The 20 Companies With the Largest Market Capitalizations in the World – Oct 2015

The 20 publicly traded companies with the largest market capitalizations. Since my June list of the top 20 stocks many of the market caps have declined slightly.

Google and Amazon were star performers in the last 4 months with Google up $127 billion and Amazon increasing $96 billion moving Amazon from outside the top 20 into 8th place. Facebook increased in value by $64 billion and moved from the 18th largest market cap to 7th. The China market declined quite rapidly since June and the largest Chinese companies saw significant drops in market cap.

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China and China Mobile dropped from the top 10 (replaced by Facebook and Amazon). That results in USA companies holding the top 10 spots (the next 5 are either Chinese or Swiss).

The next ten most valuable companies:

Market capitalization shown are of the close of business October 30th, as shown on Google Finance.

The 11th to 20th most valuable companies includes 3 Chinese companies, 3 USA companies, 3 Swiss companies and 1 Japanese company. Alibaba, Tencent, China Construction Bank and Walmart dropped out of the top 20 (replaced by Amazon, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble and Toyota). Alibaba remained above $200 in market cap making it the only company worth more than 200 billion that missed the cut. In the top 20 the USA gained 2 spots, China lost 3 and Japan gained 1.

The total value of the top 20 has barely changed since my June post on the top 20 most valuable companies in the world: from $6.046 trillion to $6.054 trillion. Since my October 2014 post of the 20 most valuable companies in the world the total value of the top 20 companies has risen from $5.722 trillion to $6.054 trillion, an increase of $332 billion. Several companies have been replaced in the last year to create the current top 20 list.

Related: Global Stock Market Capitalization from 2000 to 2012 – Stock Market Capitalization by Country from 1990 to 2010 – Historical Stock Returns

A few other companies of interest (based on their market capitalization):

Alibaba, China, $207 billion.

Samsung, Korea, $196 billion.**
Walt Disney, USA, $194 billion.
Visa, USA, $191 billion.
Anheuser Busch, Belgium, $189 billion.
Verizon, USA, $189 billion.
Walmart, USA, $186 billion.
Coca-Cola, USA, $186 billion.
China Construction Bank, China, $184 billion*.
Bank of America, USA, $178 billion.
Tencent, China, $179 billion*.
Chevron, USA, $169 billion.
Royal Dutch Shell, Netherlands, $167 billion.
Oracle, USA, $166 billion.
Citigroup, USA, $162 billion.
Agricultural Bank of China, China, $160 billion**
Gilead Sciences, USA, $160 billion.
Merck, USA, $155 billion.

PepsiCo, USA, $150 billion
Bank of China, China, $138 billion
Sanofi, France, $130 billion
China Life Insurance Company, China, $115 billion
Novo Nordisk, Denmark, $110 billion
BHP, Australia, $88 billion (down $71 billion since October 2014)

All these figures are approximate as stock buybacks and distributions are only shown quarterly, with Apple’s continued large buybacks the market cap is likely a small bit overstated for them (if I used only the price of GOOG, instead of using GOOG and GOOGL, Apple would be worth more that the other 2).

Market capitalization figures were taken from Google finance (Yahoo has vastly different market caps for GOOG and GOOGL which are just different classes of stock of the same company). ADRs were chosen, if available (to have the cap reported in USD).
* market cap taken from Google finance based on the Hong Kong exchange (no ADRs option was available) and converted to USD.
** market cap taken from Google finance based on the Korean exchange (ADRs doesn’t show market cap) and converted to USD.