Posted by
bonjo on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 1:45:17 AM
Big oil and Wal-Mart. The two big business that America loves to hate.
A few facts please.
According to Fortune Magazine’s 2006 Global 500 list the top 10 is definitely dominated by oil companies. In fact the top ten list has only oil companies, car companies and Wal-Mart, coming in at second place. No one else seems to care about the car companies and for now we will just leave them out of the mix. Its oil and Wal-Mart that we hate, right? They are the epitome of greed and obscene profits, right?
But oh those pesky facts.
There were five oil companies in the top ten largest companies in the world with oil in the number one spot and Wal-Mart in the second. Keep in mind that that they are rated in this list by total revenues.
Here is the interesting part. All of the oil companies generated profits of about 8% with the exception of Exxon Mobil who came in with about 10% profit.
Outrageous profits?
Price gouging?
Deserving of a congressional hearing…… for an 8% profit margin?????
Not at my company. I’m a construction project manager and the guys who average only 8% profit on their projects don’t last very long.
But what about Wal-Mart. Oooooh I love to hate Wal-Mart. Surely they made an obscene profit on the backs of those under-paid, under-insured proletariat workers.
Wal-Mart made $11 billion dollars on total revenues of $315 billion or about 3.5%.
They could have made as much by putting their money in a passbook savings account.
But if you look through the list for companies that are making the high profits guess what kind of business pops up.
Banks.
I have an idea. Lets all start hating banks instead of Wal-Mart.
Citigroup 18.7% profit
Wells Fargo 18.8% profit
Bank of America 19.5% profit
Citigroup ($24 billion profit on $131 billion revenue) made more than twice as much profit than Wal-Mart on a little more than 1/3 of the revenue.
I got five credit card (guaranteed pre-approval) applications in the mail TODAY. Just today.
People are bitching about the oil companies gouging us for an 8% profit while at the same time paying for their gas with a credit card that charges 18% - to as high as 23% in some states - so the bank that owns the credit card company can make almost 20% profit.
YIKES. What a bunch of idiots we have in this country!!!
Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2006/full_list/