Even as the global Covid-19 pandemic outbreak crippled the economic environment across geographies by bringing all businesses to halt, the market capitalisation of the top 100 global companies continues to swell exponentially.
According to a latest report by London-based accounting company PwC, the new worth of top global giants swelled from $10.3 trillion to $31.7 trillion, an increase of 48 per cent, between March 2020 till March 2021 with tech major Apple at the top.
As per the report Apple topped the list with $2.85 trillion in market cap, followed by Saudi Aramco, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon. While Apple regained its crown as the world's largest company by market capitalisation with a valuation 6 percent and 13 percent ahead of Saudi Aramco and Microsoft, respectively.
While Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries stoot at 58th position, tech giant Tata Consultancy Services stood at 69th spot. The two were the only companies from India in the global list.
The report claimed that there were no direct entrants to the ‘Global Top 100' companies via IPO despite a buoyant IPO market. “The threshold to enter the list is now $129 billion, potentially creating a barrier to future entrants via IPO,” the report noted.
Samsung Electronics Co was the world's 22nd-largest company in terms of market capitalisation, down seven notches from a year earlier. The tech giant was the only South Korean company on the list with a market value of $342 billion, as of March.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co came in 10th, with its market cap reaching $541 billion, up by one notch from a year earlier. Amazon's market capitalisation increased by 61 per cent in the year to March 2021, supported by the growing ‘stay-at-home economy' seen throughout 2020 and into 2021, although Amazon did not move up from fourth position.
Elon Musk-run Tesla's market capitalisation increased from $96 billion in March 2020 to $641 billion in March 2021, an astonishing 565 per cent increase and a clear outlier in the top 10 risers.
All regions and component countries experienced a relative increase in market capitalisation of the companies listed in the ‘Global Top 100'. In-line with expectations, the United States continues to dominate the ‘Global Top 100′ list in terms of market capitalisation and number of companies, with 59 companies accounting for 65 per cent of total market capitalisation, the data showed.
Also technology continued to be the largest sector in terms of market capitalisation ($10.5 trillion). Global Top 100 Technology companies saw a 71% increase as compared to their value as at March 2020, in-line with the wider industry index performance.
“As a point of comparison, in the private company domain, half of the Top 100 unicorns valued at $1 billion and above (at 31 March 2021) were from the US, broadly in line with the ‘Global Top 100' of public companies,” the report noted.
The value of the top 100 unicorns grew by 30 percent to $1.1 trillion in the year to March 2021, behind the public companies' market capitalisation increase in the same period (49 percent).
