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Business Week Global 1200 Dinosaurs

Business Week reports, "amid the rapid technological and economic shifts of our hypercompetitive world, here's a surprise: The top multinationals remain amazingly stable. Eight of the 10 companies that head up BusinessWeek's Global 1200, a ranking of corporations worldwide by stock market value, are the same ones that made the top 10 last year."

In contrast, regarding the telecom sector, BW has the following opinion.

"The big land-line telcos are losing appeal. Decliners included Australia's Telstra, Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ ) of the U.S. and Europe's ex-monopolies, Telecom Italia (TI ), France Telecom (FTE ), Deutsche Telekom (DT ), and Spain's Telef�nica (TEF ). The message: traditional land-line voice service is going the way of the dinosaur. Most of the telcos that moved up in our ranking are mobile operators such as Britain's O2 and Am�rica M�vil (AMX ) -- the mobile telephone giant controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim rose 91 places, to 152. One-third of the company's 83.6 million Latin American clients are in Mexico, where low interest rates and fast-expanding consumer credit have fueled demand for cellular phones and other electronic gadgets. Meanwhile, China Mobile Ltd. (CHL ), the top Chinese company on the list, moved up 24 places, to 36, with a market cap of $97 billion."

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