Link to top 20 of Barron's 500 List, which came out in the 5/12/08 issue. The Barron's 500 List is:

1. a unique ranking of the 500 largest (by sales) publicly traded companies in the U.S. and Canada, which aims to identify those corporations most successful at boosting their sales and cash flow

2. The Barron's 500 is prepared annually by Credit Suisse Holt, a unit of Credit Suisse Group. It compares companies on the basis of one-year sales growth and stock-price performance, three-year cash-flow return on investment, or CFROI, and one-year change in CFROI for the most recent fiscal year. It grades them A through F, using the percentage change in one-year cash flow to break ties and determine rankings. (A more detailed description of Holt's methodology is at the end of this article.) The Barron's 500 rankings don't reflect the views of Credit Suisse analysts.

3. Just as the Barron's 500 identifies well-managed companies, it also pinpoints those that fail to generate sufficient returns on investment. Near the bottom of our latest ranking are home builders such as KB Home and Pulte Homes; chronic underachiever Eastman Kodak, and Fannie Mae, which lost $2.19 billion in the first quarter, just a drop in an ocean of red ink.