One world; one gigantic marketplace. This year, 60 countries have global 2000 entries vs. 51 in our inaugural list in 2004. The Forbes global 2000 are public companies with the top composite scores based on their rankings for sales, profits, assets and market value. Our justification for using a composite ranking is simple: One metric alone can give a false impression about corporate size.

　　In total, the global 2000 companies now account for $30 trillion in revenues, $2.4 trillion in profits, $119 trillion in assets and $39 trillion in market value. Around the world, 72 million people work for these companies.