won 5th ranking in forbes' list Asia's Fab 50 CompaniesFrom: By...

won 5th ranking in forbes' list Asia's Fab 50 Companies
From: By Nayla Yehia
October 04, 2005

The world's largest mining group BHP Billiton has a lot of what China wants: iron ore and coal

AUSTRALIAN company BHP Billiton won third ranking in the Forbes Fabulous 50 list of Asian companies while Brambles has landed in fifth spot.

Some 500 public companies in the Asia-Pacific region met Forbes's definition of "big" and therefore could have been be considered for this first Forbes Fabulous 50.

About half the sample survived Forbes's additional criteria for sustained and rising profitability. From the remainder, Forbes picked the top 50 Asian companies.

This cream of the regional crop is not a ranking by size, like Forbes's annual Global 2000, or necessarily a measure of brand wattage.

Forbes is mindful that many may wish to build a stock portfolio around such choices. Thus Forbes has included some top performers that gained from state parentage or blessing, as long as they were sharp from competing in today's marketplace.

As the economies of Australasia move on, enjoying a world-beating pace of growth that now again includes the integral economy of Japan, the bar for such a select list gets higher.

Several big Asian firms have listed offshoots that might have qualified for the Fab 50 on their own, but Forbes folded them into the mother corporation for puposes of this listing.

Statistical criteria for inclusion in the list required companies to have at least $US5 billion ($6.56 billion) in revenue or market value) with the best aggregate scores for long-term profitability, sales and earnings growth as well.