Tanzania out of list of world’s top 2,000 firms

Dar es Salaam. Tanzanian firms are missing from the list of 2000 largest companies that was released yesterday by Forbes magazine. The 16th annual Forbes Global 2000, which focuses on public listed firms, features companies from only three African countries – South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, showing how long African-based firms still have to go to compete on the global corporate arena.

African Companies

Only one company from East Africa, Safaricom, features in the list. The Kenyan telecoms firm is on position 1,817 and has a market value of $11.1 billion. South Africa has 11 firms in the list, including two firms, South Africa, Standard bank Group and First Rand, in the top 500. While Standard bank is on position 376, First Rand is in position 470. Other South African firms in the list and their positions in brackets include Sasol (509), Naspers (531), Sanlam (702), MTN Group (1069), Shoprite Holdings (1325), MMI Holdings (1559), Remgro (1808) and RMB Holdings (1832).

Dangote Cement and Zenith Bank are the two companies in the list from Nigeria. While Dangote is in position 1652, Zenith Bank is in position 1962.

Who is on top?

The two largest companies in the world are from China. ICBC is the largest company and China Construction Bank is the second largest. American companies JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway are the third largest and the fourth largest firms in the world, respectively. In the list China and the US split the top 10 evenly in the list, the first time since 2015. Overal China is home to 291 Global 2000 companies while the US is on top with 560.

“The Forbes Global 2000 list includes publicly-traded companies from 60 countries. Collectively, the companies on this list account for $39.1 trillion in sales, $3.2 trillion in profit, $189 trillion in assets and $56.8 trillion in market value,” Forbes Magazine says about the list.

The Global 2000 ranking is based on a composite score from equally-weighted measures of revenue, profits, assets and market value. For the sixth consecutive year, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the China Construction Bank take the number one and two spots. Following closely behind is the United States’ JP Morgan Chase and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which took third and fourth place respectively. Rounding out the top 10 are Agricultural Bank of China (5), Bank of America (6), Wells Fargo (7), Apple (8), Bank of China (9) and Ping An Insurance (10).

China is ‘big in everything’

The list has revealed how China is “big--at everything”. Its tech companies like HNA Technology are getting bigger, says Kenneth Rapoza of Fobes.

“Asian e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba, founded by billionaire Jack Ma, is already a beast. China has some of the biggest airlines in the world. C-Trip International is bigger than Expedia by market cap. Car companies? Of the 32 auto and truck manufacturers on this year’s Forbes Global 2000 list, eight are Chinese. That puts them on par with Japan and clobbers the US at just three,” he says. As time goes on, China will have even more, he adds.

All of the top companies are banks, led by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (the biggest public company in the world) and China Construction Bank (the second biggest public company in the world). The US is also bank heavy, except for Apple, which comes in at No 9 on the Global 2000 list. Guangzhou Rural Commercial Bank is a newcomer to the list, ranked at 1,092. Zhongyuan Bank is another newbie, ranked now at 1,268.

But further down the list, one can see the “new China” emerging in the mix. HNA Technology, a tech holding company that owns electronics distributor Ingram Micro out of Irvine, Calif., and 360 Security Technology are a Global 2000 company today.

The Global 2000 relies on data from FactSet Research Systems to screen for the biggest companies in four metric: sales, profits, assets and market value. Each of the 2000 lists has a minimum cutoff value in order for a company to qualify: sales $4.47 billion, profits of $333.3 million, assets of $10.72 billion and market value of $6.55 billion. A company needs to qualify for at least one of the lists in order to be eligible for the final Global 2000 ranking.