Hi! Apple unveiled its new Vision Pro headset on Monday, and crowd members were blown away by its 3D camera and cinematic capabilities — its $3499 price tag, on the other hand, didn't get the same response... Today we’re exploring:
Turning over?
The Fortune 500, Fortune magazine’s yearly ranking of America’s biggest companies by annual revenue, was released on Monday, with Walmart taking the top spot for the 11th year in a row after sales rose 6.6% to $611 billion in the last financial year.
However, that streak of dominating the index could soon come to an end, as online retail giant Amazon continues its campaign to close the gap on its brick-and-mortar counterpart. Also looking to challenge for the top spot are ExxonMobil — the last company other than Walmart to top the list back in 2012 — and the most valuable company in the world, Apple.
Most fortunate
The Fortune 500 list was first published in 1955, and it certainly looked a little different back then. The tech giants, health companies, and retailers of today are notably absent in the upper end of the rankings, with 1955’s list topped by General Motors alongside food makers, steel and electric firms, and oil companies (two of which are now nested under the ExxonMobil umbrella).
And the names at the top of the list will likely dramatically shift again in the next 70 years too — just 10 years ago, Walmart’s fiercest rival Amazon sat 51st on the Fortune 500. Indeed, even back in 2017’s edition, Bezos’s company was $350bn a year off the number 1 spot, but the 6 years since have proved how quickly the business landscape can change.
Hole-in-one
The pro-golf world was left stunned yesterday after the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf announced a merger, also taking in the DP World Tour. The deal aims to “unify the game of golf”, with all ongoing litigation dropped.
LIV Golf emerged as a competitor to the traditional PGA Tour last year, teeing off its first tournament in June. Before the first driver was even out of the bag, however, the competition was marred in controversy with accusations of “sportswashing” as high-profile players signed on with the tour for huge fees — bankrolled by the Saudi kingdom’s colossal $650 billionsovereign wealth fund.
The green
There are other key differences between the tours too, LIV’s inaugural season featured 8 tournaments of 54 rounds (LIV is 54 in Roman numerals), compared to the PGA’s standard 72, though it’s the immense prize money on offer that’s been the biggest game-changer. Each LIV tournament has an eye-popping $25 million purse — $20 million for individual prizes and $5 million for teams — with the top three individual performers over the season sharing an additional $30 million.
Fewer players and larger sums mean substantial earnings regardless of finishing positions, with even those at the bottom of the leaderboard could secure hefty $120,000 sums, while the average payout surpassed $500,000. This has dwarfed the prize money offered by established events such as the Players Championship on the PGA Tour, which averaged just under $300,000 and a minimum payout of $41,000.
Family comes first
Spending time with family is of the utmost importance to people across the US, with a whopping 73% of Americans describing it as “one of the most important things" to them personally, according to recent data from Pew Research Center.
More than 9 in 10 people put family time into the top category or the “very important” bucket, a clear sign that, although the amount of time we spend alone tends to increase as we age, the hours and minutes spent with family is of very high value compared to other life factors.
Top priorities
Nothing else on the list was as unanimously valued. Only 32% of those surveyed ranked practicing religious faith as "one of the most important things" to them personally, while being physically active and being outdoors & experiencing nature captured 31% and 29%, respectively.
While being successful in one’s career is “one of the most” or “very” important things to just 66% of people in the US, it’s still far ahead of pursuits like taking part in a creative activity or involvement in social and political causes, for which just 43% and 28% of Americans said the same, respectively.
• A look at Home Depot’s lesser-known range of $43k build-your-own tiny homes.
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• Charting the states where Americans are paying the most, and least, in sales tax each year.
Off the charts: Which food chain's mass of US stores were we tallying back in January? Hint: it's adding a staggering 4000 stores in China, increasing its presence in the nation by over 7x in the next 2 decades. [Answer below].
