DiversityInc announced The 2007 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® today. The top five winners are Bank of America, Pepsi Bottling Group, AT&T, The Coca-Cola Company and Ford Motor Company. A total of 317 companies participated this year, a 100 percent increase over the last three years and a 24 percent increase over last year.

"DiversityInc Top 50 companies demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of diversity management and the differences in people," notes Luke Visconti, partner and cofounder, DiversityInc, a monthly business magazine and daily web site. "They are better prepared to compete globally and with our rapidly diversifying domestic market."

For the fourth year in a row, the DiversityInc Top 50 companies, expressed as a stock index, beat the Standard & Poor's 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq on a 10-, five- and one-year basis, documenting the connection between superior diversity management and excellent corporate governance, which produces a consistent return on equity for investors.

Key findings from The 2007 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies competition:

• The Top 50 hire 42 percent people of color; the U.S. work force is 29 percent people of color*
• Although Top 50 companies employ only 5 percent of the U.S. work force, they employ 17 percent of the college-educated people of color*
• Twenty-five percent of Top 50 companies' management are people of color, compared with 12 percent people of color in management nationwide*
• One hundred percent of the Top 50 offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples, compared with 53 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Seventy-four percent of the Top 50 include gender orientation in their nondiscrimination policies, compared with only 24 percent of the Fortune 500*
• Top 50 companies spend 9.7 percent of their procurement budgets with minority- and women-owned suppliers, compared with just 2 percent nationally*
• Ninety-six percent of the Top 50 companies link executive compensation to diversity goals
• Ninety percent of Top 50 CEOs sign off on executive compensation tied to diversity, compared with 72 percent last year*

"Actual management practices show an emphasis on human factors, both internally and externally, that simply doesn't exist in the typical U.S. corporation," said Visconti. "Considering the difference translates to stock performance, we think this demonstrates that diversity management is a serious business differentiator."

Methodology

The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list is determined entirely by a statistical analysis of responses to our 230-question survey. The survey is sent to any company requesting it that has more than 1,000 employees. There is no fee to enter and no requirement to advertise. The methodology is unbiased and is completely independent of business conducted with DiversityInc.

Companies in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity demonstrate consistent strength in the four areas the survey measures: CEO Commitment (the most heavily weighted), Human Capital, Corporate Communications and Supplier Diversity.

The survey also is used to determine the nine specialty lists: the Top 10 Companies for Recruitment & Retention, the Top 10 Companies for Supplier Diversity, the Top 10 Companies for African Americans, the Top 10 Companies for Latinos, the Top 10 Companies for Asian Americans, the Top 10 Companies for Executive Women, the Top 10 Companies for GLBT Employees, the Top 10 Companies for People With Disabilities, and the 25 Noteworthy Companies.

The Top 50 list was unveiled during a live video webcast today. To see the webcast and the complete list of Top 50 winners, visit www.DiversityInc.com/top50.

About DiversityInc

DiversityInc is a monthly business magazine, with a daily web site, www.DiversityInc.com. The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list is a purely editorial process and is completely independent of any business conducted with the company. DiversityInc was launched in 1997.

*Sources: The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, National Center for Education Statistics, Human Rights Campaign