What are the largest companies in the world?
Here, most people think of the well-known tech giants, such as Apple $AAPL (+1,26 %) or Microsoft $MSFT. (+1,55 %)
However, companies can be valued not only by their market capitalization, but also by other factors.
Forbes, for example, ranks companies (equally weighted) according to the following criteria:
- Market capitalization
- Total value of all assets
- Profit
- Revenue
Suddenly you get a completely different picture than via the ranking according to pure market capitalization and you don't find a single(!) tech company among the top 5:
- Industrial & Commercial Bank China
- JP Morgan Chase
- Berkshire Hathaway
- China Construction Bank
- Saudi Aramco
Here you can see again what power and weight e.g. a JP Morgan has in the global economy.
Do you primarily only look at market capitalization or do such rankings also play a role for you?
And does this make you look differently at companies/shares of e.g. JP Morgan or Berkshire Hathaway?