13 UAE companies on Forbes' Global 2000 lisst

Thirteen UAE companies have made it to Forbes’ Global 2000 list this year, ranking among the biggest and most powerful public listed companies in the world. The Forbes Global 2000 is a list compiled by Forbes magazine of the top 2,000 global listed companies. Firms are ranked according to scores based on sales, profits, assets and market value (calculated in April 2012). The 13 local companies were led by Etisalat, which ranked No. 509 on the list. It had a market value of $20 billion. “The UAE made its debut on our list in 2008 and now has 13 companies with aggregate sales of $39 billion and $79 billion in market value,” the Forbes report said. Total assets of the 13 UAE firms amounted to $419.2 billion while they made a combined profit of $7.8 billion in the year gone by. Among the UAE’s largest listed firms on the global 2000 list, there are eight banks, two oil and gas companies, and one each from telecom, ports/shipping and real estate sectors. Besides Etisalat, others among the top five UAE companies on the coveted list include National Bank of Abu Dhabi at No. 772 ($9.5 billion in market value), First Gulf Bank at No. 852 ($8.1 billion), Emirates NBD at No. 1034 ($4.8 billion) and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank at No. 1050 ($4.8 billion). In all, there are 45 companies from the six Gulf nations among the global 2000, with Saudi Arabia’s oil titan Saudi Basic Industries (Sabic) leading the GCC’s companies at No. 88 globally, with $84.4 billion in market value. There are 17 companies from Saudi Arabia (with a combined market value of $272.50 billion), 10 from Qatar ($92.9 billion), three from Kuwait ($38.3 billion), and one each from Bahrain (Ahli United Bank, ranked at No. 1621 globally with a market value of $3.8 billion) and Oman (BankMuscat, ranked at No. 1830 globally with a market value of $3 billion). Globally, America leads the list both in terms of top three companies (Exxon Mobile, JPMorgan Chase, and General Electric) as well as the overall number of companies in the top 2000 (524 firms with a combined market value of $13,389 billion). Japan has the second largest share of companies (258 firms) on the list, followed by China (136 firms).