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 revenue to spending & consumption, the point is that these large firms represent a huge portion of all economies. And that is for only 5,000 companies. When you consider all the time and energy spent chasing all sorts of names, companies and leads for a small portion of a market — it is curious why companies don’t focus more on those big companies who are big spenders.

This shift change in businesses, like ships passing in the night, is not just about being in the right sector. It is about the companies and how they operated. We looked at the growth rate of all Global 5000 companies over the past 5 years which is 6.2%. Selecting the industries represented by these 3 firms, we find:

• Airlines = 6.1%
• Electronic Equipment = 7%
• Information Services = 5%

Now, looking at the CAGR of these 3 companies over that time frame, we find growth rates of:

• American Airlines (AMR) = minus 0.4%
• Eastman Kodak = minus 11.6%
• Facebook = 135% growth

There are a couple of interesting aspects here for marketers, enterprise sales and your internal database.  For those selling to these firms, are the companies still built into your sales plans and quotas?  At the same levels? It is unlikely that all thre of these companies will be purchasing what they have in the past at the same levels. What adjustments are you making?

One other implication here is that the fading companies look quite different than the fast growth firms like Facebook.  Their cost structure and employment levels are very different as the new firms are not people intensive businesses. Add up a number of these transitions and it is easy to see how the unemployment picture is still a challenge.  At the sales and marketing level for an individual company, the makeup of your products and services need to be adjusted as the makeup of the marketplace goes through transitions.

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 rate of these companies in BRIC compared to the overall growth rate of all companies in The Global 5000. Consider the following growth rates.

BRIC vs Total Global 5000

• 2007    29% vs 13%
• 2008    26% vs 10%
• 2009    0.5% vs -9%
• 2010     29% vs 11%

In essence, the growth rate of the BRIC companies is twice that of all the largest companies overall. And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Some of the recent press regarding the proposed merge of Glencore and Xstrata illustrate the growth of key companies and industries in BRIC countries.     These two Swiss based companies are involved in mining operations throughout the world. These mining operations and the growth of the minerals and metal operations are helping fuel much of the growth of the commodities needed in the BRIC and emerging market countries.

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 are smaller as the total revenue for private companies in The Global 5000 is 8% or $3.4 trillion out of the total of $42.2 trillion for all Global 5000 companies.

The larger private companies stack up well next to their public counterparts.  If we take the Top 50 publics and Top 50 privates, the private company revenue is approximately 25% of the public companies. Beyond the Global 5000, the rest of the companies are almost exclusively privates.  Anyone looking at small and medium businesses (SMB) is well tuned in to the world of private companies.

Here is a sample of the top private companies in the world (by revenue)

• Glencore International AG
• Cargill
• Koch Industries
• REWE Group
• ALDI Einkauf GmbH
• U.S. Postal Service
• Robert Bosch 
• Reliance Industries Limited
• Groupe Auchan
• Kaiser Permanente
• China FAW (First Automotive Works)
• Chrysler LLC
• Lotte Holdings
• SNCF
• Spar International

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 important for your organization’s CRM system and the client and prospect recrods in there. Database Marketers need to continually update their internal systems that can feed sales prospects and account management.  Sales account assignments are almost aways affected as are quotas and expectations for renewals and new client acquisitions.

These Global 5000 companies do not stand still. There is continual evaluations of existing businesses, portfolios and looking at new opportunities.  That in turn, generates a high levle of activity which creates new opportunities.

Among the larer firms with activities in 2011 are listed here. If you have your sightes on any of these, it is time to ensure the database is current.

• Wal-Mart Stores
• China Petroleum & Chemical
• ConocoPhillips
• General Electric
• Berkshire Hathaway
• Bank of America Corporation
• Samsung Electronics
• Hewlett-Packard
• GDF Suez
• Cargill
• Hitachi Ltd
• Nestle
• Siemens
• IBM
• HSBC
• Aviva

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 growth rate (CAGR), their total employees and total training budgets.

These 125 companies employ over 22 million people worldwide and had 2010 revenue in excess of $11 trillion. This total breaks down as follows:

• North America = 31.6%
• Europe = 30.4%
• AsiaPac = 28.1%
• South America = 7.8%
• Middle East/Africa = 2.2%

The big story is the look at the 3 year growth rate by region. Overall, these 125 companies had a growth rate of 4.8% between 2007 and 2010. When we look at the growth by region, it clearly shows why there is concern over the growth rate in North American and European companies.

• AsiaPac = 10.8%
• South America = 9.5%
• Middle East/Africa = 8.1%
• North America = 2.1%
• Europe = 1.6%

As businesses look at marketing resources and focus of their efforts, looking at growth areas might mean looking outside where you normally have.

To obtain a list of the top 25 companies in each of the 5 regions, please email – theglobal5000@gmail.com

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 of 4.8% — so they showed better than average growth
• Airlines have a heavier employee cost component in their cost structure which has contributed to their financial issues. Top airlines employees are 4.3% of the leading company employee count — but the revenue comparison is only 2.6%.  Their employee count (and related costs) are more than 1 1/2 times the leading companies and at a lower proportion of revenue.
• They spend more on training. The top 25 airlines spend 12.3% of the top 125 on training which is understandable given the nature of the business
• And we know they have to deal with cost of fuel
• If we look at revenue per employee, the top airlines have a $314,000 ratio. When we look at the Top 125 leading companies, their figure is over $497,000.

When adding up all these facts and looking at the data from the airlines and then examine the basic data from leading Global 5000 companies, it is no wonder there is yet another bankruptcy in the airline industry.

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 The Global 5000 stands at 645 currently as we do include companies from around the globe and companies that may be smaller than the Forbes threshold.

Marketers look at opportunities don’t generally care if their target audience is a public or private organization. Plenty of firms like REWE of Germany, Glencore in Switzerland or Reliance Industries of India offer some interesting opportunities.

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 million contacts in China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

For the larger, Global 5000 companies, we have the following in the database.

• China = 122
• Australia =  71
• India = 68
• Singapore = 23
• Malaysia = 15
• Indonesia = 12
• Philippines = 11
• Thailand = 6
• New Zealand = 3

Here’s the list of activities reported in October:

• Abbott Laboratories will be splitting into two companies
• ACI Worldwide is acquiring S1 corporation
• AGCO agreed to buy grain storage systems maker GSI Holdings Corp
• Banco Popular Espanol will acquire Banco Pastor
• China Petroleum & Chemical (Sinopec) is acquiring Daylight Energy
• Cigna Corporation is acquiring HealthSpring
• Friendly Ice Cream filed Chapter 11
• G4s will be acquiring ISS of Denmark
• General Electric is selling China brokerage operations to Nomura
• International Business Machines (IBM) is acquiring Q1 Labs
• Kinder Morgan Energy is acquiring El Paso Energy
• MF Global Ltd. filed Chapter 11
• Pang Da Automobile Trade Co Ltd is acquiring Saab with Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co
• Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc. is being taken private
• PTT Global Chemical amalgamated its businesses with PTT Chemical Public Company Limited and became a new entity