Nine Indian firms figure in Forbes'' list of fine corporations

New Delhi: Nine Indian firms, including Indian Oil, HLL, Infosys, Reliance and Wipro, have figured in the Forbes' latest global list of finest large corporations.

The A-list of best big companies was prepared by not merely measuring stock prices or profits, but, rather, the ability of a company to expand its sales and income, earning good profits that reward shareholders over the long haul.

"Some of the bigger companies, notably the big European telecom firms, came close, while others, in particular the automakers, were far out of the running," says Forbes.

The nine Indian firms that appeared on the A-list were: Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, State Bank of India, Reliance Industries, Hindustan Petroleum, ONGC, Hindustan Lever, Wipro and Infosys Technologies. While IOC topped the list of Indian firms with highest sales of $23,288 million, ONGC was the numero uno Indian company in terms of market capitalisation.

In terms of overall market capitalisation, IOC was ranked 133, while Reliance followed at 199 and HLL at 211. BPCL was ranked lowest among the Indian firms at 381. IOC was ranked 56th in the global list in terms of annual sales.

According to Forbes, in order to be eligible for consideration, a company must have had annual sales of at least $5 billion in its latest reported financial year or a market value of $5 billion or more in mid-March. Of the 60,000 corporations around the world with common stock, about 1,100 met one of those criteria.