Biggest companies in the world revealed

In early 2016 Alphabet, Google's recently rebranded parent company became the biggest publicly traded company in the world - worth more than half a trillion dollars.

But what are some of the other biggest companies in the world?

According to the Fortune Global 500 list the biggest publicly reported company in the world by revenue is retail giant, Walmart.

In 2015 they reportedly brought in around $486 billion, which is about the same GDP as the entire country of Norway

This ranks Walmart as the 27th largest economy in the world.

Walmart is also the single largest private employer in both the United States and Mexico with 1.4 million employees in the US.

The Walton family that owns the company has a combined net worth of roughly $149 billion which makes them the richest family in America.

The next five largest companies in the world are petroleum refiners: Sinopec Group, Royal Dutch Shell, China National Petroleum, ExxonMobil and British Petroleum.

Their revenues combined equal the revenue of the entire country of India, which at $2 trillion is the ninth largest in the world.

Missing from the Fortune Global 500 list is Saudi Aramco as they do not publicly post their revenue, but it's thought the be the largest in the world by value with an estimate $10 trillion.

Historically none of these come close to the Dutch East India Company which was the first publicly traded company, worth trillions of dollars when adjusted for inflation.

It was effectively a multi-national shipping conglomerate with a monopoly on the Dutch spice trade.

In the future if companies continue to consolidate, massive conglomerates are likely to only get larger.