Could A company like EXXON MOBILE OWN THE WORLD eventually why or why not?

Question

If you look at Exxon's financial statements it says they have 228 billion in retained earnings. What would keep a company like this from say buying wal-mart they could buy the whole thing with that kind of money sitting aside and then they could use the money from wal-mart to guy Target and then maybe GE and so on and so on what keeps them from doing this? Would using that much of their retained earnigns hurt Exxon bad? Fill me in on details?

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/statemnt.aspx?Symbol=XOM&lstStatement=Balance&stmtView=Ann

Answer 1

No it can't .. Why?  Because it is already Owned and the Families that own the world make sure that  people stay poor through use of legislation, etc.  to avoid or mitigate the rise of any competitors that might take over.

Answer 2

well you could but would the purchase make more than the cost it was to buy it.

Answer 3

The whole world?!

I don't think that would be possible, you said "228 billion".  Just to buy all of the companies on the New Stock Exchange would be like $40,000,000,000,000(That's 40 Trillion dollars) let alone all the other companies that are not on the exchange, plus all the companies in all the countries around the world.

Companies have to be willing to sell themselves, before other companies can buy them.  Microsoft had the money to buy Yahoo, but Yahoo said, no!

Although, $228 billion is a lot of money, it is a drop in the bucket and a long way off from the whole world.

A lot of that 228 billion will go back into finding new oil and replacing and repairing equipment.

Answer 4

You're not allow to own a monopoly.

Answer 5

1) No.

2) Exxon Mobil barely sells $400,000,000,000.00 USD annually. In contrast, South Africa sells $100,000,000,000.00 USD annually.

What are they going to do?

Buy the whole country?

They cannot even buy the province of Gauteng.

Wal-Mart is the largest company in the World and Exxon Mobil could easily buy it. (They have a line of credit of at least ONE TRILLION DOLLARS)

Let's asume they get a super nice interest rate of just 10% annually somehow from the largest banks in the World.

Wal-Mart makes at least TEN BILLION ANNUALLY EASILY but that money would be used to pay their debt and that would mean they are not making a penny with Wal-Mart.

What's the point of owning the largest company in the World if you don't make any money with it?

Right now, Wal-Mart reinvest all their profits to build more Wal-Marts all over the world.

If they use all their profits to pay the banks then they won't have any money left to build more Wal-Marts and the rest of the companies would grow bigger and bigger and Wal-Mart would stay the same size and eventually it would become irrelevant.

Wal-Mart could easily buy Target for $100,000,000,000.00 USD right now.

Target makes at least $3,000,000,000.00 USD annually.

This means Wal-Mart would not make any money with Target for at least 30 years.

Asuming each Wal-Mart cost $100,000,000.00 USD then that cash is enough to build at least five in every country.

Why buy ONE Target in the United States for $50,000,000.00 USD when you can build ONE THOUSAND VERY SMALL WAL-MARTS in Africa for $50,000.00 each and make twice the money?  

Why buy milk for $1.00 USD and sell it for $2.00 USD if you can buy Oil for $10.00 USD and sell it for $100.00 USD?

Wal-Mart has thousands of competitors (Both big and small) anywhere.

Some Gas Stations are a hundred miles from their nearest competitor.

Buying Wal-Mart is a BAD BUSINESS DEAL for any Oil Company. The margins are too thin.

Buying Devon (NYSE:DVN), Anadarko (NYSE:APC) and Marathon Oil (NYSE:MRO) makes a lot more sense.

If you need a more detailed answer then let me know.

Answer 6

individual stock owners not wanting to sell but keep investing

Answer 7

There are so many other oil companies that can buy up the world quicker than Exxon. Exxon is puny if you compare it to others such as Saudi Aramco who is buying up oil investments via the Saudi govt.