Fortune Global Forum

The Fortune Global Forum is an annual forum for world economic magnates to discuss the issues that global businesses face. It is held by the Fortune magazine under the Time Warner Group of the U.S.

Coming into being in 1930, the Fortune magazine began to appraise and select the top 500 U.S. enterprises that have the largest operational revenue in the United States in 1955. In 1990, it began to publish a ranking of the top 500 industrial enterprises in the world.  And in 1994, it expanded the scope of the top 500 ranking to include service industry.

The ranking is based mainly on operational revenues. But it also compares assets, net income, sales volume, the number of employees, investment and dividend.  The Fortune top  500 ranking has been considered as an authoritative measurement of the economic power of an enterprise and a weatherglass of a country’s economic strength.

The Fortune Global Forum has been held consequently in Singapore, Barcelona of Spain, Bangkok of Thailand and Budapest of Hungary since 1995. The '99 Fortune Global Forum was held in Shanghai from September 27 to 29, with a theme of “China: the Next 50 Years”. More than 800 delegates from both at home and abroad attended the meeting.