NEW YORK (voa) – When one thinks of the U.S. retailer Wal-Mart, one thinks of stadium-size stores with row upon row of consumer goods ranging from televisions to turkeys.
Now, one might also think of Wal-Mart as “number-one.”
The U.S. financial magazine Fortune has issued its annual list of the top 500 U.S. companies on the basis of annual revenues, and Wal-Mart has overtaken the big oil company ExxonMobil as king of the financial hill.
Wal-Mart, which was number-two on the list a year ago, has gone from a company that made $1 billion in annual sales in 1979 to one that makes that much on good days. Overall, Wal-Mart took in about $220 billion last year.
Oddly, Fortune decided to include scandal-plagued energy trader Enron at number five in the rankings, moving up two spots from a year earlier. Don’t expect to see Enron on the list again though, as it filed for bankruptcy late last year, amid allegations of financial wrongdoing.
