GM, Ford Lead Fortune’s Global 500 List

General Motors Corp. drove to the top spot in Fortune magazine’s list of the world’s 500 biggest companies, fueled by a wave of restructurings that also lifted archrival Ford Motor Co. to No. 2 in revenue, the magazine said.

GM, with $168.4 billion in fiscal 1996 revenue, and Ford, with nearly $147 billion, displaced the Japanese trading giants that have led the Fortune Global 500 for the past two years, the magazine said in its Aug. 4 issue, which appears on newsstands Monday.

“And what’s been good for General Motors is increasingly proving good for the rest of the world as well,” Fortune said of the restructurings, pointing to a 25.1% rise in the 500 companies’ total fiscal 1996 profits to $404.4 billion.

By comparison, total revenues increased just 0.5% to $11.4 trillion, the smallest increase since Fortune began compiling the global list in 1990.

Fortune, however, said its tally was skewed by new accounting standards at the top Japanese trading companies--without the change, revenues would have risen 2%, even with inflation.

The most profitable company on the list was Anglo-Dutch oil colossus Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which earned $8.9 billion on $128.2 billion in revenue. Thirty-one of the most profitable companies and seven of the top 10 were American, Fortune said.

U.S. and Japanese companies dominated the top positions in the Global 500, which included privately owned companies and cooperatives that publish financial figures and report all or part of the data to a government agency.

Japanese trading houses Mitsui & Co. ($144.9 billion in revenue), Mitsubishi Corp. ($140.2 billion) and Itochu Corp. ($135.5 billion) took third, fourth and fifth place.

Mitsubishi fell from first place in the 1996 listing, Mitsui dropped from No. 2 and Itochu No. 3.

Royal Dutch/Shell was in the sixth spot in the latest list, followed by another Japanese trading house, Marubeni Corp. Rounding out the top 10 were U.S. oil giant Exxon Corp., Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corp. and auto maker Toyota Motor Corp.