Global Investing

PART VGLOBAL SECTORS AND INDUSTRIES

As discussed in Parts Two and Three, all businesses operate in a global environment, albeit to varying degrees. This section of the book provides a brief primer on the world economy's major sectors and the industries that comprise them (see the following table). We review 11 sectors and 91 global industries based on 10 of the largest publicly traded companies in each industry. The primers cover key variables that affect sales growth and profitability for the industry, how the companies in the industry are commonly valued by analysts, and the principal factors that should be considered by investors when evaluating those businesses.

I have restricted the companies listed to those located in countries with investment-grade credit ratings on their government-issued (sovereign) debt. As a result, you will note that there are no companies listed from certain countries such as Brazil, Greece, Russia, Turkey, or Vietnam, among others. Since sovereign credit ratings are subject to change, the list of countries that meet this criteria will change over time.

The industry categories are my own variation of the standard industry classification systems you will find elsewhere and are not exhaustive since some small subindustries have been omitted or combined into a larger group. I have tried to group companies together based on common factors that affect their business operations as well as their behavior in a typical market cycle. Some companies may fit ...