International English - Eating Out - Big Business

Big business is a term used to describe large corporations, in either an individual or collective sense. The term first came into use in a symbolic sense subsequent to the American Civil War, particularly after 1880, in connection with the combination movement that began in American business at that time. Organizations that fall into the category of "big business" include ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, Google, Microsoft, Citigroup and Arcelor Mittal.
This is 10th year of selecting the 400 Best Big Companies in America. Their methodology for choosing the winners is so stringent that 165 companies from last year's 400 did not make the cut for 2008. Not only must companies pass their benchmarks for financial growth rates and returns, they must also meet approval for their corporate governance, accounting standards and background checks. Their editors' choice for the company of the year is Nvidia (nasdaq: NVDA - news - people ). Nvidia is now racing to develop its next generation of chips as it faces new challenges fromIntel (nasdaq: INTL - news - people ) and Advanced Micro Devices (nyse: AMD - news - people ). What about the other 25 industries? In chemicals, they cite Mosaic (nyse: MOS - news - people ) as the best-managed of the group. Mosaic took restructuring charges in May 2006 related to closing its higher-cost phosphate operations, and this write-off led to a loss for fiscal 2006. Their best-managed choice in food, drink & tobacco is PepsiCo (nyse: PEP - news - people ). PepsiCo is a member of our platinum honor roll, a select list of 21 companies.