The July 24, 2006 issue of Fortune, featuring its Fortune 500 list
The
Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by
Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500
U.S. closely held and
public corporations as ranked by their
gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of
excise taxes companies collect.
[, USPages.com.] The list includes publicly and privately-held companies for which revenues are publicly available. The first Fortune 500 list was published in 1955.
Wal-Mart was the largest company on the list in 2007 and 2008.
ExxonMobil was in second place in 2007 and 2008, but overtook
Wal-Mart in 2009.
Although the Fortune 500 list is the most familiar one, similar gross revenue lists of the top firms range from the highest ranking
Fortune 100 including the top one hundred to the broader ranking
Fortune 1000 that includes the top thousand firms. Often the membership on the smaller lists is quite stable, however, the ranking on the lists may change over time, depending upon revenues and often, because of mergers among firms already listed.
See also
