After our 53 billionaires, 48 Indian cos shine on Forbes list

The rankings, topped by British banking behemoth HSBC, have been compiled on the basis of a composite score of sales, profit, assets and market capitalisation. HSBC is followed by industrial conglomerate General Electric, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil — all four from the US — in the top five positions. Two Indian firms, Mukesh Ambani-promoted RIL and ONGC are among the top 200 firms at 193rd and 198th ranks.

Earlier in March, Forbes had released its list of the world’s richest billionaires, which included 53 Indian businessmen with four of them — Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and KP Singh — figuring among the world’s 10 wealthiest. RIL and ONGC are followed by two PSU majors, State Bank of India (219th) and Indian Oil Corporation (303rd), the country’s biggest private sector lender ICICI Bank (374th) and state-run power generation major NTPC (411th).

The other Indian companies on the list include SAIL (647th) and Tata Steel (738th), Telecom giants Bharti Airtel (826th) and Reliance Communications (846th), software major TCS (927), housing finance giant HDFC (949th), engineering heavyweight Larsen & Toubro (961st), and state-run Oil firm BPCL (967th). While Mukesh Ambani-led RIL has topped the list of Indian companies, there are also three firms belonging to the group led by his estranged younger brother Anil Ambani — Reliance Comm, Reliance Power (1,597th) and Reliance Capital (1,919th).

According to Forbes, the Global 2000 companies have a combined revenue of $30 trillion, profits of $2.4 trillion, assets of $119 trillion and market capitalisation of $39 trillion. Besides, these companies employ 72 million people across the world. While the list is still dominated by US companies, the number of American firms has dropped by 61 from the previous year and 153 from 2004. “In contrast, China, India and Brazil are rapidly adding companies to the list. India, for example, has 48 companies this year versus 27 in 2004,” the report said.

In terms of sectors, banking has the largest presence with 315 firms in the global list. Even among the Indian companies, one-third or 16 of them belong to this sector.

Other Indian companies in the list include Bhel (1,012), Infosys (1,040), HDFC Bank (1,093), Wipro (1,102), Tata Motors (1,111), HPCL (1,112), NMDC (1,134), ITC (1,159), PNB (1,166), DLF (1,185), Hindalco (1,205), GAIL (1,249), Canara Bank (1,305), Axis Bank (1,361), Bank of India (1,375), PGCIL (1,413), Bank of Baroda (1,477), Nalco (1,478) and Unitech (1,484). The list also has Grasim (1,527), Indian Overseas Bank (1,737), IDBI (1,744), PFC (1,753), Union Bank of India (1,759), Satyam (1,763), Central Bank of India (1,803), Syndicate Bank (1,833), M&M (1,919), Uco Bank (1,935), Oriental Bank (1,952), Suzlon Energy (1,954) and Allahabad Bank (1,996).