Note that "market value"/market cap is a quite restrictive view of a companies size - it's a measure of the value of issued shares, not how big a company is!
Some things that might intuitively contribute to a companies bigness but won't be reflected in market cap:
* Debt vs equity funding - a company that issues debt to raise money will have a smaller market cap than a company issuing an equivalent amount of equity. Enterprise value is a different measure which does include this (and would rank e.g. Toyota higher)
* Taxation differences
* Obviously publicly owned companies won't appear here at all, e.g. famously many oil & gas companies are government owned
etc
What's most amazing to me is that everyone talks about how profitable Apple is, but it's really Saudi Aramco that rains the money with being 2x more profitable than Apple.
This is a ranking by Market cap. Not revenues. This ranking is basically what the stock market and investors feel like these companies are worth as measured by the current stock price and total number of shares held. Not really a great way to rank, but it's a way.
It's got an annoying interface where it shows the first however many and you can click "show more"...over and over and over as it only adds a few more each time.
I'm hoping someone will post a breakdown of how many by country at some point.
Also worth remembering that Apple was once driven by a person who valued quality over anything else, and is now driven by a numbers guy who values growth and values shareholders much higher than previous guy, which probably influenced this as well
Came here to say this; this is less a list of biggest companies in the world by market cap and more two comments:
- It's pretty easy to be a monopoly in the US
- The US pumps a lot of money into its stock market
Like, when you have an ad company (Meta) that's more valuable than an essentially national company that makes everything from earbuds to "ultra-large ships" (Samsung) [0], you know something's off.
>> The US pumps a lot of money into its stock market
Yes, blindly dump money in every month to a 401k, which is usually in a fund so it gets spread around. It can't end well, but I have no idea when it will end.
Interesting how no German companies made the list despite Germany’s massive economy.
Two reasons come to mind:
1) Car companies (other than Tesla) are in a valuation slump.
2) Germans value the “Mittelstand” [1] of stable mid-size enterprises. These companies may even be global market leaders in some specific niche, but they don’t seek to grow to unfamiliar market areas or to merge with other similar companies.
I don't think "value the Mittlestand" is the right phase to describe why these companies stay small, I think it's more like unable to grow past a certain size due to various factors such as conservative mindset shunning everything non-German and a false focus on the domestic market instead of the global market which in the last few decades changed faster than German companies were willing to adapt. That's like me saying I "value a lower wage" when in fact I'm unable to get a higher wage because I've stagnated in my career doing the same thing for 20 years.
As they have missed the boat on the global high-growth tech market of the last couple of decades, they're stuck in the stagnation of low-growth markets and certain niches where they fly under the radar and enjoy no competition in their field as the US and China are too busy chasing the high-growth markets of the future, to bother competing there. It's a safe place to be in the market but there's also almost no growth there so hiring is slow and so is wage growth.
I've worked and interviewed a lot for Mittlestand companies and can say I'm not looking forward to ever stepping foot in one again, until I'm close to retirement maybe.
> I've worked and interviewed a lot for Mittlestand companies and can say I'm not looking forward to ever stepping foot in one again, until I'm close to retirement maybe.
Various stories but here's a compilation of some accumulated experiences in short:
- poor pay. here everyone parrots how Germany values engineers, but as an EE I was making less than a kid making mobile apps in a pure SW company. The finance controlling ladies were paid better than the engineers were. Basically in traditional German companies whoever is closer to the money gets the better pay, finance, sales, marketing, managers, etc. Those who actually have to do the engineering work are the lowest on the food chain as they're the furthest from the "money boys". The engineer-first culture in Germany died in the late '80s to early '90, then the bean-counters took over.
- archaic mentality, working conditions and micromanagement. Our boomer boss didn't want to use Jira so he had me send him emails every Monday describing the status of each task. Boss saw me a few times reading HN and said "go back to work, we're paying you to work, not to browse the internet" even though I was always in time with my deliverables. Also, company policy was everyone had to punch in and out exact times you come and go in the office, including lunch breaks, to make sure everyone was working their full working hours stated in the contract to the minute.
- huge focus on credentials, titles and certifications
- WFH is the devil. because the boss, who sometimes is a shareholder in the company, can't "see you work" and automatically assumes you're slacking off instead of working while you're at home, and can't come to tap you on the shoulder whenever he needs something because he wants to have the answer immediately and not have to type it in Slack and wait 5 minutes for a response. Also he disliked calls, and always wanted to have the meetings in person in the meeting room for the most basic things that could have been cleared up in a Slack message.
Pandemic dragged them remote kicking and screaming. Proffered to have us come to the office with masks rather than WFH. Before the pandemic one colleague broke his leg skiing and so he couldn't drive to the office anymore, and the company preferred to pay a taxi to drive him to the office everyday rather than let him WFH.
- extreme avarice on pointless things. I was printing plane and train tickets for my vacation on the office printer and the boss said to "stop using company resources for your own interest". Company was still issuing the same 100 Euro 1080p monitors and cheapo laptops with 8 gigs of RAM to engineers that they issued to reception lady in 2020 because "everyone gets the same period". I was laughed out for asking for a 200 Euro 4k monitor and a better laptop with 16Gigs of RAM because "why do you need it? everyone does their job fine with the older machines?". While the boss was buying himself the latest MacBook Pro, Apple Display, iPad Pro on the day they were launched.
- stupid rules for the sake of rules with massive double standards. The boss heard about companies getting hacked so se had the IT admin crank up the security nags to paranoid levels having us getting signed out of our Microsoft accounts every hour or so and phones being locked down. Then he got annoyed by those extreme settings and told the IT admin, "yeah, could you please remove the security barriers, but just for me, I know what I'm doing, I don't need them".
- nepotism. In Mittlestand companies, the workforce mainly consists of friends, former university colleagues or former acquaintances of the boss and managers working there, so such cliques are formed, around which the important information travels by word of mouth with everyone else on a need to know basis in written form. If you come from outside those cliques, especially as a non german speaking foreigner, you're looked at with suspicion and kept in the dark on many things which limit your growth in the company. Also, as these companies tend to be in more rural areas, people there tend also to be more rural-minded and conservative, with you being from the same village as the bosses, being important in your status in the company and you getting a warm welcome and not being treated with suspicion.
And with the cliques come the gossips. I had some periods when I kept getting sick quite frequently so I had to be on sick leave a lot, and everyone at the company was gossiping behind my back that I'm taking sick leave to avoid coming to work.
The funny thing is, what you described closely resembles a stereotypical Polish company called "januszex" [1], yet many Polish people would rather work for a German company if given choice.
[1] Janusz - a male name common among Polish boomers
> "That's like me saying I "value a lower wage" when in fact I'm unable to get a higher wage because I've stagnated in my career doing the same thing for 20 years."
A person in that position would probably phrase it as "I value job stability". Some people prefer that to chasing higher salaries.
There' stability and there's also stagnation. High growth potential does not automatically mean instability.
When choosing careers many young people prefer to go in the fields where there is growth, not stagnation. That's why tech is so popular and mechanical engineering is not.
It’s incredible how the US has lead the world in so many areas. What are some of the factors that other countries lack from a political standpoint where the US excels ?
- European regulation would swiftly destroy any technical innovation coming out of Europe
- There is certain benefit to companies being HQed in USA - legitimacy, American law being standard. E.g. Many European startups end up being officially HQed in USA, even if founders, majority of work is done in Europe - access to VC funding.
- USA companies are "using" intellectual capital of EU - many companies on an upward trajectory got acquired by USA companies - e.g. Skype. In my city most engineers either work remotely for USA companies, or work in European office of an American company
- Just European mentality - lower tolerance for potential failure, less "go for the moon" mentality, more "collectivism" experienced by higher taxes or super strict employment law in many places
- There are "network" effects to doing most types of business. Notice that most companies outside of USA are either resources (e.g. Aramco), hardware (network effects in Asia), outsourcing (the whole point is being in cheaper place than USA, e.g. TCS), medical (not sure why so many are from non-USA), banks (those need to be everywhere).
I'm not sure how to interpret the "GDP per working hour" metric. Are people in Ireland significantly more productive than people in other countries? Or how do we explain Ireland's significant lead on those charts? It sounds as vague or as useful as "the average temperature of all patients in a hospital". Also, the two links you provided show very different ranking of countries.
At the same time, I don't know how to properly measure human productivity. I mean, how do you compare productivity of people working at OpenAI to productivity of people working at Walmart?
> Also, the two links you provided show very different ranking of countries
Different years.
> At the same time, I don't know how to properly measure human productivity. I mean, how do you compare productivity of people working at OpenAI to productivity of people working at Walmart?
Exactly. Just because Ireland has a lot of services HQed there due to a beneficial tax regime doesn't make an Irish person working 40h at Google who count all EU revenues there more or less productive than someone working at a midsized German manufacturer of critical car components (say brakes).
GDP per hour worked is the least bad way of measuring we have, and I'm not aware of other ones. It can easily be skewed though, because it relies on a poor metric at its base, GDP.
My point was just that the difference between US and EU is minimal, with the imperfect way of measuring it. If anyone has a better way I'm all ears, but I highly doubt it will show anything different.
One factor is that articles in the US set the success metrics. If market cap and total GDP matter to you then sure, US is the scoreboard leader. If things like life expectancy, health, work life balance, et al matter to you: less so.
Like others have commented I very much like the work environment in the US, and like my work. But for many, and probably most workers in the US life is very hard, especially when compared to wealthy countries.
>If things like life expectancy, health, work life balance, et al matter to you: less so.
The thing is, you need money(a strong industry and a strong market economy) to afford to give your workers all these perks. If you just write them down as laws, many investors will simply avoid setting up shop in your country, meaning the workers in those countries might have good perks on paper but they'll have to settle with much lower wages because of the much fewer opportunities available to them.
- Excessive politcal lobbying and influence by private companies leads to unprecedented profits by said companies
- Zero checks and balances against monopolies allows them to grow even larger without any stops in check
- Both previous factors makes GDP skyrocket, while inequality grows bigger too
Due to lack of political will / influence by pro-gun organizations, US proudly leads the world in the number of mass shootings too, so it's not just the best when it comes to MORE MONEY, but also more bullets :)
D. Lack of a proper safety net means most Americans are desperate for money no matter how much they have. This helps fuel all of the aforementioned trends.
America is the land of hustling and exploitation…it’s just the best place to grow a business. They suck up the talented entrepreneurs from all over the world because of this.
This has many advantages but also disadvantages, such as individuals and businesses being sociopathic in the pursuit of profit.
> individuals and businesses being sociopathic in the pursuit of profit
I'm a Turkish immigrant who's been living in Germany since more than a third of my life. While more back in Istanbul, I see individuals and businesses behaving like this everywhere. I've only been once to the US (loved the NYC and Chicago - crazy), so my exposure is plainly touristic, is this really so bad there to make it a clear disadvantage?
Can someone who has personal experience in both sides of the world care to make a best attempt for a neutral comparison?
"UnitedHealth Group Incorporated is a for-profit American multinational managed healthcare and insurance company based in Minnetonka, Minnesota. It offers healthcare products and insurance services"
There is a very clear break of the distribution at around the $500bln level. This suggests that there might be a different generative process behind the valuations of the top 7 companies in the list. A log plot of a much wider range might be more informative as to what is going on.
I hate how "market capitalization" is used. Intuitively it means how much of the market is served by the particular company, when in reality people use it to refer to the value of the company on markets where we trade shares of companies. As illustrated by this chart, those two numbers have at best a tenuous correlation: For example Tesla, a comparatively small car manufacturer, can be found on this chart, while their much larger competitors can't.
"Market value" (like in the HN title vs. on the site) is a much better word.
Some things that might intuitively contribute to a companies bigness but won't be reflected in market cap:
* Debt vs equity funding - a company that issues debt to raise money will have a smaller market cap than a company issuing an equivalent amount of equity. Enterprise value is a different measure which does include this (and would rank e.g. Toyota higher)
* Taxation differences
* Obviously publicly owned companies won't appear here at all, e.g. famously many oil & gas companies are government owned etc