Three more on Global 500 list

Three more on Global 500 list

Three more mainland companies made it onto the 2007 Fortune Global 500 List, the largest increase among all economies, published results from the United States business magazine showed yesterday.
A total of 22 companies on the mainland are among the world's 500 largest companies, in addition to two from Hong Kong and six from Taiwan. Four years ago, only 11 companies on the mainland made the list.
State-owned oil and chemical giant Sinopec had the highest ranking - 17th, the first time that a mainland company broke into the top 20. It is also the second-largest company in Asia, following Toyota.
Three out of the top five Asian businesses are in China, reversing results on the 2006 list, in which three companies were from Japan and two from China.
China Minmetals and China National Offshore Oil entered the top 500 for the first time.
Robust growth in the Chinese economy was the biggest boost to performance of firms on the list.
The Chinese government raised its economic growth figures for 2006 on Wednesday by 0.4 percentage points to an annual growth rate of 11.1 percent.
Sinopec's revenue reached $131.64 billion in 2006, one-third higher than the previous year, while China National Petroleum had the nation's highest profits, at $13.27 billion, the world's 17th highest. Both companies benefited greatly from rising oil prices.
Ongoing reforms also helped deliver better results for the State-owned giants.
The Agricultural Bank of China, the only one of the nation's Big Four banks that has not gone public but is reforming its operations in preparation to do so, also boosted its profitability, by 471 percent.
Wal-Mart continued its position as the largest company in the world, with a revenue of $351 billion, followed by Exxon Mobile and Royal Dutch Shell.
The total revenue of the Fortune Global 500 were $21 trillion, almost half of the world's total GDP.