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Forbes’ Global 2000 2021 ranked Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) No. 1 among the world’s largest publicly traded companies. JPMorgan Chase was No. 2, Berkshire Hathaway No. 3, China Construction Bank No. 4 and Saudi Aramco No. 5. The ranking was published on May 13, 2021, and combined sales, profits, assets and market value rather than ranking companies by stock-market capitalization alone.
The word 2021 refers to the edition and publication year—not to a uniform set of calendar-year 2021 results. Forbes used the latest available 12-month financial data around April 16, 2021, and calculated market values using closing share prices on that date. The result is therefore a historical snapshot, not a current ranking.
Forbes Global 2000 2021: the quick answer
- No. 1: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, or ICBC.
- Publication date: May 13, 2021.
- What it measured: Sales, profits, assets and market value, weighted equally.
- Financial data: The latest available 12-month figures collected around April 16, 2021.
- Market-value date: April 16, 2021 closing prices.
- Geographic leader: The United States, with 590 companies.
- Largest non-U.S. grouping reported by Forbes: China, including Hong Kong, with 350 companies.
- Most prominent pandemic pattern: E-commerce and technology companies rose while airlines, hotels, cruise companies and many oil businesses fell.
You can consult the archived Forbes 2021 Global 2000 feature for the historical ranking and methodology. Forbes’ old list address, forbes.com/lists/global2000/, now leads into current Forbes list infrastructure, so it should not be assumed to be a stable 2021 archive.
Top 10 companies in the Forbes Global 2000 2021
The table shows the reported figures in billions of U.S. dollars. Market value is specifically the April 16, 2021 snapshot; sales, profits and assets represent the latest available 12-month data used for the edition. The figures are consolidated and converted into U.S. dollars.
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| Rank | Company | Headquarters | Industry | Sales ($bn) |
Profits ($bn) |
Assets ($bn) |
Market value ($bn) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) | Beijing, China | Banking | 190.5 | 45.8 | 4,914.7 | 249.5 |
| 2 | JPMorgan Chase | New York, United States | Banking and financial services | 136.2 | 40.4 | 3,689.3 | 464.8 |
| 3 | Berkshire Hathaway | Omaha, United States | Conglomerate and financial services | 245.5 | 42.5 | 873.7 | 624.4 |
| 4 | China Construction Bank | Beijing, China | Banking | 173.5 | 39.3 | 4,301.7 | 210.4 |
| 5 | Saudi Aramco | Dhahran, Saudi Arabia | Oil and gas | 229.7 | 49.3 | 510.3 | 1,897.2 |
| 6 | Apple | Cupertino, United States | Technology hardware, software and services | 294.0 | 63.9 | 354.1 | 2,252.3 |
| 7 | Bank of America | Charlotte, United States | Banking | 98.8 | 17.9 | 2,832.2 | 336.3 |
| 8 | Ping An Insurance Group | Shenzhen, China | Insurance and financial services | 169.1 | 20.8 | 1,453.8 | 211.2 |
| 9 | Citigroup | New York, United States | Banking and financial services | 153.9 | 31.3 | 4,159.9 | 140.1 |
| 10 | Amazon | Seattle, United States | Retail and technology | 386.1 | 21.3 | 321.2 | 1,711.8 |
Source: the archived Forbes edition, cross-checked against contemporary Forbes coverage and the published list reproduction. Some secondary reproductions contain duplicated ranks or transcription errors.
What stands out in the top 10?
ICBC held the No. 1 position for the ninth consecutive year. The top 10 included five banks or financial-services groups from the United States or China: ICBC, JPMorgan Chase, China Construction Bank, Bank of America and Citigroup. That concentration is a direct consequence of including assets in the composite methodology.
Apple and Saudi Aramco had substantially higher market values than ICBC, but market value was only one quarter of the ranking formula. Apple’s reported market value was $2.2523 trillion and Saudi Aramco’s was $1.8972 trillion, compared with ICBC’s $249.5 billion. ICBC’s enormous asset base, together with its sales and profit rankings, produced the strongest overall composite score.
Apple was identified in Forbes’ technology coverage as the most profitable company in the ranking, with approximately $63.9 billion in profit. Amazon had the highest sales figure among the top 10 at $386.1 billion, although Walmart—not shown in the top 10 table—was the overall sales leader. Amazon was ranked higher overall because the Global 2000 score also considered profits, assets and market value.
How Forbes calculated the 2021 ranking
Forbes did not add together dollars of sales, profits, assets and market value. Those measures are too different to combine directly. Instead, Forbes created four separate rankings of up to 2,000 companies:
- Companies ranked by sales.
- Companies ranked by profits.
- Companies ranked by assets.
- Companies ranked by market value.
Companies received scores based on their position in each metric list. Forbes added the four scores and ordered eligible companies by the resulting composite score. The four indicators were equally weighted. A company needed to qualify for at least one of the four individual lists to be eligible for the overall Global 2000.
Forbes’ published 2021 methodology reported approximate minimum thresholds of:
| Metric | Approximate minimum threshold |
|---|---|
| Sales | $4.6 billion |
| Profits | $278.5 million |
| Assets | $12.72 billion |
| Market value | $8.26 billion, often rounded to approximately $8.3 billion |
The market-value cutoff rose from $5.27 billion in the 2020 edition to $8.26 billion in 2021. The methodology and thresholds are described in Forbes Brazil’s reproduction of the 2021 methodology.
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The 2021 Global 2000 was published on May 13, 2021. Forbes used the latest 12-month financial information available around April 16, 2021, so companies were not all measured over the same January–December period. A company with a fiscal year ending in a different month could have supplied figures from a different reporting period than another company.
Market value was calculated from closing prices on April 16, 2021. Therefore, the figures in the table are not the companies’ market values on the publication date, and later changes in share prices do not revise the historical ranking.
Why ICBC ranked above Apple and Saudi Aramco
The ranking is best understood as a broad scale index rather than a stock-market-capitalization table. ICBC’s assets were reported at $4.9147 trillion, compared with $354.1 billion for Apple and $510.3 billion for Saudi Aramco. Its $45.8 billion in profits also placed it near the top of the list, while its sales were large enough to contribute materially to its composite position.
Apple and Saudi Aramco were much more valuable in the stock market on the measurement date. That fact did not make either company No. 1 because market value represented only one equally weighted component. A company can therefore rank highly through a combination of balance-sheet size, operating scale and profits even when investors assign it a lower market value.
Important interpretation: ICBC was the largest company according to Forbes’ four-part Global 2000 formula. It was not necessarily the largest company by revenue, assets, profits or market value considered separately.
Why banks dominated the list
Financial institutions have unusually large balance sheets because loans and other financial assets are recorded on the balance sheet. Including assets as one of four equal indicators therefore gives banks a structural advantage in a broad scale ranking.
Forbes’ 2021 banking analysis counted 289 banks on the Global 2000. Five of the top 10 were banks or financial-services groups, and eight of the top 20 were U.S. or Chinese banks. This does not mean banks were more profitable or better investments than every industrial or technology company. It means the methodology treats balance-sheet scale as a major part of corporate size.
A bank’s $4.9 trillion of assets should also not be compared mechanically with a retailer’s $321.2 billion of assets. The figures describe different business models. Forbes ranks each company against peers on each metric before combining the rankings, but the final result still reflects the influence of financial institutions’ balance sheets.
The scale of the 2,000 companies
Collectively, the companies in the 2021 edition reported approximately:
- $39.8 trillion in sales or revenue;
- $2.5 trillion in profits;
- $223 trillion in assets; and
- $79.8 trillion in market value.
Compared with the prior edition, aggregate market value rose sharply while sales and profits declined. That combination captures the uneven financial effect of COVID-19: many companies faced weaker operating results, while equity markets recovered rapidly and assigned higher values to businesses expected to benefit from digital adoption and economic reopening.
Rank #3
Country and regional representation
The United States was the most represented country, with 590 companies. Forbes reported 350 companies for China, including Hong Kong, up from 324 in 2020. The United States added only two companies year over year, while China’s increase reflected its relatively quick economic recovery, active initial-public-offering market and expansion of technology businesses.
The geographic label matters. The 350 figure is Forbes’ grouping of mainland China and Hong Kong; it should not automatically be presented as a mainland-China-only total. It also should not be replaced with the 2022 figure of 351 companies for China and Hong Kong.
Japan was also prominent in the broader ranking, but the cited contemporary Forbes country coverage does not state an overall 2021 Japan total. The figure of 15 Japanese companies reported in the technology article applies only to the 2021 technology-company group, not to all Japanese companies in the Global 2000. Readers needing the exact overall Japan count should use the archived list or filter a structured reproduction rather than treating 15 as the national total.
Technology expanded during the pandemic
A record 177 technology companies appeared in the 2021 Global 2000. Forbes’ technology analysis reported that these companies collectively represented approximately:
- $17.9 trillion in market value;
- $3.3 trillion in sales;
- $5.2 trillion in assets; and
- $434.7 billion in profits.
The United States supplied 81 of the technology companies, followed by China with 26, Japan with 15 and Taiwan with 13. The leading technology companies by overall ranking were:
| Company | Overall rank | Technology rank |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | 6 | 1 |
| Samsung Electronics | 11 | 2 |
| Alphabet | 13 | 3 |
| Microsoft | 15 | 4 |
| Tencent | 29 | 5 |
The technology figures help explain why the pandemic did not produce a simple decline for every industry. Companies selling devices, cloud services, digital advertising, online marketplaces and other digital products benefited from changes in consumer and business behavior, although the Global 2000 itself measures scale rather than assigning a pandemic-winner score.
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Pandemic winners and losers
E-commerce and digital platforms moved up
Amazon rose to No. 10 from No. 22 in the prior edition, helped by a reported 102% increase in profits. Alibaba advanced from No. 31 to No. 23. JD.com moved from No. 238 to No. 101, and Pinduoduo climbed from No. 1,649 to No. 864.
Amazon’s reported sales of $386.1 billion made it the second-largest company in the entire list by sales, behind Walmart. This illustrates the difference between a single-metric ranking and Forbes’ composite ranking: Walmart led by sales, while Amazon ranked higher overall than its sales position alone would suggest.
Airlines, hotels and cruises fell
The four major U.S. airlines recorded an average revenue decline of approximately 63%. Delta, the highest-ranked of those airlines, fell to No. 715 from No. 263 in 2020.
Rank #4
Travel and leisure companies experienced similarly severe disruption:
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- Hilton fell to No. 1,541.
- Carnival fell to No. 1,114.
These movements should not be read as permanent judgments about the businesses. They reflect the financial data and market values available for the 2021 edition during an extraordinary period of travel restrictions, reduced occupancy and weak passenger demand.
Oil companies and Europe’s leader changed
Volkswagen became Europe’s highest-ranked publicly traded company, replacing Royal Dutch Shell. Shell fell from No. 21 in 2020 to No. 324 in 2021 as the pandemic reduced gasoline consumption and weakened the oil sector. Total fell from No. 29 to No. 344, while Gazprom fell from No. 32 to No. 367.
Saudi Aramco nevertheless ranked No. 5 overall, showing why a sector-wide downturn did not remove every large energy company from the top positions. Its ranking reflected its combined sales, profits, assets and market value—not market value alone.
IPOs, mergers and new entrants
Thirty companies entered the 2021 list through initial public offerings, compared with 10 in the prior edition. The highest-ranked IPO entrant was Lufax Holding at No. 500.
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| Company | Overall rank | Why it was notable |
|---|---|---|
| Stellantis | 419 | Created through the Peugeot–Fiat Chrysler merger |
| Lufax Holding | 500 | Highest-ranked IPO entrant |
| Viatris | 874 | Formed after Mylan combined with Pfizer’s Upjohn business |
| Nongfu Spring | 1,065 | Newly listed Chinese consumer company |
| Kuaishou Technology | 1,125 | Newly listed Chinese technology platform |
The arrival of new listings means that year-over-year rank changes do not always represent an existing company’s operating improvement or deterioration. A company may move because another company entered, merged, changed its reporting structure or became eligible for the list.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Who was excluded from the Global 2000?
The ranking covered publicly traded companies. It excluded private and otherwise unlisted businesses, as well as publicly traded subsidiaries whose financial results were consolidated into a parent company.
That is why major unlisted companies such as Huawei and ByteDance did not appear. Their absence does not mean Forbes considered them too small; they were outside the ranking’s public-company scope. The same rule also prevents the list from counting the same consolidated business twice through a parent and subsidiary.
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What the ranking does—and does not—measure
| The Global 2000 can help measure | It does not measure directly |
|---|---|
| Broad corporate scale across four indicators | Current company size or current stock price |
| Sales and profit generation | Shareholder return |
| Balance-sheet size | Profitability efficiency or return on assets |
| Investor market value at a historical date | Private-company scale |
| Relative prominence by industry and country | Employee count, innovation, governance or environmental performance |
The Global 2000 is also not an investment recommendation. A high rank does not mean a stock is cheap, safe or suitable for a particular investor. It is a composite scale ranking whose results depend on the chosen metrics, reporting periods, exchange-rate conversions, market-price date and treatment of financial institutions.
Use the right comparison for the question
If the question is which company had the most sales, use a revenue ranking. If it is which company investors valued most highly on a specific day, use a market-capitalization ranking. If it is which companies generated the most profit, use a profitability ranking. The Forbes Global 2000 answers a broader question: which public companies ranked strongly across sales, profits, assets and market value at the time of the 2021 edition?
Where to find the complete 2,000-company list
The best historical starting point is Forbes’ archived 2021 Global 2000 interactive feature. Use it to verify the edition, ranking and methodology rather than relying on an undated search-result table.
For filtering and data work, TreeMap provides a Global 2000 dataset page and a direct 2021 .mtm file containing the 2,000 companies with fields such as sales, profits, assets, market value, headquarters country and industry classification. This is a convenient third-party structured reproduction, not an official Forbes spreadsheet. Verify important figures against Forbes’ archive because secondary tables can contain duplicated rank numbers, mismatched figures or data from another edition.
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How the 2021 edition compares with the current ranking
The 2021 Global 2000 should not be described as the latest Forbes list. As of August 9, 2026, Forbes had released its 24th annual Global 2000 on June 24, 2026, and JPMorgan Chase ranked No. 1 in that edition. The change from ICBC in 2021 to JPMorgan Chase in 2026 reflects a different market environment, different financial data and a new market-value snapshot. It does not change the historical 2021 result.
For current context, see Forbes’ announcement of the 2026 Global 2000. Do not mix the 2026 ranking or its country counts with the 2021 figures.
Source note
This article treats the archived Forbes 2021 feature and contemporary Forbes reporting as the controlling sources. Supporting coverage includes Forbes’ analysis of the largest banks, technology companies, European companies and hotel, restaurant and leisure companies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Forbes Global 2000 2021 rank companies by market capitalization?
No. Forbes used an equally weighted composite of sales, profits, assets and market value. Apple and Saudi Aramco had much higher market values than ICBC in the top-10 figures, but ICBC ranked first because of its combined performance across all four measures.
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No. The edition was published on May 13, 2021 and used the latest available 12-month financial data around April 16, 2021. Companies therefore had different fiscal reporting periods, and market values were based on April 16 closing prices.
Why are Huawei and ByteDance missing from the 2021 Global 2000?
Forbes’ ranking covered publicly traded companies and excluded unlisted businesses. Huawei and ByteDance were not absent because they were too small; they were outside the list’s public-company scope.
Where can I access all 2,000 companies from the 2021 edition?
Use Forbes’ archived 2021 interactive feature first. TreeMap also offers a downloadable third-party 2021 dataset that can be useful for filtering, but important figures should be checked against the Forbes archive because secondary reproductions can contain transcription errors.
The Bottom Line
The Forbes Global 2000 2021 was a historical, four-metric ranking of public-company scale. ICBC remained No. 1 for the ninth year, not because it had the highest market capitalization, but because its enormous assets and strong sales and profits compensated for a lower market value than Apple or Saudi Aramco. The list also records the pandemic’s uneven impact: digital businesses gained ground, while travel, hospitality and many energy companies fell.
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