PetroChina replaces ExxonMobil as world's biggest company

[sweeps]

PetroChina is the first company in the world with a 1 trillion dollar market cap.

MSN Money article

[Broken Arrow]

Oh yeah, I remember reading that. And to think it's only a part of a bigger state-owned Chinese petroleum company. ExxonMobile is less than half that size. It's publically traded, but the state still holds like more than 85% of controlling interest.

Scary.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

This value is new as of yesterday, right? It is value gained through the sale of stock in Shanghai for the first time? If that is the case, then PetroChina is not "big" in the same ways the Exxon Mobil is "big." It is as though PetroChina is 2/3 promise and 1/3 reality.

I wonder who bought all those shares. Though I hear stock investing has some popularity in China, I think I read that Chinese citizens are limited as to how much they can purchase. (I could be wrong on that.) So now with the value of state-owned PetroChina tripled, who are all these new stock holders? Has the government put itself into the minority? Do stockholders of Chinese companies get to vote in any company issues?! I can't imagine!

[sweeps]

Big in terms of market cap. In fact it's bigger than ExxonMobil and General Electric combined.

Could be a gigantic bubble waiting to pop. On the other hand, people said that about Google at $200 too. Stay tuned.

[Broken Arrow]

Yeah, the Chinese stock market is kind of going through their Roaring 20's if some articles are to be believed. I guess this is in part why stocks like these are so popular over there, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that oil is hot right now.

On the same note, I remember reading an article a while back about how many Chinese citizens lost much of their life savings because they betted all on a single stock, and how they're just learning about the concept of diversification.