Clearly reflecting the shifting global and financial landscape, China was beamed to second place with a total of 73 firms in the annual corporate ranking by Fortune magazine. The Fortune 500, a merit list of companies which clearly demarcates China’s ascendance to the top, adding 12 new companies to the list this year, shows that the financial axis has already tilted East. While monetary and fiscal tweakings are necessary to keep China’s projected 7.2 percent growth on track, analysts expect these to be fine tunings, unlike India’s political changes which are much harder to fathom.
“One of the more remarkable shifts has been in the number of Chinese companies on the list,” Fortune said, pointing out there were only 11 Chinese firms on the Global 500 in 2002, while the number of Japanese companies has fallen from 88.
China’s strong presence on the Top global 500 companies, has propelled it to second place after the US, which sadly fell the most this year. “Although the US still hosts the lion’s share of Global 500 corporations, no country has lost more companies during the last decade. There are 132 US-headquartered businesses on this year’s list, down from 197 a decade ago,” the US business magazine said.
Compared with only two private companies that were listed in 2011, another three appeared on the list. The five companies are Ping An Insurance (Grp) Co of China Ltd., Jiangsu Shagang Group Co., Ltd., Huawei investment holding Co., LTD, Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. and Shandong weiqiao pioneering group co. , Ltd.
The latter two firms got on the list for the first time, while the biggest rise came from Zhejiang Geely, climbed 213 rungs from last year to No. 475.
Chinese banks moved up in the ranking, with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China rising to No.54 this year from No.77 in 2011 and the Bank of China to No.93 from No.132 last year, according to the official Global Times.
Meanwhile, two Indian companies made the top 100 list: state-run Indian Oil, ranked at 83, and Reliance Industries, in the 99th slot, comparatively, Chinese state energy companies Sinopec Group, China National Petroleum and State Grid dominated the top 10 with fifth, sixth and seventh slots.