"The age of thrift is here. You have to do innovation at both ends--premium innovation and innovation for the value consumer."
-- PepsiCo (PEP) chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi in a recent Q&A with Pattie Sellers. No. 1 on Fortune's 2009 Most Powerful Women in Business list (for the fourth year in a row) Nooyi today delivered another quarter of solid earnings. PepsiCo beat analyst expectations with net income of $1.72 billion, up 9% over last year.
Nooyi is relentless in reinventing a company that many others might have thought didn't need reinventing. Investing in healthier products, reorganizing her core team, spending billions to acquire Pepsi's two largest bottlers...the list of changes go on and on. "Any capital we invested in the company has to be rethought," Nooyi said in the interview, noting, "The bottom line is: Through this downturn, you have to increase your investment, not cut back." She added, "Now is a wonderful time to look for disruptive models."
Click here for a series of video clips from Pattie's interview with Nooyi. --Jessica Shambora
Home Depot (HD) hammered it home this morning--earnings beat expectations, and the stock is up 3%, to just under $27. Nice surprise after Lowe's (LOW) disappointed yesterday. The No. 2 home-improvement retailer reported a 19% profit dip in its second quarter and, even more worrisome to investors, a 9.5% decline in same-store sales.
So what is Home Depot, the market leader, doing right? The new Fortune, hitting newsstands this week, delivers MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 18, 2009 2:19 PM ET
So now we have evidence that Goldman Sach's (GS) Lloyd Blankfein and JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) Jamie Dimon are the rock-star CEOs in financial services. Two days after Goldman announced blowout quarterly profits, JPMorgan soundly beat the Street today.
Investors predicted it. JPM's stock is flat today, trading around $36--that's evidence enough. But one thing few investors knew is that Dimon spent a month, until July 2, in Asia--confident enough, obviously, to MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 16, 2009 3:52 PM ET
"If you are in the investment business and you have a high IQ, sell 30 points to the next person. You do not have to be a genius at all. But you do have to have emotional stability, and you have to have some peace about your decisions. I don't know how much is innate and how much can be taught. If you have that quality you will do very MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - May 8, 2009 6:57 PM ET
"At the end of a day the performance of a company like Kraft has everything to do with the quality of the people that we have in the key roles and so I spend most of my time worrying about whether that's the case, making sure...we have the right people in the right places, that they have the resources that they need to get the job done."
-- Kraft (KFT) CEO MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - May 5, 2009 6:57 PM ET
"It could well be that we are witnesses to the birth of yet another Apple ecosystem."
-- Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett in the New York Times Wednesday. After the bell, Apple (AAPL) reported a 15% jump in second-quarter net income to $1.21 billion. Sales of the iPhone surged 123% over the last quarter, with 3.79 million units sold.
"The iPhone has quieted any skeptics who thought this was a one-time event MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 22, 2009 7:24 PM ET
"They've never felt compelled to do anything because other banks were doing it, and that's how banks get in trouble, when they say, 'Everybody else is doing it, why shouldn't I?'"
--Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) CEO Warren Buffett in an interview with Fortune's Adam Lashinsky about Wells Fargo (WFC). As the largest shareholder of Wells Fargo through Berkshire, Buffett knows the San Francisco bank well. "Those guys have gone their own way," MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 20, 2009 6:21 PM ET
"I'm one of these who believes you have so much gray matter in your head. And if you take all your gray matter and you worry about what you can't control, you're wasting an awful lot of good gray matter, right?"
--Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) CEO Bill Weldon, in a recent interview with Fortune. The New Jersey-based maker of Band-Aids, knee replacements, and prescription drugs--and a bellwether for the health-care industry--announced MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 14, 2009 6:52 PM ET
It was, to steal a Malcolm Gladwell term, a "tipping point" in my outlook on the cratering economy. I call it my "That Girl" moment.
It was the fourth Monday in November last year. I was at a Thanksgiving party at the home of Cathie Black, the president of Hearst Magazines. Marlo Thomas was there, too. "Saks is selling shoes for 75% off. It's incredible!" TV's onetime Ann Marie was crowing, MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 27, 2009 1:01 PM ET
"When you are leading a large organization, you need to lead by example and appreciate that this includes having targets that generate value, not simply targets that can be easily hit."
-- Sears (SHLD) Chairman Eddie Lampert from his annual letter to shareholders, posted on Sears' web site Thursday. The good news: Sears reported a fourth quarter profit of $190 million, beating analyst estimates. The bad news: That's a 55% drop MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Feb 26, 2009 7:24 PM ET
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
In a funny and candid interview, Google VP Marissa Mayer explains how she got to the top. Watch
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns shares how she once accepted a job with Dell but ended up staying with Xerox. Watch
Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
