38%, to $587 million. It was the airline's 34th straight year of profitability.

FedEx

Top 10 Rank: 6

Rank among: Delivery: 1

When Hurricane Katrina hit in late August 2005, businesses became the heroes: FedEx delivered 440 tons of relief supplies, mostly at no charge. No wonder it ranked no. 2 on last year's list. This year, it slipped a bit to no. 6.

Apple

Top 10 Rank: 7

Rank among: Computers: 2

You could say that Apple has landed - not only on our street corners and in our malls but also, for the first time, on the top ten of our Most Admired Companies list. Apple's peers have watched it upend industries from computers to music. And now it's become the best retailer in America.

In 2004, Apple reached $1 billion in annual sales faster than any retailer in history; last year, sales reached $1 billion a quarter. And now comes the next, if not must-have, then must-see, product.

"Our stores were conceived and built for this moment in time - to roll out iPhone," CEO Steve Jobs told Fortune. If sales are anywhere near expectations - Apple hopes to move ten million iPhones in 2008 - the typical Apple Store could be selling, in absolute terms, as much as a Best Buy, and with just a fraction of the selling space.

Google

Top 10 Rank: 8

Rank among: Internet Services and Retailing: 2

The "do no evil" company in 2005 took more than $900 million worth of stock to fund Google.org, bucking the traditional corporate foundation model in favor of something with fewer tax advantages but greater freedom to fund programs like for-profit entrepreneurship efforts in Africa.

And of course, the stock is its own success story. Google debuted on the Nasdaq in April 2004, with stock priced at $85 a share. The price is now about $450.

Johnson & Johnson

Top 10 Rank: 9

Rank among: Pharmaceuticals: 2

Long admired for product quality and smart management, J & J has prospered lately by diversifying away from dependence on its drug business and into medical devices. Nevertheless, the company slipped a bit in our rankings this year, falling from No. 6 on the 2006 list.

Procter & Gamble

Top 10 Rank: 10

Rank among: Household and Personal Products: 1

The Cincinnati-based consumer-products giant has been expanding its global reach for longer than most of the companies on our list. It now sells soap and such in more than 13,000 cities and towns in China. The company was ranked No. 4 last year.