Upvote:5
American Business History Center provides an XLSX file with the top U.S. (public only) companies in 1917 and 1929. here are the 1929 Top Ten:
Source: Forbes Magazine 50th Anniversary Issue, 9/15/1967
List does not include most private companies, so is incomplete
Also, companies were not required to report revenues, so such
companies as ASARCO, American Tobacco, and Standard Oil (NY) are not included
Company | 1929 Revenues ($MM)
-----------------------------+---------------------
Standard Oil (New Jersey) | $1,523
General Motors | $1,504
Ford Motor | $1,143
US Steel | $1,097
Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea | $1,054
Swift & Co. | $1,000
Armour & Co. | $1,000
Standard Oil (Indiana) | $495
Sears, Roebuck | $444
General Electric | $415
The closest list I could find for post-Depression is in 1955, with the Fortune 500 listing for 1955, the first year in which Fortune magazine compiled and published such a list. Although still just U.S. companies at that time (rather than today's true global listing), recovery from the devastation of WW2 was still a decade away, so all the top global companies were still U.S. companies.
As you can see, all of General Motors, U. S. Steel, and Standard Oil (New Jersey) / Exxon remain in the top 5 but their order has changed, and General Electric and Esmark have replaced Ford Motor and Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea in that elite company.
Note the omission of the Ford Motor Company from the 1955 list, while every year from 1956 until at least 1975 it is in either 2nd or 3rd place. This is because Ford only went public in 1956, so it was omitted from prior lists.