The following table from the Wall Street Journal shows the largest listed companies i.e. the largest companies traded in the stock markets. Therefore state companies, which are not traded in the stock markets, are not included in the list.
Wall Street Journal : Largest Companies
Companies are ranked according to market value i.e. number of shares X current share price. For example if a company has issued 1.000 shares, and at the moment each share sells for 2 dollars in the stock market, its value is 2.000 dollars. If there is some good news and the price of the share rises to 3 dollars, its value will be 3.000 dollars. If there is some bad news and the price of the share falls to 1 dollar its value will be 1.000 dollars, and so on. If we rank the companies according to some other criterion i.e. according to revenue or according to profits etc, we will end up with a different ranking.
As you can see Apple is number one, with a market value of 658 billion dollars. Alphabet, the second one, is Google. The table is from October 2015 and in the meantime the ranking has changed. Apple performed worse than expected and its price fell, and Google performed better than expected and its price rose. Now Google is number one with a market value of 570 billion dollars, and Apple is second with a market value 535 billion dollars. See Time magazine “Google Overtakes Apple as the World’s Most Valuable Public Company”, January 2016.
I previously uploaded the list with the richest people in the world from Bloomberg. See “The Richest People on Earth”.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is first on the list, with a fortune of 79 billion dollars. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is fourth on the list, with a fortune of approximately 50 billion dollars.
Bloomberg Billionaires Index
As you can see the two lists are related. Bill Gates is number one and Microsoft is number three. Mark Zuckerberg is number four and Facebook is number 7. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is number 5, and Amazon is number 10. The two lists cannot be completely related because different businessmen decide to hold different shares of their companies when they start, because they have different appetites for risk. Moreover these kind of businessmen create many companies. In addition, after a while, these guys are tired of all this money, and they start donating billions of dollars in order to build reputation as philanthropists, and also to feel good about themselves. Finally as time goes by fortunes change hands.
What we have to keep in mind is that most of these guys’ fortunes are not in the form of dollars in a box or bank deposits, but rather in the form of shares in their companies. Therefore if we want to tax more these billionaires that we see on the Bloomberg table, we do not have to open a box and take a few billions from the box, but rather we would have to tax their companies. We have to tax Microsoft more, we have tax Facebook more, we have to tax Amazon more etc, because that’s where most these peoples’ wealth is. If next year we stop using Facebook, and we start using something else, Zuckerberg will worth 5 billion and not 50 billion, because the price of his shares will collapse.
Moreover, many people who read communist and nazi propaganda are trying to find in the lists the names they hear in conspiracy theories i.e Rockefeller, Rothschild etc. The truth is that Bill Gates is the John Rockefeller of the 21st century, and John Rockefeller was the Bill Gates of the 20th century. Standard oil was the Microsoft of the 20th century, and Microsoft is the Standard Oil of the 21st century. If we were to read the same lists 100 years ago we would find John Rockefeller and Standard Oil instead of Bill Gates and Microsoft. And in 100 years from now we will not find Bill Gates and Microsoft in the lists.
However the company of John Rockefeller is still in the list, because Standard Oil was split to Exxon and Chevron, and as you can see Exxon is number four on the table. Except that it is no longer controlled by the Rockefellers. There might be some Rockefellers holding some shares in Exxon, but obviously their shares are peanuts when compared to the ones held by Gates, Zuckerberg etc, because Gates and Zuckerberg are the Rockefellers of the 21st centuries, and Rockefeller was the Gates and Zuckerberg of the 20th century.
I must also say that John Rockefeller was not Jewish as many people believe. John Rockefeller was Christian and a religious one. It was Mayer Rothschild , another legend, who was Jewish. But that’s not a problem. If you like conspiracy theories you do not need Rothschild. You can use Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg is a Jew. For example you can say that through Facebook Zuckerberg controls our minds and our feelings etc. Or you can thing of something else. Think!
“Meet the Market Cap-tains: The $300 Billion Club, By the Numbers”, October 2015
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