Wal-Mart was the largest company on the list in 2007 and 2008. ExxonMobil was in second place in 2007 and 2008, but overtook Wal-Mart in 2009. Wal-Mart once again regained the top spot in 2010. One should note that the revenue and profit numbers are for the year previous to the named year: therefore the 2010 list ranks companies by 2009 revenues.
Although the Fortune 500 list is the most familiar one, similar gross revenue lists of the top firms range from the highest ranking Fortune 100 including the top one hundred to the broader ranking Fortune 1000 that includes the top thousand firms. While the membership on the smaller lists are somewhat stable, the ranking on the lists may change over time, depending upon revenues and often, because of mergers among firms already listed.
The original Fortune 500 was restricted to companies whose revenues were derived from manufacturing, mining, or energy exploration. At the same time, Fortune published companion "Fortune 50" lists of the 50 largest commercial banks (ranked by assets), utilities (ranked by assets), life insurance companies (ranked by assets), retailers (ranked by gross revenues) and transportation companies (ranked by revenues). These have been consolidated into one single list, so the Fortune 500 as it exists today includes companies that in previous years would have been on one of the "Fortune 50" lists.
The concept of the Fortune 500 was created by Edgar P. Smith, a Fortune Editor.
Wal-Mart still continues to be ranked on the top in 2011.
Category:Lists of companies Category:Fortune (magazine) Category:Top lists Category:Annual magazine issues
cs:Fortune 500 de:Fortune 500 es:Fortune 500 fa:فرچون ۵۰۰ fr:Fortune 500 ko:포춘 500 id:Fortune 500 it:Fortune 500 he:דירוג החברות של כתב העת Fortune hu:Fortune 500 ms:Fortune 500 nl:Fortune 500 ja:フォーチュン500 pl:Fortune 500 ro:Fortune 500 ru:Fortune 1000#Fortune 500 sco:Fortune 500 sk:Fortune 500 fi:Fortune 500 tr:Fortune 500 zh:财富500强This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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