Fortune

The world’s 500 richest people have seen $134 billion wiped from their fortunes overnight, thanks to a stock price bloodbath on Friday led by Amazon. The Nasdaq 100 Index fell 2.4% on Friday, dragging down the net worth of all 10 of the richest people in the world by at least $1 billion—at least on paper. The index is down more than 10% from its most recent peak. Tech billionaires alone—who make up many of the world’s richest people—lost $68 billion from their collective fortunes, according to Bloomberg’s calculations. Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page bid farewell to more than $3 billion each on Friday. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eF9hnssJ

The executive at the top of the #Global500, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, started his career near the bottom. Although he planned to attend a prestigious business school, he got rejected from Harvard, Stanford, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. When he joined Walmart in 1984, his job was to unload trailers in a warehouse. On his first day, he even rear-ended his boss’s car, he told students during this year’s commencement address at the University of Arkansas. Yet McMillon persevered, and worked his way up the ranks during a 33-year career at Walmart. Now the CEO of the No. 1 company on the Fortune 500 and Global 500 lists, McMillon says three key learnings helped him make it to the top while maintaining a balanced life. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dT5brYjn

For the first time since 2018, the U.S. has more companies than China on Fortune's Global 500 list.

Ritik Malhotra really could have stopped. In 2021, Malhotra was at Brex, having sold his previous company to the fintech unicorn. That company, Elph, was acquired by Brex in 2019, and it was Malhotra’s second success: He sold his first company Streem to Box in 2014. Malhotra recently told Fortune: “The thing that ate at me was realizing that, while the first two companies were financial successes, great products and integrations, the kid version of me—learning to program, building websites—would still ask this version of me: Where did you apply your craft to build something that’s long-lasting, enduring, and resilient?” So, Malhotra left Brex in 2021 and founded digitally-native financial advisory startup Savvy Wealth—he was only 29. Now 32, Malhotra is on his third startup, and is betting that this one will be his most enduring. Savvy is building a platform aiming to make it easier for financial advisors to run their businesses independently. The company’s just taken a key next step: Savvy has raised $15.5 million in an additional round led by Canvas Ventures, closing the startup’s Series A at $26.5 million, Fortune can exclusively report Read more: https://lnkd.in/eQz92etF

Always exciting when the cover comes out! My recent profile on Roelof Botha, the head of Sequoia Capital, as he navigates this current era in VC. (Cover photo by Spencer Lowell for Fortune.) Link to story here: https://lnkd.in/gZf3fqpZ

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon started his career near the bottom. Now he's the executive at the top of the #Global500, our annual list of the world’s largest companies. Although he planned to attend a prestigious business school, he got rejected from Harvard, Stanford, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. When he joined Walmart in 1984, his job was to unload trailers in a warehouse. On his first day, he even rear-ended his boss’s car, he told students during this year’s commencement address at the University of Arkansas. Yet McMillon persevered, and worked his way up the ranks during a 33-year career at Walmart. Read more: bit.ly/4aPG4HG

The 2024 Fortune #Global500 is here. 🌐 💰 The corporations on our annual list of the world’s 500 largest companies posted near-flat, but still record-breaking aggregate revenues of $41 trillion in 2023, with a year-over-year increase of 0.1%. 🇺🇸 For the first time since 2018, the U.S. presence (139 companies) on the Fortune Global 500 surpassed that of Greater China (133 companies). 🌎 Fortune #Global500 companies are based in 238 cities and 35 countries/territories around the world. 🔗 See the full list: https://lnkd.in/e3e_pTZD

In 2019, Volkswagen committed $185 billion to transform itself into an electric-first powerhouse. Almost five years later, the carmaker now faces threats from all directions. As Fortune’s Vivienne Walt experienced firsthand at VW’s massive, dedicated EV factory in Zwickau, in the former East Germany, China now presents the biggest existential threat to the German giant’s future. Shenzhen-based BYD, China’s largest EV and battery maker, overtook Tesla in EV sales for the first time last year. And the Chinese giant already has its sights set on Europe, with plans to open a factory in Hungary next year—a move to avoid upcoming tariffs on Chinese EV imports imposed by the European Union. Fortune's Alex Wood Morton has experienced VW’s electric woes firsthand as well. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eYap9p2p

No VC firm has picked winners better than Sequoia Capital. In 1978 it gave Steve Jobs $150,000 to create Apple—now worth $3.6 trillion. Sequoia was also first to back Nvidia in 1993. It cut early checks for Google, Cisco, YouTube, and Airbnb. Over the course of the firm’s lifetime, Sequoia has returned more than $70 billion to its investors, with more than half of that—some $43 billion—paying out in just the past five years. In fact, more than 25% of the market cap of the Nasdaq comes from companies underwritten by Sequoia. Their stellar reputation is precisely what makes Roelof Botha’s job so hard. The task isn’t so much to fix what’s broken as it is to keep what works from breaking—and not to be the guy who ends a five-decade winning streak. Read more from the #Global500 issue of Fortune Magazine: https://lnkd.in/dC3CpCRm

Oslo is not known for high drama. But in 2020, Norway’s capital erupted in controversy over one spectacularly wealthy investor, a splashy event in Philadelphia—and the biggest sovereign wealth fund on the planet. That spring, Nicolai Tangen, the Norwegian founder of London hedge fund AKO Capital, was picked by Norway’s central bank to be the next CEO of its gargantuan oil-and-gas-financed investment fund, whose value had soared above $1 trillion. It soon emerged that months before his selection, Tangen had flown a private-planeload of guests to a gathering he had organized with his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The event featured seminars, fancy dinners, and a $1 million performance by Sting—all at Tangen’s expense. The then CEO of the oil fund, Norway’s trade minister, and the country’s attorney general had all attended. Such finance-nerd blowouts may be standard fare on Wall Street, but they were a jolt in discreet, low-key Norway. The news ignited a media frenzy and even a parliamentary inquiry over favoritism and conflicts of interest. Above all, the affair was at odds with the country’s squeaky-clean reputation—and with the perception of Norges Bank Investment Management, or NBIM, the fund’s asset manager, as a champion of better corporate governance. “It got very messy,” says Anja Riise, executive director of Future in Our Hands, a Norwegian environmental NGO that fiercely opposed Tangen’s appointment. “He’s quite different from what we’ve seen in previous directors.” Read more from the #Global500 issue of Fortune Magazine: https://lnkd.in/eerHcUbR