Two firms headquartered in Arlington have seen their rankings go up in the newly released 2024 “Global 500” list of the world’s largest companies.
Boeing and Raytheon were among seven Virginia firms making the annual ranking by Fortune:
• With revenues of $77.8 billion, Boeing moved from 197th on the 2023 list to 159 in 2024. It had been headquartered in Illinois for 21 years before moving head-office operations to Arlington in 2022.
• RTX (Raytheon Technology Businesses) rose from 195th to 188th, with 2024 revenues of $68.9 billion. It completed a corporate-headquarters move from Massachusetts to Arlington in 2022.
In each case, the corporate-headquarters moves were designed to put the firm’s top leadership closer to the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.
For 2024, Walmart retained its ranking as the top firm, revenue-wise, in the world for the 11th straight year. Rounding out the top five:
• Amazon moved up from No. 4 in 2023 to No. 2 in 2024.
• State Grid (a state-run Chinese electric company) stayed steady at No. 3.
• Saudi Aramco, an oil producer owned largely by the government of Saudi Arabia, dropped from No. 2 to No. 4 but for the third year in a row remained the most profitable company in the world ($121 billion in profits).
• Sinopec Group, a Chinese holding company, rose from No. 6 to No. 5.
Collectively, the 500 firms on the list had total revenue of $41 trillion for the year, up 0.1 percent from a year before.
For the first time since 2018, U.S. firms outnumbered Chinese firms (139 to 133).
The full ranking can be found at https://fortune.com/ranking/global500/.
