Is the era of supernormal growth for Google Inc over?

The phenomenal growth witnessed by Google Inc during the start of this decade is gradually slowing down. Google’s revenues had jumped 250 times in 7 years from 2001 to 2008 showing a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 120%. The profits even fared better with the net profits in 2008 being more than 600 times the net profits in 2001 – a CAGR of 150%. However, Google’s revenue growth rate has been slowing down as its size is increasing. The annual growth rate which was more than 400% in 2002 has gradually fallen to about 30% in 2008 and in the first half of 2009 the growth rate was in single digit.

Has Google’s growth matured? Is Google’s supernormal growth phase behind us? It is quite possible as suggested by the trend in the growth rates. Google is now one-third the size of Microsoft and one-fifth of IBM. For a company that was incorporated only 11 years ago - growing to such a size is amazing. Continuing to show such phenomenal growth is not sustainable in long term. If Google can grow by more than 25% in next 4-5 years it would be a significant achievement. A growth rate more than that will require entering into other related businesses. Google has done it in past and is very capable of doing it in future. With plans of entering into the Operating System business which has Microsoft's dominance, Google has a huge potential opportunity which if it can unleash will help it grow even faster.

Huge write downs (~ £21 billion) waiting for Lloyds Banking Group

Lloyds Banking Group plc (erstwhile Lloyds TSB Group plc) is expected to write off as much as £21 billion of bad debt from its books in the year 2009. The H1 2009 (Jan – June) results which are likely to be declared by July end or early August are expected to show more losses than in the previous year same period. The losses will be mainly because of the high provisions which the bank is expected to make. According to an estimate the write-offs to be made in the H1 2009 will be more than that made by HBOS and Lloyds TSB combined in 2008. The huge write down in one of the biggest banking group of United Kingdom (UK) indicates that the banking system is yet to stabilize.

The UK Government has invested £50bn so far in Lloyds and RBS, but that could rise when Lloyds joins the asset protection scheme. At present, the state's stakes are worth £7.5bn and £14.3bn. Notably, UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the agency that manages the stakes for the Treasury, holds a majority stake in the company (43 per cent of Lloyds) following the government support. This holding could rise even higher, as the bank issue shares to insure its bad loans with the Government. However, the Treasury is hoping that it can recover its investment, although it may have to wait for some more time. When things will improve, UKFI plans to sell its stake and return the bank to the private sector. Any such share sale will have to be spread over several years in order to prevent huge share inflow into the system.

In 2008, Lloyds had acquired HBOS for about £12 billion. The deal was backed out by UK government to prevent collapse of the banking system. However, Lloyds shareholders saw wealth erosion after a £15 billion 'black hole' was discovered in HBOS accounts. Many of the Lloyds shareholders’ are skeptical of a possible government-bank nexus behind this deal as they lose a huge portion of their holdings (about 85 per cent). Furious Lloyds shareholders have demanded transcripts of secret negotiations between Mr Brown and the bank's chairman Sir Victor Blank last July and September.

About Lloyds Banking Group plc

Lloyds TSB Group plc was renamed Lloyds Banking Group plc on 19 January 2009, following the acquisition of HBOS plc. The group owns the Lloyds TSB brand which is one of the largest retail bank in the UK brand and came into existence in 1995 by the merger of Lloyds Bank and the Trustee Savings Bank (TSB Bank).

Under the UK government Asset Protection Scheme announced on March 7 Lloyds has to provide a total of £14 billion of additional lending in the period up to 1 March 2010 to boost the spending and investment activities which could be vital in avoiding a prolonged recession.

A bit of history of economic crises

The current crises got me looking into the other economic downturns in the 20th century. Here are my findings:
We all know about the great depression in the early 1930s, but I was actually surprised by the number of recessions in the world since. Here are the major ones:

1. Latin America's woes
Latin America has long endured economic problems like currency crises, hyperinflation, banking failures etc. The lack of prudent governance and macroeconomic populism continued till 1980s, when the economic reforms were introduced. These measures included:

• State - owned firms were privatized
• Import restrictions lifted
• Budget deficits trimmed, inflation became a priority

These measures led to efficiency, investor confidence and large inflows of money. But soon there was a recession in Latin America (esp. Mexico and Argentina) in 1990s, the exact reason for which is still not understood well by economists. Some of the causes were:

• Impending devaluation of Mexican pesos not handled well
• High government spendings and
• Wide spread corruption and dollar-loan exposure

This crisis was finally controlled by huge loans provided by the United States, Canada, and International Monetary Fund(IMF).

2. Japan's downturn
Japan suffered laggard economic growth and recessions in the most of the 1990s (also known as the lost decade. The crisis started in Japan in 1989-90 and the reasons were:

• Loose financial regulation, bad debts.
• Bubble in stock markets and real estate from 1986-1990

Japan has suffered economic paralysis for such a long time. The country's economy was investment driven and this recession caused investments to flow outside the country. The falling interest rates (at one point the interest rates were zero also) inhibited spending. This low consumption led to a deflationary spiral which was only strengthened by rising unemployment levels. The central bank has also dithered far too long where it alternated between public spending and budgetary control.

3. South East Asia's crash
South Asia till late 1990s was a tremendous success story. The region saw extended economic growth and was a role model for many. All that changed in 1997 when the many south Asian economies were caught in a currency crisis: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea to be precise. Again economists disagree over exact reasons for this crisis, generally the following factors are considered to be the culprit:

• Started with currency collapse of Thai Baht, which was long under attack from speculators and hedge funds. Government finally floated Baht leading to its fall.
• Crony capitalism where in these economies there was a collusion between government and big business players.
• These economies had relatively free markets and light regulation, which led them vulnerable to the vagaries of foreign investors.
• This crisis led to slumping currencies, stock market devaluations and precipitous private debt

4. Internet bubble of the 21st century
Also known as the dot com bust, happenned in 2001. There was a considerable bubble in the stock markets of western economies from 1996-2001. The bubble was caused by inflated valuations of stock markets, especially internet and technology related firms. These firms in turn had flawed business models, where in all of them were rooting for growth over profits working under the assumption that finally profits will come once the markets are captured.

Results of Stress tests - who sailed through and who needs more capital

The results of the SCAP were out on 7th May 2009 and the 19 Bank Holding Companies will require an additional 74.6 billion dollars to make the financial system sail through without collapse if the economic situation worsens.
Here's the summary of results:

Bank	Additional capital needed (billion dollars)
AmEx	0
BofA	33.9
BB&T	0
BNYM	0
CapOne	0
Citi	5.5
FifthThird	1.1
GMAC	11.5
Goldman Sachs	0
JPMC	0
KeyCorp	1.8
MetLife	0
Morgan Stanley	1.8
PNC	0.6
Regions	2.5
State Street	0
SunTrust	2.2
US Bancorp	0
Wells Fargo	13.7
Total	74.6

Top 10 Hedge fund management firms by assets under management

Bridgewater Associates	1
JPMorgan	2
Paulson & Co.	3
D. E. Shaw	4
Brevan Howard	5
Och-Ziff Capital Management	6
Man AHL	7
Soros Fund Management	8
Goldman Sachs	9
Renaissance Technologies	10

Hedge Fund Industry size falls sharply in last one year

From a peak of 1.93 trillion dollars in mid of 2008, the hedge fund industry size is reduced to merely 1.33 trillion dollars owing to the credit crunch and macro-economic situation.

The 'Funds of funds' industry has also come down sharply from 825 billion dollars in mid 2008 to 525 billion dollars at the end of first quarter of 2009.

The fall in assets size is partly due to trading losses and partly due to investors pulling out money from these funds.

These are the data from Hedge Fund Research (HFR) as available on in the publicly available news articles across the internet. Due to the ambiguity of the breadth of the hedge fund and the voluntary nature of data disclosure these may be different from those published by other research firms.

Top 10 global financial centres

As of March 2009, the following is the ranking of the top financial centres of the world as published by GFCI (Global Financial Centres Index):

The GFCI is published by City of London Corporation every March. The full report by GFCI can be found at ZYEN.

	Rank	GFCI rating
London	1	781
New York	2	768
Singapore	3	687
Hong Kong	4	684
Zurich	5	659
Geneva	6	638
Chicago	7	638
Frankfurt	8	633
Boston	9	618
Dublin	10	618

London, the financial hub of the world, has been at the helm since long time. London, also the banking centre of the world, has headquarters of more than 100 of European's 500 biggest companies.

The rise and fall and rise of oil prices

The oil prices have been very volatile lately. According to the data published by Energy Information Administration, U.S., the Europe Brent spot price has touched a daily average high of $143.95 per barrel on July 3, 2007 during the bull phase and then fallen to a low of $33.73 per barrel on Dec 26, 2008. The fall from the peak has been quite steep and was triggered with the slowdown in the demand of oil owing to the economic recession and credit crunch.

The chart below summarizes the journey of the oil prices.




























Source of Data: EIA

India's most reputable companies - 2009 Forbes ranking

Forbes has published the list of top 200 most reputable companies in world. The list is available at Forbes website.

In the list there were following 17 Indian companies with Tata group at the helm:

Company	Global Rank	Industry
Tata	11	Conglomerate
State Bank of India	29	Banking
Infosys Technologies	39	Computer
Larsen & Toubro	47	Construction/Engineering
Maruti Udyog	49	Automotive
Hindustan Unilever	69	Consumer Products
ITC Limited	95	Conglomerate
Canara Bank	102	Banking
Hindustan Petroleum	111	Energy
Indian Oil	112	Energy
Wipro	116	Computer
Reliance Group	132	Conglomerate
Mahindra & Mahindra	137	Automotive
Bharti Airtel .	163	Telecommunications
Bank of Baroda	174	Banking
Bharat Petroleum	175	Energy
Punjab National Bank	177	Banking

Source: Forbes

Bank of America needs 34 billion USD to pass Fed's stress test

America's largest bank, Bank of America, is reported to require additional 33.9 billion USD to meet the capital target set by Federal Reserve during the stress test. The stress test also known as Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP) was conducted by Fed on 19 biggest financial institutions to find out the capital that will be required if the recession becomes deeper. The results of the test are expected to start coming from this week onwards. Speculation is rife that most of the banks will need additional capital to pass the test.

BofA had about 240 billion dollars of shareholder's equity capital as on 31st March 2009. This was about 10.3% of its total assets (2.3 trillion dollars). Since 2007 BofA has increased its shareholder's capital significantly to deal with the financial crisis and economic recession. However, if the macro-economic situation worsens in near term BofA would require still more capital as the results of SCAP of Fed would show.

According to a ews article by UK's 'The Guardian', BofA could sell a part of its stake in Chinese bank 'China Construction Bank' (CCB). The stake sale could fetch BofA about 8 billion USD. Even with this sale, BofA will have to garner the remaining 26 billion USD from other sources. In case of no other option left, it may have to convert some of the government's prefferred shares to common shares, thereby diluting the existing shareholder's stake.

Small banks continue to fail in US

Three banks have been reported to fail in the first day of May taking the total number of bank failure in this year 2009 to 32 in just 4 months and 5 days. The banks to fail this month were:
1. America West Bank, Layton

2. Citizens Community Bank, Ridgewood
3. Silverton Bank, N.A., Atlanta

The news was updated on FDIC's website on 5th May. The biggest of the three is Silverton with about 4 billion assets. The bank, on its website, has put up the following notice:

"Silverton Bank, N.A. is participating in the FDIC's Transaction Account Guarantee Program. Under that program, all noninterest-bearing transaction accounts are fully guaranteed by the FDIC for the entire amount in the account through December 31, 2009. Coverage under the Transaction Account Guarantee Program is in addition to and separate from the coverage available under the FDIC's general deposit insurance rules. Accounts that sweep into overnight Fed Funds are not considered non-interest bearing; therefore, they will not be covered under the FDIC’s Transaction Account Guarantee Program."

FDIC has created a bridge bank, Silverton Bridge Bank, to take over the operations of Silverton Bank. The bank will start its regular business from July 29, 2009.
The depositors will have the first priority followed by creditors and shareholders.

Details on the deposit insurance and other bank failure related information can be assessed from FDIC's website.

Top Bank holding companies in US by total domestic deposits

The biggest domestic deposit banks on June 30, 2008 as per the data published by FDIC were:

Bank Name	Deposits (Jun 2008) billion $
BoA Corp	701.5
JP Morgan Chase	497.2
Wachovia	422.0
Wells Fargo	293.4
Citigroup	271.3
US Bancorp	127.8
Suntrust Bank	115.6
National City Corp	97.8
RBS	95.3
Toronto-Dominion Bank	89.8

Of these the last two were foreign banks. In all there were 12 foreign banks in the top 50 list.

	Bank Name	Deposits (Jun 2008) billion $
1	RBS Group	95.3
2	Toronto-Dominion Bank	89.8
3	HSBC Holdings	83.0
4	Banco Santander	53.8
5	BNP Paribas	43.9
6	Mitsubishi UFJ	42.0
7	BBVA	39.4
8	Allied Irish Bank	36.5
9	Bank of Montreal	29.1
10	UBS	24.4
11	Royal Bank of Canada	17.8
12 Source:	Deutsche Bank FDIC	15.2

47 Indian companies in Forbes 2000 List

The following 47 companies have figured into the Forbes 2000 list:

Company	Sector
Reliance Industries	Oil & Gas Operations
SBI	Banking
ONGC	Oil & Gas Operations
IOCL	Oil & Gas Operations
NTPC	Utilities
ICICI Bank	Banking
Tata Steel	Materials
Bharti Airtel	Telecommunications
SAIL	Materials
Reliance Communications	Telecommunications Services
L&T	Capital Goods
BPCL	Oil & Gas Operations
BHEL	Capital Goods
HDFC	Banking
TCS	Software & Services
Hindalco Industries	Materials
HDFC Bank	Banking
DLF	Diversified Financials
Infosys Technologies	Software & Services
Punjab National Bank	Banking
ITC	Food, Drink & Tobacco
Wipro	Software & Services
Bank of India	Banking
HPCL	Oil & Gas Operations
GAIL (India)	Utilities
NMDC	Materials
Canara Bank	Banking
Power Grid of India	Utilities
Tata Motors	Capital Goods
Bank of Baroda	Banking
Power Finance	Finance
Axis Bank	Banking
Union Bank of India	Banking
Grasim Industries	Construction
Indian Overseas Bank	Banking
Sun Pharma Industries	Drugs & Biotechnology
Mahindra & Mahindra	Consumer Durables
Allahabad Bank	Banking
Indian Bank	Banking
Syndicate Bank	Banking
IDBI Bank	Banking
Central Bank of India	Banking
Jindal Steel & Power	Materials
National Aluminium	Materials
Oriental Bank of Commerce	Banking
UCO Bank	Banking
Hero Honda Motors	Consumer Durables

Rank	Companies	Sales (b $)
121	Reliance Industries	34.03
150	State Bank of India Group	22.63
152	Oil & Natural Gas Corp	24.04
207	Indian Oil Corp Ltd	51.66
317	NTPC	9.63
329	ICICI Bank	15.06
463	Tata Steel	32.77
508	Bharti Airtel	6.73
582	Steel Authority of India	9.82
689	Reliance Communications	4.26

Forbes global 2000 list is published every year and takes into consideration the assets, sales, profits, and market capitalization of the corporations.

Source: Forbes

Financial institutions with highest revenues in world

Once again from the Forbes 2000 list(published on 8th April 2009), the biggest turnover companies in the Financial services domain are as follows:

	Company	Industry	Sales ($bil)
1	ING Group	Insurance	213.99
2	Fortis	Diversified Fin.	164.37
3	AXA Group	Insurance	156.95
4	HSBC Holdings	Banking	142.05
5	Allianz	Insurance	127.24
6	Deutsche Bank	Diversified Fin.	124.78
7	Generali Group	Insurance	118.39
8	Bank of America	Banking	113.11
9	BNP Paribas	Banking	107.96
10	Berkshire Hathaway	Diversified Fin.	107.79
11	Crédit Agricole	Banking	107.75
12	Citigroup	Banking	106.66
13	JPMorgan Chase	Banking	101.49
14	Société Générale	Banking	99.25

While the world's top three companies Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, and Wal-Mart have annual sales more than 400 billion dollars, the biggest financial institution, insurance major - ING Group generates about half the revenues. In the banking sector this is even lower with the biggest being HSBC holdings at 142 billion dollars.
For the complete list of 2000 companies, please visit Forbes.

Top 10 banks by assets (2009)

About two months back when I had tried compiling a list of world's top banks by asssets, the task was not easy. The main reasons being that full year results of all companies were not out. Also, all the firms don't report their numbers in dollars using a point-in-time exchange rates was debatable. However, recently Forbes had published the list of world's top 2000 companies. Great!, so now I know who stands where without much efforts :). If we go by the Forbes numbers (which I beleive should be correct), the top 10 companies in the whole world when put in the order of their balance sheet size are as follows:

Rank	Company	Country	Assets ($bil)
1	Royal Bank of Scotland	United Kingdom	3491
2	Barclays	United Kingdom	2948
3	Deutsche Bank	Germany	2947
4	BNP Paribas	France	2889
5	HSBC Holdings	United Kingdom	2520
6	JPMorgan Chase	United States	2175
7	Crédit Agricole	France	2064
8	Citigroup	United States	1939
9	Mitsubishi UFJ Financial	Japan	1931
10	UBS	Switzerland	1899

No surprise these are all banks or financial institutions. Banks have a slightly different way of accounting and the public deposits form a significant part of their assets. As a matter of fact in the top 50 companies only two companies, GE(ranked 28th) and Deutsche Post (ranked 49th), are outside the financial domain. While GE's presence in top 50 was expected, Deutsche Post at 49th position was a bit of surprise for me.

For the complete list of 2000 companies, please visit Forbes.
Source: Forbes, Google Finance, Reuters.

Top 10 banks of the world by market capitalization (April 2009)

Bank	Country	Mkt Cap on Apr 30, 2009
Indl & Coml Bank of China	China	197
China Construction Bank	China	133
JP Morgan Chase	US	124
HSBC	UK	123
Bank of China	China	120
Wells Fargo	US	85
Banco Santander	Spain	73
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial	Japan	63
Goldman Sachs	US	59
Bank of America	US	57

52 Banks in America failed in last one year

According to the data by FDIC(Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) 52 banks have failed in the last one year, one failure per week on an average. This, once again, highlights the gravity of the crisis, and its impact on the financial institutions across the United States.

Month	No. of banks failure
Apr-09	8
Mar-09	5
Feb-09	10
Jan-09	6
Dec-08	3
Nov-08	5
Oct-08	4
Sep-08	3
Aug-08	3
Jul-08	3
May-08	2
Total since May 2008	52

These banks combined had an asset size of 388 billion USD. The failure had cost about 2 billion dollars to the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund.

Washington Mutual was the biggest of them all with 307 billion dollar assets in its balance sheet. Before the failure it was the sixth largest bank in US. The panic started in Washington Mutual when about 16 billion dollars were withdrawn from the bank during 10 day bank-run. This was about 9% of the size of the total deposits in the bank. However, the pain was avoided by the sale of the bank to JP Morgan Chase (JPMC). This failure was the largest in the history of America.

The second biggest bank to fail during the year was IndyMac Bank with 32 billion dollars of assets. This was the fourth largest bank failure in American history. The failure cost FDIC about 9 billion USD.

About FDIC
"The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) preserves and promotes public confidence in the U.S. financial system by insuring deposits in banks and thrift institutions for at least $250,000; by identifying, monitoring and addressing risks to the deposit insurance funds; and by limiting the effect on the economy and the financial system when a bank or thrift institution fails."

Fed Stress test for 19 biggest US Financial Institutions

US Federal Reserve is putting the 19 biggest US financial institutions under stress test to check their stability if the economic situation worsens. Those under the stress test along with their P/E and market capitalization as on 24 April 2009 are listed below:

Name of Finanical Institution	P/E	Market Cap (Billion USD)	Code
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.	58.6	125.4	JPM
Wells Fargo & Co.	7.8	90.8	WFC
Goldman Sachs Group	27.1	61.0	GS
Bank of America Corp.	12.0	58.2	BAC
US Bancorp	16.5	33.4	USB
Bank of NY Mellon Corp.	27.4	30.9	BN
American Express Co.	13.3	29.3	AXP
MetLife	6.4	24.0	MET
Morgan Stanley	-	23.8	MS
PNC Financial Services Group	18.0	19.2	PNC
Citigroup	-	17.6	C
State Street Corp.	9.4	16.1	STT
BB&T Corp.	9.7	13.1	BBT
Capital One Financial Corp.	-	7.5	COF
SunTrust Banks Inc.	18.3	5.7	STI
Regions Financial Corp.	-	3.9	RF
Keycorp	-	3.5	KEY
Fifth Third Bancorp	-	2.1	FITB
GMAC LLC	-	-

The stress test which is aimed at assessing the capital adequacy of the major financial institutions under various scenarios comes under the SCAP (The Supervisory Capital Assessment Program). The banks that perform poorly under this stress test will be asked to increase their capital and will come under pressure from the investors. Fed has also released a 21 page document stating the methodology which it will use for the stress testing these institutions. The results of the test will start coming after May 4, 2009. One reason behind Fed stating the methodology 10 days in advance is to prevent any shock to the investors. The press release about the methodology was done about an hour after the closing of the US market for the weekend, thus giving analysts time to analyse and digest the information.

Resources:
The Fed's press release
The Fed's stress testing methodology

World's top 6 safest banks are still the safest!!

The financial crisis has taken a toll on major banks leaving many top notch banks like America's Citibank, UK's Barclays etc. in never before situation. However, the top 6 safest bank as published by Global Finance Magazine has remained the same during this crisis. Have a look at the top 6 safest banks their ranks in the period 2004-2009.

2009	2008	2006	2004	Bank	Country
1		4	3	KfW Group	Germany
2	1	1	1	Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations	France
3	2	2	5	Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten	Netherlands
4	3	5	6	Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank	Germany
5	4	3	7	Rabobank	Netherlands
6	5	6	2	Landeskreditbank Baden-Wuerttemberg - Foerderbank	Germany

Global Finance ranks the banks on the basis of their credit rating as provided by the rating agencies Fitch, Moody's, and S&P. These banks have the highest credit rating of AAA from Fitch & S&P, and Aaa from Moody's. The rating corresponds to the maximum credit worthiness and has lowest risk of default.

The size of the balance sheet of these safest banks is however not of the order of the biggest banks like RBS, Deutsche bank, etc.

Bank	Total Assets billion USD
KfW Group	521
Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations	289
Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten	136
Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank	131
Rabobank	840
Landeskreditbank Baden-Wuerttemberg - Foerderbank	87

A comparison with the biggest banks:

Bank	Total Assets billion USD
Royal Bank of Scotland Group	3,807
Deutsche Bank Group	2,974
BNP Paribas	2,494
Barclays	2,459
HSBC	2,354

The asset data is as on Dec 31, 2007.
Source: Global Finance

Despite decline in oil prices Exxon Mobil replaces Wal-Mart as biggest company in 2008

The Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporates is out and there are few changes in the top 10 ranks with the top most rank now occupied by Exxon Mobil. Bank of America & Citigroup are out of top ten list with Hewlett-Packard and Valero Energy making place in the top 10. The Fortune rankings are based on revenues of companies in the year 2008.

2008 Rank	2009 Rank	Company	Revenues billion $
2	1	Exxon Mobil	443
1	2	Wal-Mart Stores	406
3	3	Chevron	263
5	4	ConocoPhillips	231
6	5	General Electric	183
4	6	General Motors	149
7	7	Ford Motor	146
10	8	AT&T	124
14	9	Hewlett-Packard	118
16	10	Valero Energy	118

Exxon Mobil made a huge leap forward to make its narrow trail behind Wal-Mart in 2007 a big lead ahead of it in 2008. Its revenues increased by 19%, remarkable for a company of such size and sharp decline in crude oil prices. While Wal-Mart can't be blamed for losing its position as its revenues increased at 7% when the economy halted. Amongst the new top 10 list only the two Auto-majors GM and Ford showed declining revenues.

	Company	Revenues (bil $)
		2009	2008	growth
1	Exxon Mobil	443	373	19%
2	Wal-Mart Stores	406	379	7%
3	Chevron	263	211	25%
4	ConocoPhillips	231	179	29%
5	General Electric	183	177	4%
6	General Motors	149	182	-18%
7	Ford Motor	146	172	-15%
8	AT&T	124	119	4%
9	Hewlett-Packard	118	104	13%
10	Valero Energy	118	97	22%

The profit figures give a better indication of the state of the economy with 4 out of 6 companies suffering losses. While GM and Ford continued their losses from last year, the other two loss reporting firms were impacted by the slowdown in this year only.

Rank	Company	Profits (bil $)
		2009	2008	growth
1	Exxon Mobil	45	41	11%
2	Wal-Mart Stores	13	13	5%
3	Chevron	24	19	28%
4	ConocoPhillips	-17	12	-243%
5	General Electric	17	22	-22%
6	General Motors	-31	-39	-
7	Ford Motor	-15	-3	-
8	AT&T	13	12	8%
9	Hewlett-Packard	8	7	15%
10	Valero Energy	-1	5	-122%

For the full list of Fortune 500 companies, please visit Fortune 500.