On Forbes ratings and the modest charm of world bankers
The article “On the Super Subject Object, or the 147 Committee” refers to a study by Swiss scientists who, using a supercomputer, “calculated” the core of the global economy, consisting of the largest 147 corporations. However, this “core” can be discerned without resorting to powerful computing, for example, using the world-famous ratings of corporations and the richest people on the planet, regularly published by the Fortune and Forbes magazines. True, this will require knowledge of some of the "kitchen secrets" of manufacturers of ratings and an understanding of the meaning of individual indicators ...
Forbes ratings as an alternative to a supercomputer
First of all, the Forbes lists are interesting, as they cover the largest companies of all countries of the world. Fortune lists reflect the picture only for American companies. But since a large proportion of all companies are American in the Forbes lists, information from Fortune can in some cases successfully complement the overall picture of the world.
In 2012, the American Forbes for the ninth time made an annual rating of two thousand of the world's largest companies - Forbes 2000. The rating reflects the layout on the 2011 year. When compiling Forbes 2000, four main indicators are taken into account: 1) revenue (sales), 2) profit, 3) assets, 4) market capitalization.
Aggregates 2000 largest companies - 36 trillion. dollars of revenue (+ 12% to the previous year), 2,64 trillion. USD profit (+ 11%). In doing so, they managed assets on 149 trillion. dollars (+ 8%) and had a market capitalization in 37 trillion. dollars (the figure fell for the year 0,5%).
The ranking includes companies from 66 countries - 4 more than the previous one. The United States (524 companies) and Japan (258 companies) still dominate, together increasing their presence on the 14 list of participants. China continues to be a leader in the current rankings represented by 136 companies, including newcomers to 15. The top three are followed by the United Kingdom (93 companies), South Korea (68) and India (61). The geographical division in the ranking is as follows: 733 companies represent countries in the Asia-Pacific region, 605 - Europe, Middle East and Africa, 524 - USA, 145 - South and Central America. As in the previous year, the rating included 28 Russian companies, four of them were in the first hundred of the list - Gazprom (15-e), Lukoil (68-e), Rosneft (71-e) and Sberbank (90-e).
Forbes 2000 on the "super-subject" of the world economy
Despite the turmoil experienced by the financial sector, this sector dominated the list in 2011, taking up 478 positions. The second most important sector of the economy is oil and gas, however, by the number of companies on the list, it hopelessly lagged behind the financial sector (131 is a member of the list). It is noteworthy that in the Forbes 2000 ranking, published in the 2010 year and reflecting the situation on the 2009 year, the financial sector occupied only 308 positions. It turns out that the position of the financial sector in the Forbes list for two years strengthened more than 1,5 times!
The first few dozen companies from the Forbes magazine list deserve the most attention. Apparently, this is the very “core” of the world economy. Consider the top group of 25 companies in Forbes 2000 (top-25) for the 2012 year. In this elite group there are mainly two sectors of the economy - financial and oil and gas. The financial position accounts for 11 positions, the oil and gas one - 9, and the other sectors - 5. For several years in a row on the Forbes 2000 list, banks occupied. The leaders were alternately JPMorgan Chase (listed as an American bank) and HSBC Holdings (listed as an English bank). However, in the 2012 ranking of the year, the oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil came out on top with the following indicators (billion dollars): revenue - 433,5; profit - 41,1; assets - 333,1; capitalization - 407,4. But the list of financial companies that are members of the 25 group of leaders (in brackets the place in the overall rating and the country of "registry"):
1. JPMorgan Chase (2; USA)
2. ICBC // Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (5; China)
3. HSBC (6; United Kingdom)
4. Berkshire (8; United States)
5. Wells Fargo (9; USA)
6. China Construction Bank (13; China)
7. Citygroup (14; USA)
8. Agricultural Bank of China (19; China)
9. BNP Paribus (20; France)
10. Bank of China (21; China)
11. Banko Santander (23; Spain).
As you can see, the group of leaders is dominated by banks and financial companies of the USA (4 in total) and China (4 in total). The UK, France and Spain each have one bank. However, the “linking” of banks, at least Western ones, to one country or another is fairly conditional. They are all transnational corporations, a significant or even most of their operations are carried out outside the country of registration of the parent (holding) company. It should be noted that the lists of the Forbes magazine clearly underestimate the real place of financial institutions in today's global economy. One of the reasons for this is as follows. Many of the companies in Forbes 2000 are traditionally listed as industrial, commercial or service providers, but in fact they are engaged in large-scale financial operations. This is confirmed by an analysis of their consolidated balance sheets, in which a significant portion of the assets may be in financial instruments (bank deposits, loans and credits, various securities). As part of such industrial or trading holdings, banks, insurance companies, leasing companies, etc. can be created and operate.
Financial “supersubject”: true scale of influence
Another reason is even more serious and at the same time obvious. The Forbes 2000 rating, as we noted, is based on four indicators that are equally accounted for. Rather strange arithmetic. It looks like an addition operation, when watermelons, cucumbers, acorns and fir cones are the components. Yes, such is the modern financial and economic cabalism, to which the average person is taught.
Sales figures (revenues) say little, they are very dependent on the specifics of the industry (sector). For example, trade is characterized by high sales rates with relatively modest values of the other three indicators. The index of business capitalization is subject to largely different kinds of market manipulations.
The profit indicator reflected in the financial statements also says little. It can be “twisted” in the right direction for the owners of the company; today, in general, there is a tendency to underreporting profits to evade taxes. Profits are diverted to various "tax havens". Banks in the top 25, show profits in the range of 10-20 billion. And BNP Paribus and Banko Santander - and even less. I recently had to write about one collective lawsuit in the United States, filed against US banks. The amount of claims in the lawsuit - 43 trillion. dollars It is so much profit, according to the plaintiffs (speaking on behalf of taxpayers), all American banks have been taken offshore from taxation for many years. This is one of the illustrations of the fact that the official profits of banks are only the upper part of a huge iceberg of their real profits.
But the indicator "assets" is extremely important, because he determines the degree of influence of the company. Of course, if desired, this indicator can also be “twisted up”, but to a very limited extent. In the rating of Forbes 2000, this figure seems to be leveled, its role is artificially underestimated. And if we compare the companies included in the Forbes 2000 rating by assets, we will see a striking picture: the absolute dominance of financial companies (primarily banks) over all other Forbes magazine nominees. I will give information about the assets of banks and financial companies in the top-25 (billion dollars):
1) JPMorgan Chase - 2.265,8
2) ICBC // Industrial & Commercial Bank of China - 2.039,1
3) HSBC - 2.550,0
4) Berkshire - 392,6
5) Wells Fargo - 1.313,9
6) China Construction Bank - 1.637,8
7) Citygroup - 1.873,9
8) Agricultural Bank of China - 1.563,9
9) BNP Paribus - 2.539,1
10) Bank of China - 1.583,7
11) Banko Santander - 1.624,7.
In total, the 11 financial-banking participants of the top 25 account for 19.384,5 billion dollars of assets. Or rounded up 19,4 trillion dollars. Which, by the way, is significantly higher than the annual GDP of the United States (about 15 trillion dollars in 2011). In this company, only one entity has relatively modest assets - Berkshire. This is a financial (investment) company owned by American billionaire Warren Buffet. It is the only entity that is not a credit institution, the other 10 entities are banks.
And what about the oil and gas companies in the top 25? The total assets of 9 of such companies, according to Forbes, amounted to 2.493,1 billion dollars. And the total assets of the remaining 5 companies of the top 25 companies were equal to 1.736,3 billion dollars. Thus, the total assets of the top 25 companies were estimated at 23.613,9 billion dollars. , or Rounded 23,6 trillions of dollars. It turns out that banks in the top-25 group accounted for 82% of all assets. Here you have the real place of these institutions in the global economy. It is even “cooler” than the picture drawn by scientists from Zurich. All the "conspiracy" posted on the pages of the famous American magazine! No need for super heavy-duty computers. Also, no “insider information” is needed, which the informational partisans like to excite readers.
On the "modest" banks that are not included in the Forbes magazine's top 25
But that's not all. Usually journalists and even economists look at the top of the rankings. To master the entire list is really difficult. However, let's go over the top 100 list. There on fairly modest lines we find many of our good acquaintances, who were adorned in the top 10 a few years ago. Today they behave more “modestly” after those scandals that broke out during the last financial crisis (various manipulations, manipulations and outright scams; generous distribution to bankers of billions and trillions in the form of “stabilization” loans, etc.). But the size of the assets they have is such that they would envy the leader of the list Exxon Mobil. Let me remind you that the size of the assets of this oil and gas leader is 331,1 billion dollars. But the volume of assets held by some banks and financial companies outside the top 25 (billion dollars; before the name is a place in the overall rating):
39. ING Group - 1.653,0
52. Deutsche Bank - 2.809,4
53. Barclays - 2.425,2
64. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial - 1.654,9
77. Goldman Sachs Group - 923,2
83. Bank of America - 2.129,0
90. Sberbank - 282,4
94. Societe General - 1.531,1
98. Mizuho Financial - 1.934,4
100. Morgan Stanley - 749,9.
In modest places (52-e and 53-e), they got into the ranking of Deutsche Bank and Barclays, which, as you can see, have assets that exceed the assets of the banking leader JPMorgan Chase. By the way, all the indicated “trinity” of banks is present in the first lines of the “supersubject” list, calculated by the Swiss. Any bank from the top 100 is even bigger than the largest oil and gas companies in terms of assets. In the first hundred of the Forbes list, there was also a Russian Sberbank. We specifically included it in our selective list to show that by assets it looks like a midget against the background of Western or Chinese banking giants.
If you build the ratings in terms of assets, then I think that you will get a completely different picture than the one that is drawn on the glossy pages of Forbes magazine. In my opinion, in the first hundred companies in this case, about the 80 positions would belong to banks and other financial companies. And in the list of top 25 there would be 25 banks!
By the way, Forbes is doing a different trick: every year it makes another rating called Forbes 500. It is based only on sales and profits. Assets generally do not take into account. For obvious reasons, there are very few banks in this list. With the help of Forbes 500, the American magazine takes the world banks into the “shadow”, which does them a considerable service.
However, for financial capital, the main thing is not sales, but profits and control over the economy. The financial oligarchy hides profits in offshore and charity funds. And it disguises its true economic influence in the form of the beautiful and crafty ratings of the glossy Forbes magazine.
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