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The Forbes 500 is an annual listing of the top 500 American companies produced by Forbes Magazine. The list is calculated by combining five factors: sales, profits, assets, market value, and employees. Alternate meaning: For the Boston Brahmin family associated with John Forbes Kerry, see Forbes family. ...
Reasoning behind the list
The Forbes 500 was created to answer the question: what are the largest companies (in the USA)?
The challenge is to decide how to define "large".
One way might be to simply add up the amount of stuff a corporation owns - how much money it has in the bank, how many buildings it owns, how much equipment, etc. Overall, these are called "assets". However, this is very misleading, as many companies do not own, but rent or lease most of their equipment and buildings. Most importantly, money owed to banks is called an "asset" of the bank, and by this measure alone, banks would be ranked as the largest companies by far. In business and accounting an asset is anything owned, whether in possession or by right to take possession, by a person or a group acting together, e. ...
Minge. ...
This article or section should include material from Tenancy agreement A lease is a contract conveying from one person (the lessor) to another person (the lessee) the right to use and control some article of property for a specified period of time (the term), without conveying ownership, in exchange for...
Iain Banks is a Scottish-born writer of both mainstream and science fiction novels. ...
Another method might be to look at how much profit a company makes. But this would rank a company like Fannie Mae, which has only around 9000 employees and is essentially purely intangible, as one hundred times bigger than a company like General Motors which has hundreds of thousands of employees and many factories and other fixed assets. In addition, "profit" in a company is defined as all the money made after the cost of things sold and after the salaries are paid to all the employees. As an example, a company might sell shoes that cost a dollar to make but are sold for one hundred dollars. However, if the CEO paid himself 99 dollars per shoe, the company would be making no profit at all. Profit is a positive return made on an investment by an individual or by business operations. ...
The United States Federal Government created the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) (NYSE: FNM), commonly known as Fannie Mae, in 1938 to establish a secondary market for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). ...
General Motors Corporation NYSE: GM, also known as GM, is a United States-based automobile maker with worldwide operations and brands including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Vauxhall. ...
Fixed asset is an accountancy term for assets and property which cannot easily be converted into cash. ...
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is the job of having the ultimate executive responsibility or authority within an organization or corporation. ...
Another method might be to look at the revenue earned by the company. This is how the Fortune 500 ranks companies. This method is heavily biased towards distributors such as Walmart, which may have a high volume of sales but may be operating on very thin profit margins. In business, revenue is the amount of money that a company actually receives from its activities, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers. ...
The Fortune 500 is a ranking of the top 500 United States corporations as measured by gross revenue. ...
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ...
Profit margin is a measure of profitability. ...
Another method might be to look at the market capitalization of the company, that is, the price to buy the entire company. However, this price is not set by any rule, but by how the people value the company and its prospects. Thus, in the late nineties, Cisco Systems would have been the biggest company by this measure. When the dot-com bubble crashed, Cisco's perceived value changed dramatically. Market capitalization, often abbreviated to market cap, is a business term that refers to the aggregate value of a firms outstanding common shares. ...
Cisco Systems, Inc. ...
Dot-com (also dotcom or redundantly dot. ...
Recognizing such issues, Forbes uses a balanced mix of these factors to rank companies. Alternate meaning: For the Boston Brahmin family associated with John Forbes Kerry, see Forbes family. ...
See also The Forbes Global 2000 is a ranking of the top 2000 public corporations in the world based on a balanced mix of four metrics. ...
The Fortune 500 is a ranking of the top 500 United States corporations as measured by gross revenue. ...
This is a list of companies in the 1998 Forbes 500 list based on performance during 1997 ([1]): Contents: Top - 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A Abbott...
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