– This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on July 21, Friday.
Other than what the presenter has mentioned about the rise of companies' total revenue, Assistant Managing Editor of Fortune Magazine also revealed to CNBC in an interview that the rankings, this year, had two major changes. The first change is that the number of Chinese companies in the list had increased very significantly.
The first on the list is Walmart, who has been ranked first for the past four consecutive years. Coming in second and third are State Grid and Sinopec Group. China National Petroleum came in fourth. Therefore, what we can see is that there were at least three Chinese companies that made it to the top five.
[Brian O'leefe, Fortune Magazine, Assistant Managing Editor] "A decade ago, there were 29 Chinese companies on the list. This year, there is a 109 and the 3 of the top 5 biggest companies were Chinese. Also, a couple of big debut this year were Alibaba at 462 and Tencent at number 478.China is really asserting itself."
The number of China companies that are listed on Fortune 500 has been on the rise consecutively for 14 years, with the number of companies being at 115. Including those from Hong Kong, there are 109 companies from Mainland China (Taiwan not included) making the list.
This year, 152 American companies and 51 Japanese companies made it up to the list. Although China surpassed Japan, who came in third for the most companies being listed, the main bulk of Japan's companies only came from highly innovative companies such as electronics and communication. As for Chinese companies, a total of 19 of them are energy-related, oil-refining or mining companies whereas another 14 of them are property and architecture related companies. Something noteworthy about this year's listing is that the world's six major social media companies made it on Fortune 500. This was only made possible with the listing of Alibaba and Tencent in this year and DJ China's listing in last year. America and China, respectively, make up half of the number of social media companies on the list. Moving on, another trend that we witnessed on this year's listing is the improvement in overall standing of tech companies.
Taking only companies' total revenue, Apple came in the 9th place. However, if we were to assess it based on sum of net profit, Apple emerged first. According to analysts, America tech giants like Amazon and Google had continuously been seeing a rise in their ranks. Furthermore, this year marks the first time Facebook is listed on Fortune 500, coming at the 393th place.
[Brian O'leefe, Fortune Magazine, Assistant Managing Editor] "The continuous rise of technology companies including Amazon. Amazon debut on this list in 2009 at number 485. This year, they are all up to 26, they are making a huge jump. They are dominating multiple industries. Now they are buying Whole Foods, a grocery chain in the US."
On another interesting note, Apple is not the only company that topped the list of best net profit companies. Chinese banking companies were also on the list, namely the Industrial Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank Corporation, Agricultural Bank of China and last but not least, Bank of China.
Lastly, in terms of total net assets that Chinese companies own, Industrial Commercial Bank of China will come in first. As for ROE List, the China companies that are ranked the highest are Huawei, Midea Group, Ten Cent, Geely and Vanke.
Three out of the ten fastest-rising companies come from China Mainland. They are mainly ChinaMin metals, HNA Group and Evergrande Group.