Sinopec leads Top 500 Chinese Enterprises list

CHONGQING - Chinese oil giant Sinopec Group ranked first on the 2014 edition of the Top 500 Chinese Enterprises list, marking the tenth year that the company has held the title.

Sinopec Group took the lead with total revenues of 2.95 trillion yuan ($478.24 billion), according to the list released on Tuesday by the China Enterprise Confederation and the China Enterprise Directors Association.

It was followed by another oil company, China National Petroleum Corporation, and State Grid, China's largest electric utilities company. They were joined by seven other state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to complete the top 10, including another oil giant, a construction group, a telecom operator and four major banks.

The enterprises in fourth to tenth place were, in order, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, China State Construction, China Mobile, Bank of China and China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

The list was compiled based on revenues of Chinese enterprises in 2013. All companies on the list had revenues above 20 billion yuan. The lowest-ranked company had revenues of 22.86 billion yuan, 2.99 billion yuan higher than the company in the 500th spot last year.

Combined revenues of the companies totaled 56.68 trillion yuan, up 13.31 percent year on year and roughly equal to the country's 2013 GDP of 56.88 trillion yuan.

The top three companies saw their revenues exceed 2 trillion yuan, while another 131 firms surpassed 100 billion yuan, according to the list.

The 500 companies raked in combined profits of 2.4 trillion yuan in 2013, 10.6 percent higher than the previous year.

However, their profitability slipped 0.1 percentage points to 4.24 percent, and their return on assets edged down 0.08 percentage points to 1.36 percent. Both indicators have dropped for a third straight year.

Of the 300 SOEs on the list, 42 posted combined losses of 72.66 billion yuan in 2013. In sharp contrast, only one of the 200 private companies reported losses in the same period, which totaled 50 million yuan.

Of all the 43 firms with losses, 17 were engaged in the coal industry, 7 were in the iron and steel sectors, and 7 were in non-ferrous metals.

Aggregate revenues of the SOEs increased at a slower pace of 10.6 percent year on year, with net profits up 5.84 percent from a year ago.Private firms performed better, with their revenues jumping 14.51 percent and net profits up 17.62 percent from the previous year.

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