Exxon Mobil Corp tops Fortune 500 list

The 2009 Fortune 500 list includes Exxon Mobil Corp ranked above Wal-Mart Stores Inc., shrugging off the oil price bubble and the magazine called the worst year ever for the country’s largest publicly traded companies.

Fortune’s watched list, released on Sunday, ranked companies by their revenue in 2008. Irving, Texas-based Exxon took in US$442.85 billion in revenue last year, up almost 19 per cent from 2007. The company also raked in the biggest annual profit, earning US$45.2 billion.

Among the hardest hit in 2008 were financial services companies, Fortune said. Banks, securities firms and insurers took cumulative losses of US$213.4 billion, accounting for almost 70 per cent of the total dollar decline from the peak year of 2006, the magazine said.

Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp, which were No. 8 and No. 9 respectively last year, each slipped a couple notches from the Top 10.

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart had held the top spot for six of the last seven years but fell to No. 2 this year. Still, the retail giant’s 2008 revenue climbed 7 per cent to US $405.6 billion, as the battered economy sent more consumers searching for bargains. The world’s largest retailer took in US$13.4 billion in annual profit, an increase of about 5 per cent.

Exxon and Wal-Mart, 2008 was far from rosy for most of remaining companies on the list.

Overall earnings plunged 85 per cent to US$98.9 billion from US$645 billion in 2007, the biggest one-year decline in the 55-year history of the Fortune 500 list.

ConocoPhillips climbed one place to fourth, with US$230.76 billion in revenue.