Companies headquartered across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region accounted for 38% ($18.1 trillion) of the total aggregate revenue ($47.7 trillion) of the companies featured in the Forbes 2000 list in 2022, reveals GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

In terms of the number of companies too, APAC dominated the list with 796 enterprises, representing around 40%. North America stood second with a combined aggregate revenue of $16.9 trillion from 657 companies; followed by Europe with $11.2 trillion from 440 companies; the Middle East and Africa with $845.8 billion from 68 companies; and South & Central America with $653.9 billion from 39 enterprises.

North American companies accounted a little over 42% of the total $4.5 trillion profit pool of the companies in the Forbes 2000 list, followed by APAC at 29.2%, Europe (22.6%), the Middle East and Africa (4%), and South and Central America (2%).

The Middle East and Africa surprisingly dwarfed all other regions in terms of generating profit through per unit of revenue as it posted a net profit margin of 21.6%, followed by South and Central America (13.6%), North America (11.3%), and Asia-Pacific (7.3%).

The breakup by sector reveals that the top 15 sectors by revenue accounted for around 80.5% of the Forbes 2000 revenue pool, and 75% of total companies, which translates into $38.4 trillion and 1,499 companies, respectively.

Banking, diversified financials, oil & gas, and materials were the leading profitable sectors.

The diversified financials market, which includes investment banks and securities and payment related companies reported the highest net profit margin of 22%, followed by banking (17.4%), materials (11.9%), telecommunications services (10.7%), and technology hardware & equipment (10.4%).

IT software & services market reported the highest net profit margin of 17.5%, followed by diversified financials (16.4%), banking (13.8%), technology hardware & equipment (8.4%), and telecommunication services (7.2%).

Murthy Grandhi, Company Profiles Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digitization in the financial services industry. As working from home continued in 2021, the demand for IT-related products and services too witnessed growth. Subsequently, software companies benefitted as all enterprises fast-tracked digital adoption and switch to cloud.”