Shell turns over more than countries like Sweden, Switzerland or Indonesia and Australia's largest companies do not feature in the top hundred global companies.

 

Last week I wrote about the best economic places for international students to live in the world, according to GDP per capita and average working hours. This week I want to put the revenues of the big companies in the world and in Australia in a surprising perspective.

 

Royal Dutch Shell is the largest company in the world according to the Fortune 500 list released this week. The Dutch oil giant raked in $15 billion more in sales than Exxon Mobil. Europe's largest oil producer achieved stunning revenues of 458 billion dollar. But what does that mean, 458 billion dollar? Well for a starter it is $ 1.2 billion a day and $50 million per hour, there are days that I don’t have that in my back pocket.

Secondly if you compare the revenue of Shell with the complete GDP of nations (simply said: what a nation turns around with all its economic activities) you come to some surprising conclusions. According to `the world in figures 2008` (The Economist) Shell as a company has a larger revenue than the majority of nations with for example Argentina, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand each `earning` less than half of Shell’s revenues, while countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Indonesia and Belgium have comparable GDPs.

 

Interestingly, or shocking depending on the way you look at it, is that the GDP of 44 out of 51 African Nations with the exception of South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Angola, is in total lower than Shell’s revenue. But it can be even more unbalanced between the poor and the rich: Shell’s daily (!) revenue of 1.2 billion dollar is higher than countries like Burundi, Djibouti, Liberia, Seychelles, Solomon Islands and Samoa turn over in a whole year!

 

Australia, with a GDP of 847 billion dollar in 2008 does a lot better than Shell but what if you would compare GDP per capita with earnings per employee? Shell has 102,000 employees while Australia has over 22 million people. It means that the GDP per capita in Australia is almost 40,000 dollars, while Shell turns over a staggering 4 million dollar per employee each year!

 

What are interesting Australian companies for International Students who are looking into an international career? Nine Australian companies feature in the top 500 but none of them are in the top hundred global countries. We can find Australia’s largest company, BHP Billiton, at place 120 with revenues of 120 billion dollar. The Top Nine Australian companies are:

1 BHP Billiton: rank 120; $59.4 billion; head office in Melbourne

2 Woolworths; rank 180; $42.1 billion; head office Bella Vista

3 Australia & New Zealand Banking: rank 247; $33.3 billion; head office Melbourne

4 Commonwealth Bank of Australia: rank 267; $31 billion; head office Sydney

5 National Australia Bank: rank 272; $31.2 billion; head office Melbourne

6 Westpac Banking: rank 283; $30.1 billion; head office Sydney

7 Wesfarmers : rank 287; $ 30 billion; head office Perth

8 Telstra: rank 410; 22.3 billion; head office Melbourne

9 Caltex Australia: rank 467; $19.7; Head office Sydney

 

Industry leaders

What do you think of all these figures, do you think it is amazing or maybe you don’t care about numbers but you want to know about the story behind it, please leave a comment!