Five years ago, we took a look at the biggest companies in the world. Today we update that look with a few tables, based on the data provided in the annual Fortune magazine Global 500 lists. You can see the shift from a US-centered (and to some degree European) economy to a more global economy. The numbers and names speak for themselves.
We start out 60+ years ago, in 1962, when two billion in sales got a company into the top twenty (the “what became of” column is based on where things stood in 2020):
Pop ahead two decades, to 1980, a time when oil was on a roll, and it took almost nineteen billion to make the top twenty:
Another decade, 1994, when the big Japanese trading companies were included, with the floor to make the top twenty shooting up to sixty-four billion:
Five years ago, in 2019, it required about two hundred billion to get into the top twenty, note that Amazon ranked 9th :
Below we show the latest full year (2024) results, including several government-owned or controlled enterprises. Note the declining importance of Japanese and German companies compared with those earlier lists, and of course the rise of the Chinese.
In the 2024 data, it is interesting to note that 12 companies among the 50 largest had double-digit sales growth last year over 2023. Ten of them were American, plus one Korean and one Chinese. The American leaders were Cigna at up 26.6%, Meta +21.9%, JPMorgan Chase +16.5%, McKesson +16.2%, Microsoft +15.7%, Alphabet +13.9%, Cencora +12.1%, Bank of America +1.9%, Amazon +11.0%, and Cardinal Health +10.6%. The best the others in the top 50 could do were China Life Insurance +14.8% and Samsung Electronics +11.3%. (Readers who don’t subscribe to Fortune will need to run to a good newsstand, such as the ones at Barnes & Noble, to get the latest issue to see all the wonderful data.)
Walmart, the world’s largest company, with a 5.1% sales gain, beat 27 of the other 38, so it grew faster than the average for these giant enterprises. Thirteen of the 50 had revenue declines; none of those were American. The American consumer continues to have a job and continues to spend!
Here, a quick look to see if Amazon will pass Walmart this year, it looks like a very close race to us!
Gary Hoover
Executive Director
American Business History Center
