Wow!
February 5, 2010
If we Compare the Fortune 500 in 1959 to 2009, there are only 72 companies that appear in both lists. Or, in percentage terms, only 14 percent of the Fortune 500 companies in 1959 were still on the list 50 years later in 2009. Eighty-six percent of the companies have either gone bankrupt, merged, gone private, or still exist but have fallen from the top 500 companies (ranked by gross revenue).
That's a lot of creative destruction, and it's probably safe to say that many of today's hot or non-hot Fortune 500 like the ones listed below will be replaced by new companies in new industries by the year 2059.
Group A. American Motors, Studebaker, Eastman Kodak, Maytag and National Sugar Refining.
Group B. Boeing, Campbell Soup, Deere, IBM and Whirlpool.
Group C. Cisco, eBay, McDonald's, Microsoft and Yahoo.
All the companies in Group A were in the Fortune 500 in 1959, but not in 2009.
All the companies in Group B were in the Fortune 500 in both 1959 and 2009.
All the companies in Group C were in the Fortune 500 in 2009, but not 1959.
Here's the complete database of the Fortune 500 every year from 1959-2009.
