When we hear others talking about billions and trillions, we at times struggle to put figures in context. So this is the first column of a short series that I would like to introduce exclusively to the readers of the Oman Observer to appreciate proportions when it comes to business magnitude.
The numbers presented relate to the top 100 companies in the world, ranked by industry and country in the yearly report of PwC.
So when I mention “all” I mean to point to all those listed within the top 100.
However, to set the context, it could be useful to begin with a first more general fact: the USA is the largest economy in the world at nearly $22.7 trillion. In fact, 59 out of the 100 largest companies in the world are in the USA.
You can sense this vast amount of business when you look at job openings.
Take any metropolis in the US and count how many Linkedin jobs are available compared to entire countries.
For example, the job title “software engineer”: in San Francisco Bay Area alone, there are nearly 19 thousand job openings at the moment. That is more than UK, France, Italy and Spain all together.
In fact, all of the top US technology companies together are valued at $7.79 trillion. An incredible $2 trillion of which is taken by Apple alone.
Apple alone has a larger capitalization than all of China’s tech giants put together. And as a sector, the US stands tall twice as higher as all of the top companies in Europe, including all countries and all industries.
China comes up second in the world for technology, at $1.5 trillion with Tencent and Alibaba ranking among the top 10 in the world.
Although it has been growing steadily, it is hard to say if China’s top tech companies will be able to catch up with the American ones within this generation.
Overall, all of the top China businesses put together are valued at $4.2 trillion. Given the population of China, it is somehow expected that as a tech savvy and financially strong country, is able to place a pool of enormous companies within the top 100 in the world.
And for such a pool to combine their valuation above an entire continent can be seen as not so surprising. This is however a performance that did not work out with the same outcome in India.
In fact, among the Indian companies ranked among the top 100 in the world, the total valuation stands at only $340 billion. The overall GDP of the country, however, is the 6th in the world, with over $3 trillion in 2019.
As a first analysis we could therefore highlight that only 10 per cent of India’s economy is made by giants, while in the USA, with a GDP close to $23 trillion in 2019, about 90 per cent is made by 59 companies alone.
Food for thoughts for sure. Which one do the readers see as a stronger economy? One in the hand of a few huge businesses or one where the giants are a tiny minority? Let us spark the conversation. [The columnist is a member of the International Press Association]
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