It’s been a bad year for the hospitality business.
For the past eight months, hotels have suffered low revenues and high vacancies as the coronavirus pandemic eliminated business travel and halted most tourism. Many hotels shut down — temporarily or permanently. In New York City, some empty hotels were converted into medical staff housing or homeless shelters.
Despite these challenges, one major hotel chain’s executives have managed to impress institutional investors through their handling of the Covid-19 crisis.
Hilton Worldwide Holdings was among the best-performing companies in this year’s All-America Executive Team, with the Hilton c-suite scoring first place in the gaming and lodging sector. It’s a step up for Hilton, which last year ranked second overall in its sector, behind Marriott International.
Other c-suites also prevailed through an immensely challenging year for their industries...
The last eighteen months have seen significant investment in a new voting platform, as well as an improved methodology and eligibility process to deliver more accurate representative performance assessment and market sentiment analysis. The All-America Executive Team survey took place amid the Covid-19 outbreak, capturing critical feedback of corporate performance during exceptional socioeconomic and market stress. The result was one of the survey’s most significant voter turnouts, with over 3,000 money managers and buy-side analysts, and almost 500 sell-side researchers providing their candid feedback.
Selection criteria
To select the members of Institutional Investor’s 2021 All-America Executive Team, we surveyed buy-side analysts, money managers and sell-side researchers at securities firms and financial institutions that cover the region, including those who cast and received votes in this year’s 2020 All-America Research Team survey. We asked voters to name the best chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and investor relations professionals at the companies in their coverage universes.
All votes are weighted by rating (five, four, three, two and one). We also asked them to rate the companies’ IR programs on the following six performance attributes: in Services & Communication, “IR Credibility,” IR Responsiveness” and “Quality of Conference Calls,” and in Financial Disclosures: “Consistency,” “Granularity,” and “Timing to Market.” These ratings were aggregated to produce an overall IR Program rank for each company. Nominations for Crisis Management amid COVID-19, Financially Material ESG Disclosures and Analyst Day were also solicited from the voters as a separate distinction.
The overall rankings in each rankings category are based on combined buy- and sell-side votes. Separate rosters (buy side, sell side) are also available for each award classification.
To earn the designation of Most Honored Company, a company must achieve a weighted score of at least eight for its published positions in the Best CEO, CFO, IRO and IR Program categories. Each first-place position is worth three points; second place, two; and third place, one. In the 2021 All-America Executive Survey, 1,521 companies were nominated across 44 sectors. Most Honored designations in the Mid-Cap rankings are based on receiving the highest total weighted score from Best CEO, CFO, IRO and Best IR Program categories, per sector. Most Honored designations in the small-cap rankings are based on receiving the highest total weighted score from Best CEO, CFO, IRO and Best IR Program categories, per category.
To be eligible for inclusion on the 2021 All-America Executive Team, a company must be headquartered or have operational or executive headquarters in the region. We keep confidential the identities of the survey respondents to ensure their continuing cooperation. Voters must meet eligibility requirements, and winners must achieve a minimum vote count.