By IANS,
Mumbai : Indian steel major Tata Steel has for the first time made it to the prestigious Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest corporations, a company statement said Wednesday.
The company ranks 231 in terms of revenue, the statement said.
Interestingly, Fortune magazine in its July 21, 2008 issue, had for the first time included Tata Steel in its Global 500 list but the company was ranked 315th in terms of revenue.
This ranking was, however, based on the company’s total revenues in the first three quarters of the current fiscal and the last quarter of the previous fiscal.
Following the announcement of the company’s annual results, Fortune has re-ranked Tata Steel.
In a clarification on its website, Fortune has said: “Tata Steel’s revenue for fiscal year end March 31, 2008 — released by the company after the Global 500 publication deadline — was $32.8 billion. Had the information been available, the company would have placed 231 on the list. The company ranked 315th in the listing, based on revenue for the four quarters ended Dec. 31, 2007, of $25.7 billion.”
The Tata Steel registered the biggest year-on-year increase in revenues – a 353.2 percent change – among all the companies on the list.
Tata Steel, flagship of the Tata Group’s 98 operating companies in seven business sectors, was set up in 1907 as Asia’s first and India’s largest integrated private sector steel producer. It is now the world’s 5th largest steelmaker in terms of revenues.
With the recent acquisition of Corus, the combined enterprise has a total crude steel production capacity of around 30 million tonnes with over 82,000 employees working in 27 countries on four continents.
Fortune Global 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine owned by the world’s largest media group the United States-based AOL Time Warner. The list ranks the world’s largest companies in terms of gross revenues.
Global retail giant Wal-Mart Stores heads the 2008 list maintaining its number one rank that it had earned last year as well.
Seven Indian companies, including Tata Steel, presently figure on the list. They are: public sector oil major Indian Oil ranked 116th, private sector conglomerate Reliance India Ltd ranked 207th, public sector oil major Bharat Petroleum ranked 287th, public sector oil major Hindustan Petroleum ranked 290th, public sector oil and gas major ONGC ranked 335th and public sector bank State Bank of India ranked 380th.
Interestingly, except for public sector Oil India which has the highest rank among Indian companies, both the private sector companies finding a place in the list – Reliance Industries and Tata Steel – are ranked above the other four Indian companies in the list who are all public sector entities.
This reflects the kind of change that has been taking place in the Indian corporate sector over the last 17 years ever since economic reforms were introduced. Before 1991, no Indian private sector company had ever been included in the prestigious Fortune Global 500 list.