This $1.9 trillion firm just kicked Apple from the world's largest company perch
With a $1.2 trillion valuation after yesterday's market close, Apple ended the day as the world's largest publicly traded company in terms of market value for the umpteenth time this decade.
Fast forward to today, and the gang from Cupertino will wake up presiding over a lowly second-largest public firm. What happened while they were sleeping? Saudi's Aramco initial public offering, that's what.
The Kingdom is listing part of its crown jewel on the market for the first time, and it immediately shot up ten percent, surpassing Apple in value.
Of course, Apple makes successful products in the fickle consumer electronics business, while Aramco just sells what the sands of Arabia gave it, but humongous valuation is humongous no matter how you slice it.
The other big companies, however, comprising the top, are Silicon Valley juggernaits like Apple - Microsoft and Google's parent Alphabet - but still, Aramco's public offering marks a return of the extraction industries to the top of the publicly traded pile. That's a place they occupied just a decade or two ago, before the relentless surge of the information economy.
Bloomberg
