Toyota tumbles down Forbes list
- Source: Global Times
- [02:01 April 23 2010]
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Toyota, beset by huge safety recalls and a host of lawsuits over deaths linked to its cars, tumbled from third to 360th on the annual Forbes list of the world's leading companies.
The carmaker trailed far behind rivals Ford, Honda, and Hyundai in the 2010 listing, which ranks 2,000 of the world's best corporate performers based on an equal weighting of sales, profits, assets and market value.
Toyota ranked third last year and 10th five years ago.
Toyota, which dethroned General Motors as the world's biggest carmaker in 2008, has recalled around 10 million vehicles worldwide due to accelerator and brake defects, which have been blamed for 58 deaths.
In the latest blow, international ratings agency Moody's Thursday downgraded the beleaguered carmaker because of uncertainty over whether "product quality" would hit sales following the mass recalls.
Germany's Daimler was ranked 388th and Volkswagen dropped off the list due to the complexity sur-rounding its 2009 merger with Porsche.
US carmakers General Motors and Chrysler, which are currently turning around their businesses after filing for bankruptcy protection last year, were absent from the list.
Despite the global financial crisis, banks still dominated the list with 308 lenders in the lineup, mainly thanks to their assets, said Forbes Magazine, which compiles the list.
US investment giant JP Morgan Chase topped the list, removing General Electric from the No. 1 spot.
Moreover, the number of Japanese enterprises within the top 100 slumped to only three from 11 last year, overrun by its developing neighbor, China, which has eight firms in the top 100 of this year's list, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in fifth place, the Ky-odo news agency reported.
Forbes said the top 2,000 companies account for $30 trillion in annual revenue, $1.4 trillion in profits, $124 trillion in assets and $31 trillion in market value, up 61 percent from the previous year.
AFP - Global Times
