Forbes Global 2000

The Forbes Global 2000 is an annual ranking of the top 2000 corporations in the world by Forbes magazine. The ranking is based on a mix of four metrics: Sales, Profit, Assets and Market Value.

The Forbes Global 2000 is a useful indicator of which are the leading companies in the world, but it is only an interpretation. The results are not definitive; any change to the criteria would produce a different list.

Exclusions and inconsistencies

As the list is published early in the calendar year, Forbes has to use out of date information for the many non U.S companies which have year ends early in the calendar year, including Japanese companies, which all have 31 March year ends. No adjustments are made to reflect different accounting practices in different countries, which leads to some major anomalies. For example Vodafone is ranked 377 in the 2005 list due to losses created by huge writedowns of purchased goodwill, but if amortisation of purchased goodwill was not charged against statutory profits in the UK, it would be in the top 20. It should also be noted that wholly state owned corporations are excluded because no market valuation exists and in some cases accounts are not publicly available either. Some of these state companies would rank highly if they were eligible, for example the national oil companies of some of the OPEC countries.

2006 list

Listed below are the top 50 companies featuring on the 2006 list.

The complete list is available at http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/18/Rank_1.html.

2005 list

Forbes 2000 Rank	Company	Country	Category	Sales	Profits	Assets	Market Value
1	Citigroup	United States	Banking	108.28	17.05	1,484.10	247.66
2	General Electric	United States	Conglomerates	152.36	16.59	750.33	372.14
3	American International Group	United States	Insurance	95.04	10.91	776.42	173.99
4	Bank of America	United States	Banking	65.45	14.14	1,110.46	188.77
5	HSBC	United Kingdom	Banking	62.97	9.52	1,031.29	186.74
6	ExxonMobil	United States	Oil & gas operations	263.99	25.33	195.26	405.25
7	Royal Dutch/Shell	the Netherlands/United Kingdom	Oil & gas operations	265.19	18.54	193.83	221.49
8	BP	United Kingdom	Oil & gas operations	285.06	15.73	191.11	231.88
9	ING Group	Netherlands	Diversified financials	92.01	8.10	1,175.16	68.04
10	Toyota Motor	Japan	Consumer durables	165.68	11.13	211.15	140.89
11	UBS AG	Switzerland	Diversified financials	62.22	7.10	1,115.90	89.16
12	Wal-Mart	United States	Retailing	285.22	10.27	120.62	218.56

2005 breakdown by region

2005 breakdown by country

United States - 719
Japan - 326
United Kingdom - 140
Canada - 67
Germany - 63
France - 62
Italy - 45
South Korea - 41
Australia - 38
Switzerland - 37
Taiwan - 35
Netherlands - 33
India - 30
Spain - 30
Hong Kong - 28
Sweden - 28
China - 25
Bermuda - 19
Brazil - 19
Mexico - 18
South Africa - 18
Finland - 15
Malaysia - 14
Russia - 13
Singapore - 13
Thailand - 13
Belgium - 12
Greece - 12
Turkey - 11
Denmark - 10

Many other countries have between 1 and 9 companies on the list.

External links

The Forbes Global 2000 current list
The 2005 list of Global 2000

Companies | Forbes Global 2000

Forbes Global 2000 | Forbes Global 2000