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Forbes started their global 2000 list in 2004, and in that few short years, tremendous changes have already occurred, mirroring the realities of the international marketplace.

One example, is in the first year of the list there were 51 different countries represented, this year there were 60.

The list is made up of solely public companies, measured by "sales, profits, assets and market value." The reasoning given by Forbes was that a sole metric can give a distorted view on the true corporate size of a company.

These companies that made the list represent an astounding amount of value, as together they take in "$30 trillion in revenues, $2.4 trillion in profits, $119 trillion in assets and $39 trillion in market value," said Forbes in the story. They also have around 72 million people working for them combined.

To show you how quickly the global market is changing, in 2004 the U.S. had 153 more companies represented on the list than they do today. Just last year alone 61 U.S. companies fell from the list.

Interestingly, the largest number of companies within an industry on the global 2000 is the weakened banking sector, with 315 making it from across the world.

Not only leading the banking industry, but the entire global 2000 list was HSBC Holdings (NYSE:HBC). The company has a 26 percent annual growth in revenue over the last five years, as well as 31 percent in net income during that same time period. It's astounding because those type of numbers are usually relegated to smaller, startup banks than to a mature one like HSBC, which operates in 83 countries, has 10,000 offices and $2.3 trillion in assets.

Here's how Forbes described the specifics of how they chose the companies on the list:

"To find these global superstars, we analyzed 26 industries of the global 2000 (we excluded trading companies) and gave each company scores for a low debt-to-capital ratio, long- and short-term sales growth, profit growth, return on capital and total return over five years. The composite performance score also wires in earnings growth forecasts tabulated by Thomson IBES. We deleted a few candidates with good numbers but big problems.

"Other requirements for the global high performers list: shares traded in the U.S. or american depositary receipts, a share price of at least $5, positive equity and sales of at least $1 billion."