The ''Forbes'' 500 was an annual listing of the top 500 American companies, produced by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' magazine. The list was calculated by combining five factors: sales, profits, assets, market value, and employees. The list was last issued in March 2003 (based on 2002 data for the companies); it is no longer calculated each year and has been replaced by the

Forbes Global 2000 The ''Forbes'' Global 2000 is an annual ranking of the top 2000 public companies in the world, published by ''Forbes'' magazine. "The Global 2000" annual ranking is assembled by ''Forbes'' using a weighted assessment of four metrics: sales, profi ...

, which includes non-U.S. companies but is calculated on a similar basis as the old Forbes 500 (although it does not include employees).

Quantifying the largest companies

Various methods exist in determining the largest corporations. Forbes Magazine, for example, takes into consideration profit, revenue, market capitalization, and value of assets when ranking companies by size; the magnitude of any one of these factors alone may not necessarily be indicative of a firm's overall ranking. The value of a firm's

assets In financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value of ownership that can b ...

is typically derived from a company's ability to generate cash via its ownership and control of inputs and/or distribution of the final product. Banks and financial institutions, for example, tend to have a large number of assets due to loans and investments, however, a large portion of these do not actually belong to the firm since these assets are customers' deposits.

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by '' Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

ranks companies by revenue. This method is heavily biased towards distributors such as

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

, which may have a high volume of sales but may be operating on very thin

profit margin Profit margin is a measure of profitability. It is calculated by finding the profit as a percentage of the revenue. \text = = There are 3 types of profit margins: gross profit margin, operating profit margin and net profit margin. * Gross Pr ...

s. Another method might be to look at the market capitalization of the company. However, this price is dictated by the perceived value of the company and its prospects. At one point in the late nineties,

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

would have been the biggest company by this measure, however the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

crash reduced its perceived value dramatically. Another example would be

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econom ...

, which despite being barely profitable, has a very large market cap rivaling or exceeded established American companies due to the general market sentiment about its innovations.

References

{{Forbes Magazine Lists Forbes lists Lists of companies by revenue Annual magazine issues Lists of companies of the United States

Quantifying the largest companies

See also

References