I'm partial to Bryston, PS Audio, and McIntosh, in that order - dont' own any though, just spent a lot of time with these 3 brands at some great stores, or lucky friends houses.
I don't really have a favorite speaker company - Focus Audio I guess, but they're small. For the most part, I haven't met many speakers I couldn't find some appeal to, just some that I think offer me more than others.

I think acquring brand loyalty is a crapshoot - I've owned plenty of stereo and A/V receivers. Japanese, European, American, etc. The only ones I didnt' have serious technical problems with are Yamaha and Technics. Funny thing is, Technics isn't known for its quality at all - I wouldn't recommend them to an enemy. My H/K, Marantz, Sony, and NAD (integrated) have all had problems of one sort or another. I'm on my 2nd Yamaha without fail (3rd Yamaha though, one had a small annoying problems that was fixed fast enough). After years of receivers crapping out on me, the Yammies didn't. I owned 2 Marantz receivers prior to switching to Yamaha - they both died horrible smokey deaths. I killed an H/K unit driving 4 Cerwin-Vegas in college to obscene levels. It litteraly melted. Funny thing is, the used, crappy Technics receiver I bought as a fast replacement would drive those 4 CV's and then some every day for 2 years. It would give you a 3rd degree burn if you touched it, but it wouldn't die. I think it was the K-Car of stereo receivers.

I don't pick a brand of receiver for my needs because I think they're so much better sounding, or more feature intensive than the competition (I find them all so similar these days), but mostly because of good experience, comfort, and familiarity. Someone else will have to really impress me at this price point to get me to switch until a Yamaha unit ticks me off.

With Bryston, I dunno, a lot of people I know prefer Krell and PS Audio over Bryston, but to these ears, Bryston comes out on top - I've just always wanted Bryston gear someday, so I think long-term anticipation and coveting has developed a bias of sorts. I love T-line speakers, PMC included, and because a lot of PMC owners use Bryston, and continue to use Bryston after moving on from PMC, some of the nicer systems I've heard had Bryston electronics.

There's some brands I don't care for much, but the past 3 years I've really done a 180 degree turn on Dynaudio. I've repaired 2 different models now, and used a few of their old drivers. They're not really bad, just overpriced IMO. At least on this side of the pond. I've been told their much more affordable in Europe. A local store has comparably priced Revel and Dynaudio setup in the same room - he tells me the Dynaudio's sell more but to me the Revels are just sooo much better. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. But I'm not surprised they got ran out of the DIY market along with Audax. I have a feeling Scan-Speak is going that route as well, unless they start cutting the marketing BS and make high-performance pieces more affordable like the competition (but I digress).

I don't own stock in any of these companies though, and don't consider myself to be a hardcore fanboy of any of these brands. Personally, I like the direction the industry is going - more and more small, regional companies that are offering higher quality and superior worksmanship, packaged with that unbeatable small business service. This is a good thing, IMO.