The massive profits announced by European oil giant Shell are hard for the man in the street to visualise.
However, the company is still not the biggest player in the western oil industry.
That title falls to US major ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly-traded oil company. It has a market value of around £260billion, while Shell comes in at around £142billion.
But the oil industry is not dominant on the world stage.
ExxonMobil is only the world’s second-largest publicly-traded business behind US technology firm Apple, which has a market value of £268billion.
Apple overtook ExxonMobil to the top slot last year following a 25% growth in its market value.
Around 37million of Apple’s iPhones were sold in the last three months of 2011, vastly exceeding analyst estimates and propelling the company to record quarterly results.
Alan MacPhee, an investment manager with Brewin Dolphin in Aberdeen, said yesterday: “Interestingly, a huge part of Apple’s market capitalisation is in fact cash, with its global cash position estimated at around £62billion – almost a quarter of the value of the business.
“Of the £62billion, around £40billion is held outwith the US, meaning it would need to pay a hefty tax bill to repatriate the cash back to the US, despite many shareholders now calling for the company to start paying a dividend.”
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