he 20th anniversary edition of the Global 2000 ranking the world’s largest companies shows just how much has changed since the early years of the 21st century. The top three slots on the list in 2003 belonged to Citigroup, General Electric and American International Group. New York money center bank Citigroup is still ranked in the top 25, but once dominant AIG and GE have fallen far in the rankings.
Among the companies that have taken their place in the top 10 are this year’s No. 1, JPMorgan, three giant-sized state-owned Chinese banks and technology giants like Apple and Alphabet. JPMorgan, America’s biggest bank with $3.7 trillion in assets, is at the top of the list for the first time since 2011 and has emerged stronger from this spring’s regional banking crisis, with more deposits and an opportunistic acquisition of the failed First Republic Bank. Last year’s No. 1, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, fell to No. 338 due to unrealized losses in its investment portfolio.
The Global 2000 ranks the largest companies in the world using four metrics: sales, profits, assets and market value. As a group, the companies on the 2023 list account for $50.8 trillion in sales, $4.4 trillion in profits, $231 trillion in assets and $74 trillion in market value. Cumulative profits, assets and market value are all down slightly from last year, though this is the first time total revenue has surpassed $50 trillion. There are 58 countries represented by the publicly traded companies on the list. The U.S. leads the way with 611 companies on the ranking, and China comes in second with 346 Global 2000 companies.
We used the latest 12 months of financial data available to us as of May 5, 2023 to calculate the factors used in our ranking.
