Name: An in-depth look at the 2023 Fortune Global 500
Uploaded: 2023-08-01
Duration: 6 min 47 s
Description: This year’s list tells a story of inflation and global tensions.

This year’s list tells a story of inflation and global tensions.

An in-depth look at the 2023 Fortune Global 500

Illustration by Chris DeLorenzo for Fortune

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The global 500 ranks the largest companies in the world by revenue. The smallest company on this year's list has about $31 billion in revenue. In contrast, the smallest company in the US 500 this year has about $7 billion in revenue. While the world is getting more fragmented in ways, the risks are getting more connected and correlated. So I think the challenge is resiliency. Mortgage rates rose more than 3%. Home prices rose by 8% that impacts affordability for home ownership. The economics of every geography are slightly different but there is definitely a commonality around inflation and general uncertainty. 2022 really stood out for um expectations that we were going to have a recession. There was also an increase in focus on us. China tensions. A lot of talk about decoupling and a big transformation to the global commodity market with a real redirection of commodity exports as Russia directed more of its exports east and south. And we saw that Europe did a pivot to the west and away from Russia. Inflation was starting to rise before Russia invaded Ukraine, but that invasion affected the world's oil and food supplies and drove prices up for that. The conventional wisdom is that inflation hurts corporate profits. The profits of the global 500 were down slightly from last year, but collectively they still earned almost $3 trillion in profits, which is the second highest total ever. Number one is Walmart. It is their 10th consecutive year. At number one. Number two is Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian national crude oil producer. Number three is state grid which is China's big National Electric Utility. Number four is Amazon and number five is China National Petroleum. The story that the US 500 tells has recently been very much a story about the huge domination of big tech, all of these companies building tech expertise into huge businesses. And of course, that's an important global story. But the Global 500 reminds you that the rise of big tech is just one story. All those companies are still there. But you also look down the list and you're seeing huge European and Chinese oil companies, big global auto manufacturers like Volkswagen and Toyota. And it reminds you how much of the global workforce and how much global capital is still tied up in laboring in these dominant industries of the 20th century. All of these companies are trying to transition into a 21st century economy that might be greener and higher tech, but they're not there yet. And this list kind of proves that we need a holistic policy that the into consideration, energy reliability, affordability and energy security, oil and gas will continue to be part of the energy mix for decades. Oil prices surged in 2022. And as a result, Saudi Aramco's revenue was up about 50% over two 1021. So they were just within about $8 billion of catching Wal Mart, which in terms of companies this big, that's like a rounding error came really, really close. They also had the most profitable year that any global 500 company has ever had. They earned 159 billion with a B dollars in profits. There are more companies from greater China than there are from the US. But the US companies on the global 500 collectively brought in quite a bit more revenue than the ones from greater China. We are a long way, a long, long way from being anywhere close to the kind of representation in leadership, whether that's of companies or governments or institutions that better represents the societies that we serve. May today, close to 60% of our employee base are people of color as a Latina myself. I'm passionate about diversity inclusion, equal opportunity. First of all, it's good for business, it responds to changes we're seeing in demographics and it honors our mission. I think that in 2023 the market is still waiting to see this recession because of the magnitude of rate hikes that we've seen across central banks and what kind of slowdown will it be? Is a soft landing possible? Is it going to be a mild recession or is there a risk that the longer this is delayed, that you could have a synchronized global downturn? We have yet to see a resolution of Russia's war on Ukraine. We've seen permanent shifts into the commodity markets, but we'll continue to see that trade patterns, you know, investment flows, supply chain resilience, reducing dependencies remain very much in the narrative. And I think you will see that the global South, the emerging market countries are going to play a bigger role. Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Indonesia. Economic growth in 2023 is predicted to grow in the 4.5 up to 5.3% we believe will grow due to the potential increase of domestic economy ahead. And I think when it comes to, to Russia, when it comes to the pandemic, um it's a climate change and to those challenges that are part of the agenda for us. Uh leaders of our generation, I think we we were not trained for any of those. And these past few years of pandemic geopolitical crisis, supply chain disruption, climate change and inflationary pressures mark the dawn of a new era which I call multipolar. This new multi polar world requires companies to become better, to become ever more agile and to constantly transform and adapt. I don't know what the future is going to look like. But what we've learned as Walmart through the last few years, in particular is staying agile, staying nimble, having data, really thinking about how we use that is critical. You need to adapt much faster, you no longer have time to learn everything you need to learn as much as you can and then act.