Owen Lund
In 2015, Nvidia was around the 800th-largest company in the world. Less than a decade later, it was number one.
It is a striking ascent, but Nvidia is only the latest name in a long history of changing leadership in the global equity markets. From General Electric, Toyota and Exxon Mobil to Apple and Microsoft, the identity of the world’s largest listed company has changed repeatedly over the past few decades.
And those changes have not happened at a steady pace.
When leadership changes hand
Much like the role of UK prime minister, equity market leadership tends to alternate between long periods of stability and short bursts of intense change.
In Figure 1, we show the number of leadership changes in the FTSE All-World Index over a trailing six-month window. The periods shaded grey are those where one company sits at the top of the size rankings, while those shaded white denote leadership change.
Figure 1: Number of leadership changes in FTSE All-World Index over trailing six-month window
The mid-2000s contest between General Electric, now GE Aerospace, and Exxon Mobil produced several changes at the top of the FTSE All-World Index as the two companies’ market values converged. More recently, Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia have repeatedly exchanged the lead.
At other times, the picture has been remarkably stable, with a single company remaining at the top for years. In 1999, for example, Fortune magazine named former General Electric CEO Jack Welch “manager of the century” for having grown his company’s market value from $14 billion to $600 billion over two decades, driving it to the top of the global size rankings.
The overall picture of FTSE All-World Index leadership is a distinctive pattern: long periods of relative calm punctuated by bursts of competition for the number-one position.
The rankings tell a bigger story
Reaching number one is only part of the story. The paths companies take before and after reaching the top can be just as dramatic.
Some former leaders have gradually moved down the global rankings, while others have climbed hundreds of places on their way to the top. Nvidia’s ascent is the most striking recent example, but Figure 2 shows that substantial changes in relative company size are a recurring feature of global equity markets.
Figure 2: Ranked position of largest companies in the FTSE All-World index
AT&T sat briefly at the top of the global equity rankings in the early 1990s, before plummeting after the end of the 1999/2000 tech/telecom bubble.
Now at over $300 (in early August 2026), Apple’s share price fell as far as $0.2 in 2003 before the company recovered its fortunes with the launch of iTunes, the iPod and the iPhone. The company reached the top of the global equity size scale by the early 2010s.
Reaching the top and staying there are two very different things. Some companies have dominated the number-one position for years; for others, the experience has been fleeting (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Total days as the world’s largest listed company
| Company | Total days on the throne |
|---|---|
| Apple Inc. | 2986 |
| GE (now GE Aerospace) | 2379 |
| Exxon Mobil Corporation | 1733 |
| Microsoft Corp | 1035 |
| Nvidia | 303 |
| AT&T | 33 |
| Toyota Motor | 25 |
| Cisco Systems | 2 |
Source: FTSE Russell, data from 31/12/1993-11/8/2026. Data before the index inception date (30/6/2000) is based on a back-test of the index rules. Past performance is not a guide to future returns.
Sometimes, companies can reach the top as the result of a market anomaly. In October 2008, Volkswagen became the most valuable company in the world for just a few hours as the result of a short squeeze, temporarily replacing ExxonMobil.
You don’t have to predict the next winner
This brief historical overview shows how unstable individual companies’ fortunes can be. The changes we’ve highlighted in the global equity rankings are also much easier to identify in hindsight than to forecast. We know which companies dominate global markets today; knowing which will occupy those positions five, ten or twenty years from now is considerably harder.
Fortunately, a market capitalisation-weighted global index takes a different approach, reducing this forecasting burden.
A broad, capitalisation-weighted index such as the FTSE All-World adjusts automatically as the market changes. As the market values and size rankings of eligible companies rise and fall, their index weights change with them, subject to the index methodology.
That creates an important distinction between predicting market leadership and participating in it.
Investors do not need to identify the next global champion while it is still hundreds of places down the rankings. Nor do they need to decide when an incumbent leader’s dominance will end. A capitalisation-weighted index reflects changes in relative market value as they occur.
The next company to reach the top may already be familiar — or it may currently sit hundreds of places down the rankings. We don’t know which.
And for investors using a broad, capitalisation-weighted global index as a benchmark or as the performance target of a tracker fund, that is precisely the point.
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