13 Russian Cos. in FT Top 500 List
The Financial Times published the FT Global 500, its 12th annual list of the world’s top 500 companies by capitalization. Raw materials, especially oil, have displaced banking as the most valuable sector of the world economy. Innovative companies showed sharp growth, and companies in developing markets made up more than 10 percent of the list. The number of Russian companies on the list has increased to 13 (worth a combined total of $642.776 billion), with Gazprom leading them, as always. A company must have 15 percent of its shares on the market to be included in the list, so large state and family companies are excluded.
The U.S. company ExxonMobil remains in first place on the list this year. Petro China, which has held a $9-billion IPO in the last year, now ranks second, knocking General Electric down to third. All in all, there were three banks and three oil companies in the top ten last year, but four oil companies and one bank this year. Eleven oil companies and five banks were newcomers to the list this year. China, Russia and India contributed 51 of the top 500 companies to the list this year, compared to 24 last year. The United States has the greatest number of companies on the list, 169, worth $9.6 trillion. It was followed by Japan, with 39 companies (worth $1.6 trillion). In 1996, Japan had 110 companies on the list.
Gazprom moved up from sixth to fourth place this year. NOVATEK, VTB, Novolipetsk Steel, Severstal and VimpelCom appeared on the list for the first time. The Canadian company RIM (maker of the Blackberry communications device) showed the greatest gain, rising from 357th to 107th. Pharmaceuticals maker Novo Nordisk, shoemaker Nike, agrobiotechnologist Monsanto and Taiwanese telephone landline operator Chunghwa also made major leaps upward, as did Russian Mobile Telesystems. All of these companies were united by their innovation. Lehman Brothers, Motorola, Fannie Mae, Natexis, Ericsson, EADS, Hitachi, Commerzbank, Merrill Lynch, Schering Plough led the advance in the other direction, losing between 100 and 200 places each.
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All the Article in Russian as of June 30, 2008
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