ICBC tops Forbes as world's largest public company

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) has replaced Exxon Mobil Corp as the world's biggest public company for the first time, and China Construction Bank Corp (CCB) ranked second, the annual list compiled and released by the Forbes Magazine showed.

There are 136 companies from the Chinese mainland in Forbes' annual list of the World's Biggest Public Companies. The US has 543 companies and Japan has 251.

The list, first compiled in 2004, has 2,000 publicly traded companies.

Companies chosen on the list this year have revenues of $38 trillion, a rise of 6 percent year-on-year, but their profit have declined 7 percent to $2.43 trillion.

Data from Forbes also indicated their assets increased 7 percent to $159 trillion in 2012, and their market capitalization also rose 7 percent to $39 trillion.

The meteoric rise of ICBC and CCB in their rankings is mainly due to their double-digit growth in both revenue and profit, although both of the two Chinese commercial banks had their slowest growth rate in 2012, said Forbes.

Analysts in general ruled out the possibility that China will have a crisis in its banking industry, but noted that the rising amount of dishonored contracts and shrinking profit from loans will pose a severe threat.