Another Big M&A Deal – Berkshire Hathaway

Just as we posted activity yesterday, news today that Berkshire Hathaway is acquiring Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Two more Global 5000 companies being combined.

This could bean investment on an undervalued entity or a bet on infrastructure spending or the fact that oil prices sky rocket and shipping comes off highways and onto the rails.

For marketers & sales folks, probably little change if you are calling on Burlington Northern. Berkshire tends to let acquisitions operate fairly autonomously.

More M&A and Financial Impact

This must be impact Monday for Global 5000 companies.

CIT Group filed Chapter 11, Encore and Denbury (oil companies) are merging. And now Stanley Works is acquiring Black & Decker. We expect to continue seeing this kind of corporate action as the Global 5000 companies go thru change.

For marketers selling to companies in this space — expect continued account movement and frequent personnel changes.

Vertical Markets for the Global 5000

We are starting to do more analysis of the Global 5000 companies and have built an industry hierarchy. Here are a few counts / tidbits. There are 103 Telecom companies represented among the 5000. And another 212 Technology firms.

183 are classified in Health Care and 435 in Financial Services.

Any question as to why the current economic troubles are so inter-twined with big finance? And how finance is the center of what needs to be fixed for the global economies to run well.

Dell acquiring Perot Systems

Two Global 5000 firms are combining as Dell announced it is acquiring Perot Systems. The move gives Dell a larger footprint in the IT solutions market and helps them keep pace with HP

The Growth of BRIC Companies

And in particular China.

We just took a look at Fortune’s G500 list for this year compared with 2007. If anyone questions the shifting global growth, consider the changes counting companies by country HQ — then and now

US had 160, now 140
Japan held steady at 67 in both periods
UK – France – Germany went from 108 to 105

BRIC countries had 37 and now 51.

These 9 countries had 372 of the top companies which has dropped slightly to 363…. showing greater dispersion.

Is Money Starting to Flow? Dollar General IPO

KKR announced it is filing for an IPO for Dollar General.

Dollar General was taken private in 2007. They are a $10 billion retailer who has benefited by offering low prices during these economic times. Sales and profits have been up so it is a prime time for the ownership to bring it back out as a public company — buy low, sell high.

Expect to see a lot more IPO’s of companies that were taken private 3-5 years ago. Private Equity bought them and held. Now that the stock market is on an uptick, time to reap a handsome reward.

Facts about the Global 5000 Companies

We have created an industry group hierarchy for the Global 5000. This can help marketers identify which segments that should pay attention to when marketing to the largest companies.

There are 227 retail companies and 403 in the financial markets. 140 are in Business Services, 225 for Basic Materials and 151 in Health Care, 148 for Oil & Gas with 112 technology companies

An Update for Global 5000 Companies

Posting a quick update this morning, we continue to update the database of the largest 5000 companies .. both public and private from around the globe. As the public companies report their annual financials, we update those records. And we try to find estimates for the private companies as well.

To date we have approximately 3475 companies in the database with revenues in excess of $500 million (USD). Of these, approximately 2270 are headquartered in the US.

If anyone has suggestions as to other, large companies that should be included in the list, please post in comments

The S&P 500 and Global 5000 Companies

We have seen a lot of press attention lately to the S&P 500. Of course, it is all related to the health of the economy. Seemingly the line goes, if the S&P 500 is going up, then the market is recovering. I think they (whoever writes all that) are missing a larger picture.

The S&P 500 is US based companies that are traded.
Global 5000 companies are the largest in the world — not just US based, not just publicly traded.

There are obvious changes in the world order – -for example, GM is no longer part of the S&P 500 as they filed bankruptcy. They were replaced by DeVry Institute. That said, marketers and those trying to sell to major accounts need to take off the blinders and understand the world at large a bit more.

Echos of Auto Fallout

Lear Corp. yesterday announced they were filing bankruptcy. They are a top Global500 company with over $13 billion in revenue last year and 85,000 employees. At one point a couple of years ago, their revenue topped $17 billion with 115,000 employees.

So, as we look across this landscape of companies in this sector that have filed or merged, we see GM, Chrysler, Collins & Aikman, Lear, Delphi, Dura, Fedral-Mogul, Metaldyne, Monaco Coach, Plastech Engineered Products, Visteon.

That’s a heavey toll.