Corporations find transactions hard for many reasons, but the heart of the matter may be the degree of coordination required between the two sides of the company brain: the imaginative, risk-taking side and the prudent, process-oriented side.

Strike the right balance and the results can be powerfully positive. The question is how to do that. Best practices -- in managing the pipeline, in due diligence, in integration management -- can get a company much of the way there. Ultimately, though, there are key questions each organization must answer for itself.

That's what makes the three profiles on the following pages the real payoff in our Most Admired Corporate Dealmakers survey. The readers of The Deal have identified these companies as the leaders in their sectors. Now it's time for a closer look at what makes them successful. 

A quick recap of our project: In late September, working with Standard & Poor's Capital IQ unit, we published -- and posted online -- lists of the 10 most transaction-intensive, large-cap companies in three sectors: media, information technology, and pharma-biotech.

To generate the lists, we looked at acquisitions and divestitures closed by the companies in the 3-1/2 years ended on June 30, 2009. Details and the lists are available at The Deal's Corporate Dealmaker blog.

We then invited readers to participate in an online survey, ranking the prowess of these companies in dealmaking and rating them on four criteria: strategy, execution, value and quality of the deal team.

With 527 responses in when the survey closed in October, our survey firm, Applied Research-West Inc., tabulated the results and named the winners and runners-up in each sector. In media, Walt Disney Co. placed first, followed by CBS Corp. In information technology, Microsoft Corp. edged out Cisco Systems Inc., last year's winner. And in pharma-biotech, Abbott Laboratories and Johnson & Johnson were Nos. 1 and 2, for the second year in a row.

Having recognized these six companies at a Nov. 19 awards luncheon that served as a finale to our Deal Economy 2010 Conference in New York, we close the circle on this year's survey with a stroll through the deal shop at each of the winners.

As for next year's survey, we're already thinking about how to make it bigger and better.

Your suggestions are welcome.

• Abbott's eye for value
• Disney's four funnels
• Microsoft's M&A machine