Every year the Forbes magazine publishes its annual list of Forbes Global 2000 list. These companies represent the largest and most profitable firms from around the world. From the 2015 report:

The FORBES Global 2000 is a comprehensive list of the world’s largest, most powerful public companies, as measured by revenues, profits, assets and market value. We use a composite score that weighs those four metrics equally, as one barometer alone would present a biased and incomplete account (read our methodology here).

This year’s Global 2000 companies hail from 60 countries and account for combined revenues of $39 trillion, profits of $3 trillion, with assets worth $162 trillion, and a market value of $48 trillion. Thanks to a bull market, the total market value of Global 2000 companies grew 9% year-over-year, the most among the four metrics.

In order to review which publicly-listed Greek firms are the largest and most powerful I referred to this list. The following eight Greek companies appear in this ranking for 2015:

Source: Forbes

Bank of Greece, Public Power and National Bank of Greece (NBG) made profits last year with Bank of Greece earning $868 million. However Bank of Greece is the country’s central bank. Five of the eight firms above are banks.All these banks have billions in assets which are loans held on their books. For example, National Bank of Greece had nearly $140 billion in assets last year but had a market value of just about $4 billion.

The full list of Greek stocks trading on the US markets can be found here.

Disclosure: No Positions

Related:

• The Top 20 Greek Companies by Market Capitalization in 2015 (TFS)
• Should You Invest in National Bank of Greece ADR After 2nd Reverse Split ? (May 2013, TFS)
• Avoid National Bank of Greece After Reverse Split (Nov, 2011, TFS)
• How Much Did National Bank Of Greece Stock Fall In The Past 5 Years? (Oct, 2014, TFS)

Greece is the birthplace of democracy. However modern-day Greece can be considered as a “failed state” by some measures. For example, the country is notorious for tax evasion from ordinary people to billionaire shipping magnates. No wonder, Greece is the poorest country in developed Europe. For better or worse, Greece was included in the European Union. In the past few years, the country has become the poster-child for ruining the EU economy with its on-again off-again debt crisis. Even with the current government, the Greek drama refuses to die once for all. It has become as a bad nightmare that simply won’t go away. It may not be a bad idea for the EU to kick out Greece of the union.

The following chart shows the Greek Sovereign Debt held by various creditors:

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Source: EU Commission President Juncker: ‘I Don’t Understand Tsipras’, Der Spiegel

Related:

• Greece: go your own way (Money Observer)
• What are Greece’s default options? (Money Observer)

For investors willing to bet on Greek stocks, there are a few ADRs trading on the US markets. The complete list of Greek ADRs can be found here.

Updates:

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Source: BBC

A cool interactive graphic from The Wall Street Journal:

Click on the image or link below to go to the graphic.

Source: Greece’s Debt Due: What Greece Owes When, WSJ

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Source: A Full Greek IMF-Debt Default Would Be Four Times All Previous Defaults Combined, CFR

Source: Greece debt crisis: IMF payment missed as bailout expires, BBC

Source: Greek debt crisis: Who has most to lose?, CNN

Source: How Greece’s debt has shifted since the last bailout, WEF

Source: Zerohedge

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IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard has said that Greece needs to slash pension spending by 1% of GDP in order to reach its new budget targets.  The Greek government continues to resist, arguing that Greeks dependent on pensions have already suffered enough.  But it has yet to put a compelling alternative to its creditors.

What depresses us is how little attention has been paid to one major area of Greek government spending that seems ripe for the ax: defense spending.  Greece spends a whopping 2.2% of GDP on defense, more than any NATO member-state save the United States and France.  Bringing Greece into line with the NATO average would alone achieve ¾ of what the IMF is demanding through pension cuts.

Greece has long argued that its defense posture is grounded in a supposed threat from Turkey – also a big spender on things military.  But surely the United States and the major western European powers can keep a cold peace between NATO allies at much lower cost.

So why don’t they?  German and French arms-export interests surely explain the silence on the creditor side: Greece is one of their biggest customers.

Source: Greece and Its Creditors Should Do a Guns-For-Pensions Deal, CFR

Source: The Fate of Greece: Decision Time for Tsipras and Merkel, Der Spiegel

Related:

• Greek Sovereign Debt Owed by Creditor (TFS)
• 12 charts and maps that explain the Greek crisis (Vox)