This is number-crunching season at the Business Journal.

First it was the list of most profitable public companies, when researcher Edvard Pettersson found himself knee-deep in return on equity, net income, revenue and book value.

Now it’s Jennifer Johnson’s turn. Jennifer is our other researcher, and for the past few weeks she has been working up our annual report on executive compensation. That means sorting out the increasingly complex package of stock options, bonuses and salaries as well as understanding, once and for all, what is meant by the Black-Scholes method.

I’m very grateful to Jennifer for her hard work, along with the efforts of Josh Lurie at Joint Information, which did the actual number crunching for us.

Of course, the numbers don’t mean much without solid analysis and perspective of what they all mean, and for that we had our news crew put together a solid package of stories on the trends as well as the faces behind the numbers. Thanks to all.

Mark Lacter

Editor