So this year’s Forbes Global 2000 list (the 16th edition) is out, ranking 500 publicly-traded companies across 60 countries in terms of employee satisfaction. For the continent of Africa, Kenya’s telecom firm Safaricom emerges as the best employer, while ranking 67th place globally.
Here is a snippet of the African companies ranking by the Forbes business magazine:
| Company | Country | Africa ranking | World Ranking |
| Safaricom | Kenya | 1 | 67 |
| Africa Naspers | South Africa | 2 | 224 |
| First Rand | South Africa | 3 | 432 |
| Sanlam | South Africa | 4 | 457 |
The Forbes ranking was based on a survey done by the publisher on over 430,000 correspondents from across the globe. The correspondents, who are employees of the various companies, were asked to rate their own employer. They were also asked the likelihood of them recommending their current employer to a friend or family members. They were also asked which other employers they admired.
The International Players
This list as mentioned before contains only publicly-traded companies, and collectively they have a market value of $56.8 trillion. They also made $39.1 trillion in sales, $3.2 trillion in profit, and have combined assets of $189 trillion.
And for the first time since 2015, the U.S. and China are splitting the top 10 positions evenly among themselves. To in total Chinese companies number 291 in the list while the U.S. leads with 560 companies.
It is interesting to see how Chinese and U.S. companies performed in this list, as their performance mirrors the ongoing tariffs wars sparked by the Trump administration. Though the U.S. still dominates the list, accounting for 30% of the companies listed therein. While China and Hong Kong’s companies have also increased in this list; in 2017 they were 262 and this year they’re 291. The very first list released by Forbes back in 2003, there were only 43 companies from China and Hong Kong.
Top 10 International Companies in Forbes Global 2000 List 2018
| Company | Country | World Ranking |
| ICBC | China | 1 |
| China Construction Bank | China | 2 |
| JPMorgan Chase | USA | 3 |
| Berkshire Hathaway | USA | 4 |
| Agricultural Bank of China | China | 5 |
| Bank of America | USA | 6 |
| Wells Fargo | USA | 7 |
| Apple | USA | 8 |
| Bank of China | China | 9 |
| Ping An Insurance Group | China | 10 |
Other countries that broke into the top five countries whose companies featured most in this list are Japan, the UK, and South Korea.
Forbes methodology in compiling the Global 2000 list entailed using data from FactSet Research system, which screens for the biggest publicly traded company under four metrics: sales, profits, assets, and market value. The market valuation of the companies mentioned in this list is as of May 11, 2018.