The BusinessWeek 50, 2008 Edition

In April, BusinessWeek announced the BW 50 for 2008, the star performers in each of the 10 sectors that make up the Standard & Poor 500.

The magazine crunches all kinds of numbers over a three-year measurement period. It should come as no surprise that seven of the companies on the list are in energy, and 10 have benefited from the housing book. The magazine touts the 2008 BW 50 as the most international list since the first rankings were published in 1997.

Here are the top 10 performers:

1. Coach
2. Gilead Sciences
3. Allegheny Technologies
4. Verizon Communications
5. Questar
6. Apple
7. Colgate-Palmolive
8. BJ Services
9. Abercrombie & Fitch
10. MEMC Electronic Materials

The entire list with all of those fun metrics BusinessWeek used are at the BW 50 Interactive Scoreboard. Here is a slideshow with profiles of all 50 businesses.