I read an article in The Age online to day about Facebook being floated as a publicly listed company and that it is expected to become one of the largest companies in the world. It said that Facebook would be alongside, Bank of America, McDonald's and Amazon.com. I thought that was an interesting combination of companies and it got me to thinking, what are the largest companies in the world? I decided to do a little Googling on the subject. It turns out the information is actually quite easy to find, it is all listed on Forbes.com.
After taking a look at the list of the top ten companies I noticed that banking, finance and oil companies predominated. Four of the top ten were banks (Citigroup ranked 1, Bank of America ranked 3, HSBC Group ranked 5 and JPMorgan Chase ranked 9), three of the top ten were oil & gas companies (ExxonMobil ranked 6, Royal Dutch/Shell Group ranked 7 and BP ranked 8), one was a financial company (UBS ranked 10), one an insurance company (American Intl Group ranked 3) and the last was a conglomerate who also has a financial services division (General Electric ranked 2). All the data on the Forbes website was current and so it seems that in a climate of economic uncertainty, Banks and Oil companies are still making huge profits. I guess it is not surprising really, no matter the economic climate people will still drive their cars, trucks, boats or bikes. It is the same for Banks, even if people are defaulting on loans, everyone still needs the services of a Bank, so Oil and Banks are always going to be essential services, regardless of the political or economic environment.
Check out the top two thousand global companies on Forbes.com.
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