corporations
Most valuable listed companies: US tech giants dominate
An Apple Store in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The group is at the top of the 100 most valuable listed companies in the world. photo
© Kathy Willens/AP/dpa
US companies continue to dominate the top 100 most valuable publicly traded corporations in the world. German companies are gaining some weight again. However, it is questionable whether this is a trend reversal.
US corporations are benefiting from the hype on the stock exchanges Artificial Intelligence (AI). Apple is again at the top of the 100 most valuable listed companies in the world with a market value of a good 3 trillion dollars as of June 30, followed by Microsoft with around 2.5 trillion dollars. This is the result of an evaluation by the auditing and consulting company EY. With the exception of the Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco, the ten highest rated companies are headquartered in the USA. At least two German companies made it back into the top 100.
In the first half of the year, the software group SAP came in 71st place with a market value of 159 billion dollars (end of 2022: 106th place), Siemens climbed from 115th place to 91st place with a good 132 billion dollars. The industrial gases group Linde, which since the merger with Praxair, which is headquartered in Ireland, took 57th place. At the end of last year, Germany was not even among the top 100.
Overall, slightly more European corporations were able to place themselves in the top 100 than at the end of last year. The number rose from 16 to 19. However, their importance on world stock exchanges has been declining for years. According to EY, at the end of 2007, before the peak of the financial crisis, 46 of the 100 most valuable companies in the world were from Europe, seven of them from Germany. The most valuable European company in the first half of the year was the French luxury group LVMH (ranked 12th).
EY: US companies in particular are benefiting from the new megatrend
It would be gratifying if Europe regained some of its importance, but that would not be a trend reversal, said Henrik Ahlers, CEO of EY in Germany. “The current AI boom shows it very clearly: Once again, it is primarily US companies that are benefiting from a new megatrend on the stock exchanges and are gaining in importance.” US companies account for $24 trillion of the total value of the top 100 corporations of $34.4 trillion.
“The global euphoria surrounding the new opportunities that AI could offer for companies and private individuals has created a new dynamic on the world’s stock exchanges,” explained Ahlers. In the middle of 2023, there were 23 technology groups among the 100 most highly rated listed companies worldwide – at the end of 2022 there were still 19 companies. The value of these tech companies rose by 45 percent – according to the information, no other industry recorded an even remote increase in value.
In the top 10 alone, alongside Apple and Microsoft, are tech giants such as the Google parent company Alphabet, the online giant Amazon, the chip manufacturer Nvidia and the Facebook group Meta.
Last year, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine put considerable pressure on the stock markets. With the interest rate hikes by the major central banks, the interest-sensitive tech giants in particular faced headwind in 2022.