Disney Becomes Largest Publicly Traded Company Based in LA

Disney Becomes Largest Publicly Traded Company in LA

China View Bussines
7/17/2007

Entertainment giant Walt Disney Co. has become the largest publicly traded companies in the Los Angeles area, the first time since a local business weekly began ranking companies based in the area by market capitalization in 2002.

The market capitalization of the 200 largest publicly traded companies in the area grew by a fairly snappy 11 percent at mid-year 2007 to more than half a trillion dollars for the first time, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported Monday on its website edition.

But the corporate growth on Wall Street was anything but uniform, as the market caps of many Los Angeles-based companies surged thanks to a record year in the financial market, some others -- such as several in the home mortgage or home building business -- drooped.

And there was a change at the top. Walt Disney Co. and it 68 billion-dollar market cap knocked Amgen Inc. off its perch at the top, where it had sat since 2002, where the journal first ranked local companies by the value of their outstanding stock.

Following is the list of the top 10 publicly traded companies in the Los Angeles area this year.

Company Name Market Cap (in dollars)

1. Walt Disney Co. -- 68 billion
2. Amgen Inc. -- 64 billion
3. Occidental Petroleum Corp. -- 48 billion
4. DirecTV Group Inc. -- 28 billion
5. Northrop Grumman Corp. -- 26 billion
6. Countrywide Financial Corp. -- 21 billion
7. Edison International -- 18 billion
8. Hilton Hotels Corp. -- 13.05 billion
9. Public Storage Inc. -- 13 billion
10. Computer Sciences Corp. -- 10 billion.