Inside this week's issue of TIME is an interesting document about a remarkable enterprise: the annual report of Gulf & Western Industries, Inc. That broadly diversified corporation is celebrating its 20th anniversary and is marking the occasion in distinctive fashion. The 64-page pull-out section is the largest advertisement ever placed in any publication. Companies often seek to explain their business to the public through ads, but never before has a firm made such a comprehensive statement to so many people at one time.

Annual reports do not normally reach a broad public. In past years, no more than 300,000 people received the G&W report. But the company believes that a wider audience can find the report instructive. Hence this advertisement, which will be seen by 22 million TIME readers in the U.S. and Europe.

Gulf & Western issued its first annual report in 1959, one year after changing its name from Michigan Plating & Stamping Co. It was best known for producing rear bumpers for Studebakers. The report listed sales of $15.4 million, profits of $316,000 and a work force of about 600. The firm that year had a new chairman, a young Austrian immigrant named Charles G. Bluhdorn, who launched the company on an aggressive expansionist course. Today, under Bluhdorn's direction, G&W ranks 59th on the FORTUNE 500 list, with 1978 sales of $4.3 billion, earnings of $181 million, and more than 100,000 employees. Through its subsidiaries, the New York-based conglomerate produces movies (Saturday Night Fever, Grease) and TV series (Laverne & Shirley, Mark & Mindy), publishes books (bestsellers by Graham Greene and Irving Wallace), owns Madison Square Garden and several athletic teams (including New York's basketball Knicks and Washington, D.C.'s soccer Diplomats). G&W also sells insurance, makes consumer and commercial loans, processes sugar, and manufactures clothing, electronic equipment, paper and auto parts.

In the turbulent annals of free enterprise, the relatively swift rise of Gulf & Western must be regarded as a noteworthy success story, and the company is now seeking to share the most recent installment of that story with TIME'S audience. The unusual advertising message appears in TIME alone. As G & W Executive Vice President Martin S. Davis puts it, "We consider TIME readers very much a part of our success." We too consider the quality of our readers, along with the thoroughness of our news coverage, to be responsible for the high reputation TIME enjoys in the advertising and financial communities.

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