As Comcast and NBC made their announcement this past week, it comes in the midst of a tidal wave of change in the television industry. Watching TV or video over the internet made easy by the likes of Hulu, YouTube and handfuls of start-ups are pushing the established businesses of broadcast TV and Cable TV. In turn, the advertising world is facing yet another major hurdle.

Many players, many threats, many opportunities.
We took a look at 95 Global 5000 companies involved in TV, Cable, Advertising and Telecommunications — all players in this rapidly changing scene. Among the largest players are the likes of AT&T, NTT, Comcast, Aegis, Time Warner Cable and Cox Enterprises.

These 95 companies had revenue of approximately $1.4 trillion (that’s trillion with a T). Between 2007 and 2008, they grew 5.5%. We can expect 2009 to be lower when the books are finally closed.

A lot at stake !!
If you have customers here or are selling into this market environment — better fasten your seat belt.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.