The rating agency has included eight Indian companies in its annual list of 300 firms, while only four Chinese firms were included in the list.
MUMBAI: Can an Indian company challenge the world’s best? Not just one, there are eight that can, says New York-based global rating agency Standard and Poor’s.
S&P has spotted a total of 300 firms that can give a serious headache to the world’s leading companies in their respective fields.
The local companies include cement maker ACC (now owned by Swiss giant Holcim AG), Hotel Leela Venture (promoted by Mumbai-based Capt Krishnan Nair), Indian Hotels (the Tata Group company that runs the Taj Group of Hotels), Jain Irrigation (the Jalgaon-based PVC pipes maker); Lakshmi Machine Works (the Coimbatore-based textile machinery maker), Marico (Parachute hair oil, Kaya skin clinics, etc); Siemens India (an arm of the German giant); and Titan Industries (the watches and jewellery company).
S&P had spotted seven Indian companies last year, and the number has remained more or less the same since it started bringing out this annual report in 2001.
Japan, with 62 companies, leads the pack followed by the United States with 58 and the United Kingdom with 19.
Why hasn’t India’s share grown when everyone is talking about a buoyant Indian equity market and the great Indian growth story?
“First of all, the weightage of Indian equity as a percentage of the global universe of listed stocks is less than 3%,” said Srikant Dash, index strategist for S&P. “Secondly, the great demand that is being generated in India need not mean that the companies servicing this demand need to be domiciled in India.”
The 300 Global Challengers Class of 2007 are mid-sized publicly traded companies selected on the basis of market capitalisation, share price appreciation, earnings per share growth, sales growth, and employee count growth.
“In the Darwinian sense, mid-caps are truly positioned in an evolutionary ‘sweet spot’, having survived beyond their start-up phases and offering stability as well as rapid growth opportunities in the future,” said Dash.
“Mid-cap firms can be thought of as having overcome the ‘growing pains’ of small firms and thus a lot less risky than small-cap start-ups. The class of 2007 offers the best potential pool of firms that could become tomorrow’s leaders.”
The class of 2007 has representation across 37 countries.
The regional composition of the list has also changed from last year, with companies in the Americas losing out to counterparts in Europe.
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