Exxon Mobil tops 2009 Fortune 500 list

Energy giant Exxon Mobil gains top place on Fortune magazine’s list of the 500 biggest publicly traded companies, based on revenue.

Exxon Mobile shoved aside retail giant Wal-mart to top the list. The Fortune 500 list was recently released and the world’s largest listed oil company regained the top spot by making $442.9bn of revenue in 2008, in spite of the decline of energy prices. Wal-mart had held first place for the past seven years. The company also was the most profitable, earning $45.2bn last year and displacing Wal-Mart, which fell to runner-up after topping the list for six of the past seven years. It was a bad year all around and this is shown by the fact that earnings of the Fortune 500 fell 85 per cent to $99bn, in what the magazine said was the biggest one-year drop in the list’s 55 years. The hardest hit were the financial services companies; for example, Citigroup and Bank of America fell out of the top 10, while Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual and Wachovia were among 38 companies dropping out.