Taps Coogan – October 6th, 2020

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The following chart, from HowMuch.net, shows the largest companies in the world by market capitalization in 2020.

The largest companies in the world are Apple ($1.9 trillion), Saudi Aramco ($1.8 trillion), Microsoft and Amazon ($1.5 trillion each), and Google ($969 billion).

The visualization makes the poles of the modern economic landscape increasingly clear. Despite 30 years as ’emerging markets,’ no companies from Central and South America or Africa make the list and only two companies from Oceania (BHP and CSL) register. Even Europe is increasingly becoming an economic sideshow, having failed to meaningfully participate in the last two generations of tech expansion and fielding exactly zero large tech companies founded within the last 40 years. With Europe’s demographic, regulatory, and tax trajectory inexorably headed towards ‘even less competitive,’ one has to wonder what this map will look like in another 20 years.

It’s worth noting that a number of very large Chinese state-owned enterprises, such as Sinopec, have been left off the list.

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