One question we get asked about The Global 5000 companies is - "How much of the market do these companies represent?  One way to put this top tier of companies in perspective is to look at their collective revenue and the overall global economy. Consider this -- if we add up the revenue for the Global 5000 companies, it comes to $44 trillion dollars. There are 154 countries in the world with a population of 1 million or larger. If we add up the GDP of these 154 countries, that totals $61 trillion. While revenue and GDP are not a 1 to 1 match of ...Read More »

Within a few short weeks the reports came out about 2 traditionalGlobal 5000 firms -- American Airlines and Eastman Kodak -- filed for bankruptcy. At the same time Facebook is filing for what is shpaing up to be one of the largest IPO's ever. None of this is exactly news. American is one of the old line carriers that has never gone thru a restructuring or merger along the lines of United, US Air and Delta as example. The Kodak story has been watched for years as the transition from the film and camera business to the digital world never ...Read More »

Emerging Markets and the BRIC countries seem to come in and out of popularity in recent years. The acronym BRIC has become synonymous with emerging markets. As the economy suffered in 2008 and 2009 many had hoped that growth in BRIC-like countries would help keep the world from all falling at the same time. We soon found out that no place was spared. Within the set of Global 5000 companies -- the largest firms in the world -- approximately 12% of the total revenue of $43 trillion comes from those companies in the BRIC countries. The impressive thing is the growth ...Read More »

Most of the business press and financial news focuses our attention on public companies. Because they are public, information on those companies is easy to find and they issues all forms of communications to keep up their visibility. Private companies are private for a reason and they do make that much information avaialble. It all makes sense. Consequently, database builders and internal CRM systems often do not contain many private companies. That may be a mistake.  Looking at The Global 5000 companies, 14% of them are private companies .... these are billion $ companies and often solid prospect. Many of these companies ...Read More »

During 2011, The Global 5000 companeis were very active with a number of mergers, acquisitions, divesting assets, new IPO's and other corporate actions. In total we recorded 245 activities representing over 330 companies. Tallying up the key areas, there were 135 acquisitions, 7 companies filed ch 11 banruptcy while 5 others emerged from bankruptcy protection. Thirty companies divested of some business unties or product lines. Ten companies in The Global 5000 went private. Eleven companies announced name changes and 17 companies announced they were are splitting the company into two or more entities. What does this mean to you?    These activities and changes become ...Read More »

Growth forecasts for around the world have on the rise of the developing regions of the world compared to the more established economic regions of North America and Europe. To test if this has been trending we took the top companies from The Global 5000 in each region of the world and measured their growth over the past few years. Specifically, we took the top 25 companies (by revenue) in each of 5 regions - North America, South America, Asia Pac, Europe and Middle East/Africa. For these 25 companies, we took their aggregate revenue in 2007 and 2010 and measured their ...Read More »

AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, filed for bankruptcy this week. They are the last of the major carriers to file. When we step back and look at the overall airline industry, there are some interesting differences between the largest airlines and the rest of the leading companies around the world. From The Global 5000 database, we took the 25 largest airline companies and compared them to the top 25 companies in each region around the globe for a total of 125 leading companies. Airlines had a growth rate of 6% between 2007 and 2010 compared to the overall leaders growth ...Read More »

Forbes magazine has published their annual list of the largest private companies in the US - listed here. They cover US private companies with $2 billion + revenue. This past year (2010 revenue) there were 212 companies that fit the criteria. Except for a few of the very large firms (like Cargill or Koch Industries) most are smaller than a list like the Fortune 500. For The Global 5000, we match those companies in the Forbes list to our database to make sure we have them included every year. It is interesting to note that the total private companies in ...Read More »

In our Global 5000 database, we have 761 companies located in the AsiaPac region - slightly more than the 680 in Europe. As many have pointed out, the region is full of promise and developing economies. Over the long term, growth rates are expected to exceed both Europe and North America. In this developing environment, there a number of mid-size and smaller organizations poised to grow and that represents great opportunity. To explore those companies, we suggest looking at a database from CNC Data which goes beyond the Global 5000 sized companies and has approximately 400,000 company records and 1 ...Read More »

During the month of October, The Global 5000 companies announced 15 significant deals including M&A, IPO filings, private equity financing, and spin-offs. Focusing on the largest firms – The Global 5000 – there are generally more of these than in smaller companies. These activities and changes become important for Database Marketers as they have to continually update their internal systems that can feed sales prospects and account management. Here’s the list of activities reported in October: Abbott Laboratories will be splitting into two companies ACI Worldwide is acquiring ...Read More »