An (almost) illuminating ranking

Last week, A.T. Kearney released The Global Champions 2009, its ranking of the 25 companies (out of the world's 2,500 large international companies) that outperformed their peers from 2004-2008. There is much that can be gleaned from the ranking, seeing as how the 25 companies that made it averaged 15 percent growth annually, while the average for all 2,500 companies was an 8 percent loss. The list also shows that bigger firms were not those that necessarily prospered, and it's interesting to note that the companies included hail from a diverse spectrum of industries.

Still, I can't help but feel that the list's findings aren't as impactful as Chairman Paul Laudicina makes them out to be. "The financial crisis has greatly accelerated the rate of change in underlying global business conditions," said Paul Laudicina, chairman and managing officer of A.T. Kearney. "Companies that were able to align a disciplined growth-oriented strategy to the transformed economic landscape were the ones that dominated." That may be true, of course, but the ranking only encapsulated the first few kicks of the recession, before these companies had fully experienced the effects of it. A.T. Kearney's ranking, I believe, will be much more illuminating, I believe, when eventually compared with its 2010 edition.

To create the list, A.T. Kearney looks at the median value growth rate and the sales growth rate for the 2,500 largest publicly listed companies around the world. It considers only companies with 2008 sales greater than $10 billion and at least 25 percent of sales derived from outside their home region. The top-25 companies are as follows: 1. Nintendo (Japan); 2. Google (United States); 3. Apple (United States); 4. Doosan (South Korea); 5. Hyundai Heavy Industries (South Korea); 6. GDF Suez (France); 7. MTM (South Africa); 8. Monsanto (United States); 9. Inditex (Spain); 10. BHP Billiton (Australia); 11. Reliance Industries (India); 12 Jacobs Engineering (United States); 13. World Fuel Services (United States); 14. Fouor (Unites States); 15. ABB (Switzerland); 16. CNOOC (China); 17. Amazon.com (United States); 18. America Movil (Mexico); 19. Occidental Petroleum (United States); 20. Teva Pharmaceutical (Israel); 21. Mapfre (Spain); 22. Petrobras (Brazil); 23. Kuhne + Nagel (Switzerland); 24. Sasol (South Africa); 25. Komatsu (Japan).