A look at the “Top 100″ global companies

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The Top 100 CompaniesEvery single reader of this business blog has purchased something, at one point or another in their lives, from one or, more likely, many of the Fortune 500’s Top 100 global companies that are listed in this article.

After all, these companies are big (in part) because we spend our money there!

In 2008’s edition to the Fortune 100 listing, the companies span many major industries, reflecting the current diversity of the world economy. Banking, mining, engineering, telecoms, energy, electronics, entertainment are all represented in the “best of the best” or, more simply said, the global companies with the biggest revenues.

Please note that the most impressive growth in revenue numbers, in 2007 compared to 2006, is held by the industries of (1) banking, growth and services, (2) mining and crude-oil production and (3) shipping.

Let’s jump right in and take a look at the list leaders:

Rank Company Revenues
($ millions)
Profits
($ millions)
1 Wal-Mart Stores 378,799 12,731
2 Exxon Mobil 372,824 40,610
3 Royal Dutch Shell 355,782 31,331
4 BP 291,438 20,845
5 Toyota Motor 230,201 15,042
6 Chevron 210,783 18,688
7 ING Group 201,516 12,649
8 Total 187,280 18,042
9 General Motors 182,347 -38,732
10 ConocoPhillips 178,558 11,891
11 Daimler 177,167 5,446
12 General Electric 176,656 22,208
13 Ford Motor 172,468 -2,723
14 Fortis 164,877 5,467
15 AXA 162,762 7,755
16 Sinopec 159,260 4,166
17 Citigroup 159,229 3,617
18 Volkswagen 149,054 5,639
19 Dexia Group 147,648 3,467
20 HSBC Holdings 146,500 19,133
21 BNP Paribas 140,726 10,706
22 Allianz 140,618 10,904
23 Crédit Agricole 138,155 8,172
24 State Grid 132,885 4,423
25 China National Petroleum 129,798 14,925
26 Deutsche Bank 122,644 8,861
27 ENI 120,565 13,703
28 Bank of America Corp. 119,190 14,982
29 AT&T 118,928 11,951
30 Berkshire Hathaway 118,245 13,213
31 UBS 117,206 -3,654
32 J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. 116,353 15,365
33 Carrefour 115,585 3,147
34 Assicurazioni Generali 113,813 3,991
35 American International Group 110,064 6,200
36 Royal Bank of Scotland 108,392 15,103
37 Siemens 106,444 5,063
38 Samsung Electronics 106,006 7,986
39 ArcelorMittal 105,216 10,368
40 Honda Motor 105,102 5,254
41 Hewlett-Packard 104,286 7,264
42 Pemex 103,960 -1,675
43 Société Générale 103,443 1,296
44 McKesson 101,703 990
45 HBOS 100,267 8,093
46 International Business Machines 98,786 10,418
47 Gazprom 98,642 19,269
48 Hitachi 98,306 -509
49 Valero Energy 96,758 5,234
50 Nissan Motor 94,782 4,223
51 Tesco 94,703 4,253
52 E.ON 94,356 9,861
53 Verizon Communications 93,775 5,521
54 Nippon Telegraph & Telephone 93,527 5,562
55 Deutsche Post 90,472 1,901
56 Metro 90,267 1,129
57 Nestlé 89,630 8,874
58 Santander Central Hispano Group 89,295 12,401
59 Statoil Hydro 89,224 7,526
60 Cardinal Health 88,364 1,931
61 Goldman Sachs Group 87,968 11,599
62 Morgan Stanley 87,879 3,209
63 Petrobras 87,735 13,138
64 Deutsche Telekom 85,570 779
65 Home Depot 84,740 4,395
66 Peugeot 82,965 1,211
67 LG 82,096 2,916
68 Électricité de France 81,629 7,690
69 Aviva 81,317 2,655
70 Barclays 80,347 8,837
71 Fiat 80,112 2,673
72 Matsushita Electric Industrial 79,412 2,468
73 BASF 79,322 5,565
74 Credit Suisse 78,206 6,467
75 Sony 77,682 3,235
76 Telefónica 77,254 12,190
77 UniCredit Group 77,030 8,159
78 BMW 76,675 4,279
79 Procter & Gamble 76,476 10,340
80 CVS Caremark 76,330 2,637
81 UnitedHealth Group 75,431 4,654
82 Hyundai Motor 74,900 1,722
83 U.S. Postal Service 74,778 -5,142
84 France Télécom 72,488 8,623
85 Vodafone 71,202 13,366
86 SK Holdings 70,717 1,505
87 Kroger 70,235 1,180
88 Nokia 69,886 9,862
89 ThyssenKrupp 68,799 2,796
90 Lukoil 67,205 9,511
91 Toshiba 67,145 1,116
92 Repsol YPF 67,006 4,364
93 Boeing 66,387 4,074
94 Prudential 66,358 2,045
95 Petronas 66,218 18,118
96 AmerisourceBergen 66,074 469
97 Suez 64,982 5,370
98 Munich Re Group 64,774 5,275
99 Costco Wholesale 64,400 1,083
100 Merrill Lynch 64,217 -7,777

Business - Smooth sailing

Apart from instantly seeing if any of these companies made more or less money in 2007 than in 2006, this list is a great starting point to visit the lush web sites most of these companies have built, complete with investor information, media relations and lots of interactive features.

Surfing the company web sites, you may want to wander towards their various R&D-like sections where they explain their vision and how they intend to realize it, in the future. This could be your chance to offer them to help on one of their upcoming projects, thus helping your company score significant new business.

If you can make these companies look good at the next shareholder meeting, it’s obvious that they want to hear from you so package your message so that’s what they end up hearing.

If the hat fits, use this list wisely to grow your business alongside these global heavyweights that typically have deep pockets but also an obligation to continuously keep up with competitors. This race towards more innovation and novel methods represents, among other things, your chance to become “interesting” for at least some of these Fortune 100 companies.

Tags: fortune 500, fortune 100, top 100 businesses, top 100 companies, biggest companies, global companies, worldwide companies, us companies, french companies, deutsch companies, rich companies, rich businesses, global businesses, revenues, profits, money, shareholders

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Rich pharmaceuticals

Drugs equal moneyThe 2008 edition of the Fortune 500 shows that the US’ biggest companies are still generating lots of weatlh for the shareholders, their employees and in some cases, their communities.

The “revenue” and “profit” numbers accompanying each of the Fortune 500 listees tell a story bean counters love because in their view, numbers alone make or break companies, business models and entire industries. Of course, each company being presented in this prestigious list has its own story, way beyond the numbers that are often overly glorified as being the ultimate “scorecard” for companies.

For instance, some companies made less profit but invested more in their employees’ pension funds while others, with larger profits, have closed down factories in their home country, putting (decently paid) hard working individuals out of work, to finance the opening a sweatshop-factory in a some foreign country where salaries are a joke and the military run the show.

So even though we’re going to take a look at the numbers from pharmaceutical companies, keep in mind that each one of them has a story that you may want to look up, in order to better understand “the big picture”.

The title states that the pharmaceuticals are rich and that’s a known fact — let’s look at the numbers:

REVENUES PROFITS
Rank Company Global 500 rank $ millions % change from 2006 $ millions % change from 2006
1 Johnson & Johnson 107 61,095 15 10,576 -4
2 Pfizer 143 48,418 -8 8,144 -58
3 GlaxoSmithKline 151 45,447 6 10,432 5
4 Roche Group 175 40,315 16 8,135 29
5 Sanofi-Aventis 178 39,977 8 7,204 43
6 Novartis 181 39,800 8 11,946 67
7 AstraZeneca 265 29,559 12 5,595 -7
8 Abbott Laboratories 312 25,914 15 3,606 110
9 Merck 332 24,198 7 3,275 -26
10 Wyeth 381 22,400 10 4,616 10
11 Bristol-Myers Squibb 427 19,977 12 2,165 37
12 Eli Lilly 453 18,634 19 2,953 11

Lots of white pills

As you can see, the profits generated by these pharmaceutical companies is nothing short of astronomical and with the help of the FDA, making it easier than ever to patent and market drugs of all sorts, the money making “drug machine” seems set for many more “good years”.

Are you under the impression that these pharmaceutical companies are making too much profit, selling drugs that have, for the most part, been developed with public funding in university labs?

Everyone has an opinion about the rich pharmaceuticals but the one thing that everybody agrees on is that they generate more profit than you and me ever will… unless we decide to launch a successful pharmaceutical company of our own.

Tags: pharmaceuticals, us pharma, big pharma, american pharma, fortune 500, pharma industry, pills, drugs, chemicals, health, disease, illnesses, insured health, health cost, health debt, health profit, health revenue, hospitals, sick citizens, sick population, usa, money

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How people in US States are called

It’s common knowledge that people living in Florida are called Floridians and that, on the West Coast, the people living in California are straightforwadly called Californians.

Those two States have made it easy on us but some other ones, like Massachussetts have generally unknown demonyms like Massachusites which merely has a few hundred hits in the Google Search engine!

So in order to help everybody make sense of how people are called in the 50 US States, here’s the updated list, straight from the Wikipedia but with a few adjustments, here and there.

Now, you’ll be able to impress your “Mississippian” friends by merely knowing how they’re called.

State/territory Adjective Demonym
colloquial
Alabama Alabamian Alabamians
Alaska Alaskan Alaskans
Arizona Arizonan Arizonans
Arkansas Arkansan Arkansans
California Californian Californians
Colorado Coloradan Coloradans, Coloradoans
Connecticut Connecticuters “Nutmeggers”
Delaware Delawarean Delawareans
Florida Floridian Floridians
Georgia Georgian Georgians
Hawaii Hawaiian Hawaiians “Islanders”Hawaiian:“Kamaʻāina” (natives)

“Malihini” (non-natives)

Idaho Idahoan Idahoans
Indiana Hoosier “Hoosiers”
Illinois Illinoisan Illinoisans
Iowa Iowan Iowans “Hawkeyes”
Kansas Kansan Kansans
Kentucky Kentuckian Kentuckians
Louisiana Louisianan Louisianans, Louisianians
Maine Mainers “Down Easters”
Maryland Marylanders Free-Staters“”Old Liners
Massachusetts Bay Staters (official), Massachusites (traditional)
Michigan Michiganders, Michiganians
Minnesota Minnesotan Minnesotans
Mississippi Mississippian Mississippians
Missouri Missourian Missourians
Montana Montanan Montanans
Nebraska Nebraskan Nebraskans
Nevada Nevadan Nevadans
New Hampshire New Hampshirite New Hampshirites
New Jersey New Jerseyans, New Jerseyites
New Mexico New Mexican New Mexicans
New York New Yorkers
North Carolina North Carolinian North Carolinians Tar Heels
North Dakota North Dakotan North Dakotans
Ohio Ohioans “Buckeyes”
Oklahoma Oklahoman Oklahomans “Sooners”
Oregon Oregonian Oregonians
Pennsylvania Pennsylvanian Pennsylvanians
Rhode Island Rhode Islanders
South Carolina South Carolinian South Carolinians
South Dakota South Dakotan South Dakotans
Tennessee Tennessean Tennessean, volunteers
Texas Texan Texans
Utah Utahn, Utahan Utahns, Utahans
Vermont Vermonters
Virginia Virginian Virginians
Washington Washingtonian Washingtonians
West Virginia West Virginian West Virginians
Wisconsin Wisconsinites
Wyoming Wyomes

US Constitution

Most of these names come from way back so if you do some research on them, you’re sure to learn a thing or two as to how they came about.

Tags: us states, americans, united states, 50 states, how americans are called, names of us state citizens

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