Saudi Firms Dominate Forbes Top 500 Arab Companies List

Saudi Arabia had 108 entries- the highest – in Forbes magazine’s recently released list of the top 500 Arab companies in 2014.

The combined market value of these companies-all of which are listed in the Kingdom’s stock exchange Tadawul- stood at $746.33 billion while they had combined revenues of $162.06 billion.

State-owned firm SABIC topped the list consecutively with $50 billion in revenues and an asset base of $90.4 billion. Saudi Telecom, which reported a profit of $2.6 billion, occupied the second position yet again.

Kuwait had the second highest number of entries in the list with the National Bank of Kuwait as its top entry in the 10th position.

A total of 74 companies from the UAE were featured in the list with Etisalat, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank ranked among the top 10 companies in the Arab world.

Egypt came in at the fourth place in terms of the number of entries, followed by Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Lebanon and Iraq, respectively.

Among sectors, the industrial sector saw the highest number of entries with 24.2 per cent of the total lineup, followed by the banking sector that constituted around 20.2 per cent of the total number of firms.

Real estate companies across the region also fared well as they accounted for 10.4 per cent of entries with UAE developer Emaar Properties leading the way at the 19th position.

Companies featured in the list hailed from a number of sectors such as service, food industry, financial services, petrochemicals, retail, transport, healthcare, telecoms, insurance and tourism.

The combined revenues of all the companies stood at $383.67 billion while net profits amounted to $71.68 billion. These figures equate to year-on-year increases of 12 per cent and 16.2 per cent respectively while aggregated total assets grew 19 per cent to reach $2.64 trillion in 2013.

Following a lull caused by the global recession in 2008, Arab economies are recovering steadily with the majority of them aiming at growing the non-oil sector.

According to a report by the Institute of International Finance (IIF), GCC economies are estimated to grow at around 4.2 per cent in 2014.