Tata Steel debuts on Fortune 500 list, ranks 315
New York, July 10 (IANS)

Thanks to its acquisition of the Corus group, Tata Steel has entered the Fortune 500 list at rank 315, while India's largest corporate group Reliance Industries jumped 63 places to reach 206. Tata Steel had an annual revenue of $25,707 million. The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries posted $35,915 million. Reliance and Tata Steel are the only two Indian companies in the private sector to figure among the Fortune 500, the other five are in the public sector.

Tata Steel, part of the Ratan Tata-led Tata Group, has also been named as the company with the highest revenue growth of more than 350% over the past year, thanks to the consolidation of Corus' revenues with its balance sheet. Tata acquired Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in October 2006.

Companies qualify for the Fortune list on the basis of their revenues. The rankings are based on 2007 audited revenues. Reliance and Tata Steel are the only two Indian companies in the private sector to figure among the Fortune 500, the other five are in the public sector. Reliance, in fact, comes behind Indian Oil, which is ranked 116 with a revenue of $57,427 million. The other PSUs on the list are Bharat Petroleum (287), Hindustan Petroleum (290), ONGC (335) and the State Bank of India (380).

The US-based retail chain Wal-Mart continues to remain the world's biggest corporate with revenues of $378 billion. Oil majors Exxon Mobile and Royal Dutch Shell follow Wal-Mart on the global list with revenues of $373 billion and $355 billion respectively.

There were fewer American companies on the list this time (153 as compared to 162 last year) while 29 Chinese companies made it to the list, the best ever performance by China.