16 M’sian firms in Forbes’ most powerful and valuable firms list

Forbes has named Maybank as the 371st world’s biggest, most powerful and most valuable public companies.

KUALA LUMPUR: Sixteen Malaysian firms have made it to Forbes’ latest annual Global 2000 ranking of the world’s biggest, most powerful and most valuable public companies.

They are Malayan Banking Bhd (ranked 371).

Rankings are in parentheses:

Tenaga Nasional (ranked 408), CIMB Group (574), Public Bank (578), Sime Darby (709), Axiata Group (932), Genting (1122), RHB Capital (1185), Hong Leong Financial Group (1287), MISC (1318), AmBank Group (1331), Petronas Chemicals (1339), Maxis (1441), Petronas Gas (1485), IOI Group (1559) and YTL (1589).

Criteria for the ranking include sales, profits, assets and market value.

Sixty-eight companies from South-East Asia are in the Forbes list, with Singaporean firms accounting for 20.

The top 10 Asean companies are Indonesian state-owned oil and gas company PTT PCL (225), DBS Group (268), Oversea-Chinese Banking (302), SingTel (325), United Overseas Bank (348), Wilmar (369), Maybank (371), Tenaga (408), Bank Rakyat Indonesia (457) and Bank Mandiri (490).

The world’s biggest public companies are Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, Exxon Mobil, PetroChina, General Electric and Wells Fargo.

ICBC has sales of US$166.8bil (RM599.4bil), profit of US$44.8bil (RM161bil), assets of US$3.322 trillion (RM11.935 trillion) and market value of US$278.3bil (RM999.9bil).

The top five country breakdown is as follows: the United States (579 companies), China/Hong Kong (232), Japan (218), the United Kingdom (94) and South Korea (66).

Forbes said in a statement that China housed the world’s four biggest companies and landed five of the top 10 spots for the second year in a row.

This year, banks and diversified financials dominate with 434 spots, representing the largest share of any industry. China has the most with 13 banks, followed by the United States (11) and Canada (six).

Notable gainers include Facebook, which increased more than 200 spots to number 280 this year due to rising revenue and profits; American Airlines; Starbucks; and Monster Beverage.

In total, the Global 2000 companies, which hail from 61 countries, account for US$39 trillion (RM140 trillion) in revenue, US$3 trillion (RM10.8 trillion) in profits, US$162 trillion (RM582 trillion) in assets and US$48 trillion (RM172.5 trillion) in market value in 2015. Total market value grew 9% year-on-year, the most among the four metrics.