Wal-Mart Ranks as the Biggest Company in the World

Wal-Mart Store Inc. became the biggest company in the world on the basis of companies’ annual revenue figures. According to the 500 biggest companies list prepared by Fortune Magazine, a biweekly economic periodical, Wal-Mart with an annual revenue of 219.8 billion dollars last year is No 1 company as it overtook an oil company Exxon Mobil Corp., which recorded 191.6 billion dollars and was No 1 in the previous year. This is the first time ever that a service company ranked No 1 among the Fortune 500 list.

▽The biggest 500 companies in terms of revenue〓 A total of seven companies exceeded annual revenues of 100 billion dollars each. Notably, GM and Ford Motor Co. ranked as the third and fourth companies. The already bankrupted Enron took the fifth position, as the contract value of energy companies is included on revenues. Due to the merges, ChevronTexaco jumped to the 8th from 20th and AOL Time Warner Inc. ascended to the 37th from 271st. Among the information telecommunication companies, Microsoft took the 72nd position from 75th, and Cysco Systems was the 92nd from 107th, but IBM dropped to 8th from 9th, and AT&T to 15th from 9th.

Combined revenues of the Fortune 500 companies grew by 3 percent to 7.4 trillion dollars, compared with 7.2 trillion dollars in 2000; however, the total profit fell to 206 billion dollars, a whopping drop of 53 percent.

▽The most admired companies were chosen among the companies which recorded 8 billion dollars of annual revenues. Despite the discredit on management following various financial fiascos, GE continued to hold the No 1 position of the most admired companies list followed by Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Home Depot, respectively. Global companies other than the U.S. companies included in the list are follows; Nokia of Finland (24th), Toyota(25th), Sony(28th), and Honda(41st) of Japan, Nestle of Switzerland(39th), BP of the U.K.(45th), Singapore Airlines of Singapore(50th).

konihong@donga.com