The Truth About Fortune Global 500 2023

Fortune Global 500. Annual Who's Who. Of worldwide industry.

Iconic corporations. Influential game changers. Admired role models.

Ready for a few surprises? About the 2023 list?

Buckle up!

32 of the 500 companies incurred a full-year loss. "Took a bath", as the idiom goes. Amazon. Berkshire Hathaway. BP. AT&T. Boeing. SoftBank ... and others. Including Prudential Financial. A company that advises people "how to plan their financial future". Uh-oh!

144 suffered a year-on-year revenue decline. Toyota Motor. Alibaba. Deutsche Telekom. Meta. Bosch. Sony. Tencent ... and others. If only they could put the clock back.

As if that wasn't enough ...

238 sustained a year-on-year drop in profit. General Motors. JPMorgan Chase. Bank of America. DHL. Johnson & Johnson. Siemens. Goldman Sachs ... and others. That's the bottom line.

And now something you'd never guess ...

Only seven tech companies figured in the top 100. Apple. Alphabet. Samsung Electronics. Hon Hai. Microsoft. Meta. Dell. Shows market cap and revenue are like apples and oranges.

How "global" are the Global 500?

136 of the 500 companies were from the US. 135 from China. Close, huh? Next year will be exciting!

41 from Japan. Which reminds me ...

Remember their Big 5 trading conglomerates? Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Itochu, Marubeni and Sumitomo? They used to top the Global 500 list. Once upon a time. In 2023, they ranked between No 45 and No 282. How "Fortune"s change!

But wait! There's good news too!

Fortune's been publishing their Global 500 since 1990. 42 companies have been on the list for 29 out of these 34 years. That's some serious consistency!

Speaking of consistency ...

Walmart has obviously made it a habit. To post the highest revenue. USD 611 billion! More than Sweden's 2022 GDP! 

Warner Bros Discovery grew fastest. 177% year-on-year revenue increase! "Believe in magic"!

Prepare to be awed now ...

Saudi Aramco produced the highest profit. A whopping USD 159 billion! More than Ford's revenue!

US Postal Service "delivered" the highest profit margin. 71.3%! That's almost obscene!

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China had the largest asset base. USD 5.7 trillion! More than Italy's total wealth! As per Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2022.

People make the difference, they say ...

The largest employer was a company called Walmart. 2.1 million employees! Or rather, "associates". In Walmart language. That's half Kuwait's population!

The smallest employer was GasTerra from Netherlands. Just 101 employees! But that's because GasTerra's begun winding down. After having been part of Global 500 for 11 years!

While on this ...

Starbucks was second lowest in employee productivity. USD 80,225 full-year revenue per employee. That works out to USD 220 per employee per day! Guess it's "one person one cup". "At a time."

And lastly ...

Eight oil and gas companies were their countries' sole representatives. On the Global 500 list. OMV Austria. Ecopetrol Colombia. Pertamina Indonesia. Petronas Malaysia. Equinor Norway. Orlen Poland. Saudi Aramco Saudi Arabia. PTT Thailand. They're oil-ways welcome! :)

Know any other trivia about the Global 500?

Do share them in the comments below.

Until next time! :)