Wal-Mart retains Fortune America top slot; Citi at 8th

NEW YORK: Retail giant Wal-Mart has been named as the largest US firm for the second year in a row by Fortune magazine in its annual list of 500 top American companies.

According to Fortune list, released here on Monday and being published in the May 5 issue of the business magazine, Wal-Mart Stores has been ranked at the top with a revenue of about $378.8 billion.

ExxonMobil, which had topped the list in 2006, has been ranked at the second position with a turnover of 372.8 billion dollars.

Other companies in the top five include Chevron, General Motors and ConocoPhillips. These are followed by General Electric, Ford Motor, Citigroup, Bank of America and AT&T in the top ten.

Together the ten companies have a turnover, totaling about two trillion dollars, equivalent to the overall size of most of the economies, including India.

The world's largest bank, Citigroup, run by India-born Vikram Pandit, has retained the eighth position with a turnover of 159.2 billion dollars. Another Indian-run firm, cola giant PepsiCo, has been ranked at 59th place with about 39 billion dollars.

The list, which ranks the companies on the basis of their annual turnover, comprises American companies only. Fortune publishes a separate annual list of companies from across the world.

Last year's Fortune Global 500 list had six Indian companies, five public sector firms namely Indian Oil, ONGC, BPCL, HPCL and SBI and only one private sector firm Reliance Industries.

The magazine noted that "on June 13, 2007, the world changed for the Fortune 500. Why? Because on that day, the financial markets finally woke up from a dream".

"As a result, the companies in the 500 (list) are still coping with the trauma of their abrupt return to reality, which included the group's first profit decline in five years. And, no, the trouble isn't over. Nor is it strictly a US problem," it said, adding that the shock to the US financial system created aftershocks around the globe.

"The IMF has lowered its estimates of world growth for 2008, and the higher cost of capital is hurting businesses that need to borrow - which means everyone..."

It said that in 2006, 156 companies in the Fortune 500 reported lower profits than the year before, and 43 lost money. In 2007, all the numbers got worse with 183 companies seeing their profits fall and another 57 recording losses.

The magazine said that one trend that was witnessed was of "the unprecedented abundance of capital".

"The supergrowth of China, India, and other savings-oriented economies released new capital into the world; the efficiency of global capital markets meant trillions of dollars were being continually directed to their best use worldwide. When anything is that plentiful, it's cheap."

Wal-Mart has topped the list for six times in the past seven years, excluding 2006 when it was replaced by ExxonMobil at the top.

Collectively, revenues for all Fortune 500 companies of the US reached $10.6 trillion in 2007, up nearly seven per cent from the previous year. However, the profit of these firms dropped nearly 18 per cent to 645.2 billion dollars that year.