Russ Oil-Gas

MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russian energy giant Gazprom took 19th place in the 2008 list of the world's top 2000 companies compiled by U.S. magazine Forbes. In the list posted on its website, Forbes ranked each company according to sales, profits, assets and market value. The world's top three companies are Britain's banking group HSBC, U.S. General Electric and the Bank of America. Gazprom's sales stood at $81.76 billion, and its net profit reached $23.30 billion. The company's assets were assessed at $201.72 billion. The gas monopoly ranks fifth on the Forbes list for market value with $306.79 billion. LUKoil, Russia's largest independent oil producer, is the second Russian company after Gazprom. There are 29 Russian businesses on the list in all. LUKoil is followed by electricity monopoly Unified Energy System (UES) of Russia, the country's largest state-owned bank Sberbank and the state-owned oil company Rosneft. The publication said the 2008 list includes companies from 60 countries, employing a total of 72 million people. The United States has the most number of listed companies. However 61 U.S. companies are missing from the 2008 rankings compared with 2007. The list also shows the increasing role of Chinese, Indian and Brazilian businesses. The number of Indian companies almost doubled to 48 against the 2004 ranking.