Thanks to its acquisition of the Corus group, Tata Steel has made it to the Fortune 500 list even as India's largest corporate Reliance Industries climbed 63 places up to the 206th rank. Companies qualify to the list on the basis of their revenues.
Ratan Tata's Tata Steel has also been named as the company with the highest revenue growth of over 353 per cent over the past year, thanks to the consolidation of Corus' revenues with its balance sheet.
Among all the Indian companies, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries is ranked second after government-owned Indian Oil. Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum, ONGC and State Bank of India are the other Indian companies that figure on the list.
SBI is the seventh biggest climber among all the global companies, while RIL and BPCL have been ranked 23rd and 50th in terms of gains from the previous year rankings. The rankings are based on 2007 audited revenues.
US-based retail chain Wal-Mart continued to remain the world's biggest corporate with revenues of $378 billion. Exxon Mobile and Royal Dutch Shell are the toppers of the global list with revenues of $373 billion and $355 billion respectively.
Oil major Exxon Mobile at $40.6 billion was the world's most profitable company, followed by Shell and GE with profits of $31 billion and $22 billion, respectively. Among the money losers, General Motors (9th on the list) made history of sorts with a loss of $38.7 billion.
There were fewer American companies on the list this time (153 as compared to 162 last year) while as many as 29 Chinese companies made it to the list the best ever performance by China.