Investing In Big Companies
Investing In Big Companies
Let’s assume that in order to be called a giant, a corporation must have at least a billion dollars worth of property value. How many giants are there? Suppose we say that to be called a giant a corporation must have property valued at a billion dollarsa 1,000 times a $1 million dollars. How many companies are this big? In 1956 there were about 70. Not including financial institutions such as banks and life-insurance companies, the largest four corporations were Bell Telephone, $16 billion; Standard Oil of New Jersey, $8 billion; General Motors, $7 billion; and U.S. Steel, $4 billion. The next five, each having $2.5 billion or more, were Ford Motor, Gulf Oil, Socony Mobil Oil, E. I. duPont and the Texas Co.
