Years ago, as The Global 5000 database was being built, we researched every list of companies we could find. At the time (and it continues to this day) the big names most often mentioned were the Fortune 500 and the Forbes list of private companies. Each year, both Fortune and Forbes publish these and related lists with updated information for the latest fiscal years. We regularly use those lists to match and compare against The Global 5000 to make sure we are not over-looking any obvious companies in our research.
Here is a listing of the main lists we review to match up with The Global 5000 and what portions of the market they focus on. The Global 5000 is a unique database as it includes all countries and both public as well as private companies across all industries.
- Fortune 500 / 1000 and Global 500. Fortune publishes 2 main lists of publicly traded companies. The Fortune 500 (1st part of the larger F1000) is the largest US public companies based on revenue. The Global 500 is the largest 500 public companies in the world.
- Forbes has traditionally published their version of the largest US Private companies. In recent years this has evolved to the private companies with at least $2 billion in revenue. This has equated to just over 200 private companies.
- Financial Times – the FT produces a series of FT 500 lists of public companies based on market valuation. There is the FT Global, FT Europe, FT USA, FT UK and a few others. We check each of these and match up to The Global 5000. Most are included but there are a few companies in each of these lists where their revenue is not enough to be included.
- Privco has a large database of private companies generally related to investments and private equity. Periodically they will publish selections out of this database that we will check and match.
- Inc Magazine publishes the Inc 5000 which is a list of the fastest growing “small businesses”. While these are mainly small companies which are well below the lower level of The Global 5000, there are usually a handful of companies that need to be checked.
Next come a long list of industry associations and trade publications that publish “top lists”. These are not always top based on revenue. Rather they reflect the products of their respective industries. These often contain divisions or product lines of larger companies. These industry focused lists also become part of the process.
Finally, there are country lists noting the largest companies in various countries. These are published by various local business publications and newspaper organizations. Most often they show the in-country operations of larger companies. A number of these will show largest employers in the country so some research work has to be completed to match these lists and use what is applicable.