20 Indian firms in 500 most valuable globally, Reliance top: Hurun report

Twenty Indian companies, up eight from last year, are among the 500 most-valuable ones in the world, a report released on Friday showed. With a valuation of $202 billion, Reliance Industries was the most valuable Indian company on the list. Globally, it was the 34th biggest company. Apple, worth $2.4 trillion, was the most valuable company, followed by Microsoft, with a value of $1.8 trillion.

In the last year, the top 500 companies of the world lost $11.1 trillion of their value, the 2022 Hurun Global 500 report released by Hurun Research Institute said.

“This year the Hurun Global 500 lost $11 trillion of value, losing all the value created last year but still $7 billion ahead of where the Hurun Global 500 were two years ago,” Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher at Hurun India, said.

Tata Consultancy Services, valued at $139 billion, was the second most valuable Indian company on the list. Four companies of the Gautam Adani-led Adani Group featured in the top 500. These were Adani Transmission, Adani Green, Adani Green Energy and Adani Total Gas. At $63 billion, Adani Enterprises was the most valued among these.

Other companies featured in the top 10 globally included names like Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson and Johnson and Exxon Mobil.

The financial services sector was the biggest contributor to the list, with 104 companies from the sector on the list. United Health Group and Visa were the two financial services companies in the top 10.

While at $2.4 trillion, the media and enterprises sector lost the most money in 2021. Meta Platforms faced a wipeout of $618 billion last year; its valuation now stands at $349 billion.

Zoom, Snap, and Adidas were among the companies that dropped out of the top 500.

Saudi Aramco was the world’s most valuable listed state-controlled company, with a total value of $2.03 trillion. State Bank of India (SBI), at $62 billion, and the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), at $45 billion, were the two biggest state-owned Indian companies. These did not feature in the list as they contained only non-state-controlled companies.

“Global markets have had a bad year, with the exception of India, where the benchmark Sensex was up 12per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Russia’s MOEX were both down by half, Korea’s KOSPI was down 31 per cent, Shenzhen Component Index was down 29 per cent, Nasdaq was down 21 per cent, Shanghai Composite Index was down 16 per cent, South Germany’s DAX down 15 per cent and the UK’s FTSE was flat,” Anas Rahman Junaid, MD and chief researcher at Hurun India said.