S. Rajagopalan
Washington

Eight Indian firms figure in this year's Forbes A-List, featuring 400 of "the world's best big companies". Forbes says the list includes the most attractive public companies for investors.

Bharti Televentures and ITC have made it to the list this year along with Reliance Industries, Infosys Technologies, Wipro, Bharat Petroleum, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and the State Bank of India (SBI) — all of which had been listed last year as well.

Three big Indian companies which were featured last year have failed to find a place this time. These are: Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Hindustan Lever.

The unusual methodology employed by Forbes for the selection meant that some well-known corporate giants like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, ABB and Vodafone were left out from this year's list. Several great names had to be zapped in the last stages as their scores fell just short, says Forbes' executive editor Tim W. Ferguson.

Three of the chosen Indian companies have achieved a sales turnover in the region of $12 billion — the SBI ($12.1 billion), Bharat Petroleum ($12 billion) and Reliance ($11.8 billion).

In terms of market capitalisation, the ONGC leads the table with $21.3 billion, followed by Reliance ($14.4 billion) and Infosys ($8.6 billion).

The A-List, which is dominated by American companies as usual (142 of them this time), features only corporates with either sales or a market capitalisation of $5 billion or more. It looks at the past five years' return on capital, sales growth and profit growth. It also analyses stock market performance and takes into account earnings expectations for the coming year.

"The A-List has performed better than some relevant indexes," says Ferguson. "So, we'll boldly suggest that these 400 firms — representing less than 1 per cent of the world's publicly listed companies — are prime candidates for a growth-oriented equities portfolio."