'Who' Really Runs Your State?

A state's economy is nothing without the businesses that call it home. However, these companies are not created equally - bigger businesses naturally have outsized influence, generating more revenue, employing more people and (at least theoretically) paying more taxes. So given that corporations are now 'people', who really runs your state in this crony-capitalist land of the free?

Some may be surprising: Chevron (not Apple) runs California, Costco (not Microsoft) runs Washington, and Sands run Nevada.

Some are less so: Berkshire Hathaway runs Nebraska, GM runs Michigan, and ExxonMobil runs Texas.

As Broadview Networks explains,

Using Hoover’s, a D&B Company, we searched through each state’s list of companies to find which had the largest revenue in the last fiscal year.  It was interesting to see how each company’s revenues have changed over the year (for better or worse) and to see if a new largest company had emerged.

At first glance, you may ask, “Where are Apple and Microsoft?”  Yes, these are huge companies but this map is specifically looking at total revenue from the last fiscal year.  If we look at California with Apple vs. Chevron, there is a large discrepancy between market value and total revenues.  Apple’s market value as of March 31, 2015 was $724 billion while Chevron’s was only (and we use “only” lightly) $197 billion.  In terms of revenue, Chevron comes out on top with $203 billion in the last fiscal year while Apple had revenues of $182 billion.