57 Indian Leading Firms in Forbes Global 2000 List

57 Indian Leading Firms in Forbes Global 2000 List

Washington: As many as 57 Indian companies including Reliance Industries, State Bank of India and Oil & Natural Gas Corp. figure in The Forbes Global 2000 list of public companies based on their rankings for sales, profits, assets and market value.

Reliance with sales of USD 45.3 billion is ranked 121st in the list with three public State Bank of India Group (136, USD 29.1 billion), Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (172, 22.6 billion) and Indian Oil (243, USD 52.1 billion) taking the next three places among the Indian firms.

Other companies in India's top ten were ICICI Bank (288, USD 13.2 billion), NTPC (348, USD 10.8 billion), Coal India (418, USD 10.4 billion), Bharti Airtel (453, USD 9.3 billion), Larsen & Toubro (499, USD 9.8 billion) and Tata Motors (512, USD 20.2 billion).

JPMorgan Chase is in the top spot for the second consecutive year as the world's largest company followed by HSBC, up six spots fuelled by a 121 percent growth in profits in the past fiscal year.

In total, the Global 2000 companies now account for USD 32 trillion in revenues, USD 2.4 trillion in profits, USD 138 trillion in assets and USD 38 trillion in market value. These firms also employ 80 million people worldwide.

The Asia-Pacific region led The Global 2000 again this year with 701 companies, including the most additions (11) to the list of the regions - Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa-EMEA, the Americas and the US - with doubled profits, by far the biggest increase.

The biggest profit centre was China, as 121 companies, including PetroChina, ICBC and Sinopec, returned an aggregate profit of USD 168 billion. Japan and South Korea also showed impressive gains in profits and assets.

With the US economy back on its feet, growing at a steady 3 percent clip over the past 12 months, American firms on The Forbes Global 2000 are growing far faster. Total sales were up 12 percent in 2010 over 2009, and profits continue to rise-up 69 percent, versus 56 percent for the S&P 500.

Still, the US grip on The Global 2000 has been slipping since 2004, when the number of US constituents was 751. It's now 536. The US still accounts for the most firms among the top 100 with 28.