From the editor.

There is no magic formula for business success, now or generations ago. If there was, it would be as closely guarded as The DaVinci Code. But there are some eternal verities that seem to work with all sizes of companies, public and private, and our cover story enumerates a half-dozen of them.

These aren't the thoughts of high-paid consultants, star CEOs or academics involved in years of research. They come directly from CFOs (and a former CFO) at five private companies, several of them very large. These financial executives graciously spent considerable phone time with Executive Editor Ellen M. Heffes and William Sinnett, Director of Research for Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF), explaining how their companies have structured themselves for success.

A core concept of the article, sustainable growth, is underscored by the corporate histories of the likes of Cargill Inc., Koch Industries Inc. and S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., all of which have grown and prospered over generations. Cargill and Johnson are both well over a century old, Koch traces its roots to 1927, and Carey has been chauffeuring customers for 85 years. The youngest company in the article, SAS--the big maker of financial analytic software--is 30 years old this year.

It's refreshing to hear the emphasis that these CFOs say is placed on people, from finding the right people to put on the bus (in Jim Collins' phrase) to paying them well and treating them like an extended family. Cargill, for instance, probably has a lot of employees like Assistant Treasurer Dave Braden, who was profiled in the September "Balance Sheet" column. Braden has worked for the company since 1978, yet confessed that he remains "challenged and energized by the growth of Cargill." What more could a company want from a financial executive than experience, energy and commitment?

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It's definitely one of those pieces of "conventional wisdom" that has a lot of people nodding their heads: that the compliance costs of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and especially its Section 404 on internal controls, have frightened off a host of foreign companies that would otherwise have opted to list on the U.S. exchanges. Certainly, there is evidence that listings on foreign exchanges have mushroomed in recent years. But is that--or even most of that--the result of shying from the U.S.?

Yes and no, as my investigation into foreign listings (page 25) found. Prominent European companies like Porsche AG have publicly declared that Sarbanes-Oxley was their reason for choosing to list in Germany instead of on the New York Stock Exchange. And the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in London has been a magnet for many small companies, in the U.S. as well as abroad--largely for its spare-the-rod approach to regulation.

But perhaps the biggest phenomenon in worldwide capital markets seems to be a "wealth-sharing" in which record numbers of initial public offerings are being done in more countries than ever. Capital markets have never been more global or more sophisticated, and giant listings can now be accommodated in places like Hong Kong, not just in New York. As local exchanges gain volume and credence, the need to go far away to list dissipates.

While the U.S. exchanges may have lost some bragging rights, they have continued to maintain their standards. Better to remain something of a gold standard for the world's best companies than to lower the bar in order to keep pace in a kind of global numbers race.