Stryker

Description

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Is this an operating room or Dad's workshop? Stryker's surgical products include such instruments as drills, saws, rasps, even cement mixers. The company's Orthopaedic Implants category includes artificial joints, spinal rods and screws, artificial vertebral discs, bone cement, and other orthopedic implants and supplies. The company's Stryker Biotech orthopaedic division makes OP-1, a product to grow bone. The MedSurg Equipment segment include facial and hand surgery instruments, endoscopy equipment, and stretchers. Stryker's products are marketed globally to hospitals, doctors, and other health care facilities via direct sales personnel and distributors.

McDonalds

Description

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"Billions served," indeed. McDonald's is the world's #1 fast-food company by sales, with more than 31,000 restaurants serving burgers and fries in almost 120 countries. (Nearly 14,000 Golden Arches locations are in the US.) The popular chain is well-known for its Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, and Chicken McNuggets. Most of its outlets are free-standing units, but McDonald's also has many quick-service kiosk units located in airports and retail areas. Each unit gets its food and packaging from approved suppliers and uses standardized procedures to ensure that a Big Mac purchased in Pittsburgh tastes the same as one bought in Beijing. More than 75% of its restaurants are run by franchisees or affiliates.

McDonald's has maintained its dominant position in the fast-food business by focusing on the quality of its food and customer service. A part of that effort has involved unwinding a diversification strategy that involved acquiring additional chains in the late 1990s. In 2007 it sold Boston Market (acquired in 2000 for $175 million) to private equity firm Sun Capital Partners for about $250 million, and the previous year McDonald's spun off the Chipotle Mexican Grill chain through an IPO. It also in 2008 sold a 33% stake in UK sandwich chain Pret A Manger as part of a $670 million buyout by private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital.

Further streamlining its operations, the company has been transferring many of its company-owned restaurants to franchisees and affiliates. McDonald's sold nearly its entire Latin American region in 2007 to a group led by Woods Stanton, who previously served as regional president for the Golden Arches. The $700 million deal included 1,100 corporate-run restaurants and 500 franchised locations. (The company feels the local operating group, which pays McDonald's royalties for running the restaurants, will be able to aggressively invest to expand the chain in that area.)

The company's expansion efforts, meanwhile, have focused on such international markets as China (where it plans to add more than 120 new locations during 2008) and new menu items. The company is launching a new one-third pound hamburger made from Angus beef to tap into the growing gourmet burger segment, and it plans to aggressively pursue the Starbucks crowd with a new line-up of coffee drinks.

McDonald's continues to be a target for critics who charge the company's food lacks nutritional value and may be contributing to increasing rates of obesity, especially among children. In response, McDonald's has introduced healthier menu items and shifted its marketing towards children to show a more active Ronald McDonald.