Visualizing The World’s Most Valuable Companies Of All Time

MODERN JUGGERNAUTS LIKE APPLE DON’T EVEN COME CLOSE The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.
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Before speculative bubbles could form around Dotcom companies (late-1990s) or housing prices (mid-2000s), Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that some of the first financial bubbles formed from the prospect of trading with faraway lands.
Looking back, it’s pretty easy to see why.
Companies like the Dutch East India Company (known in Dutch as the VOC, or Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) were granted monopolies on trade, and they engaged in daring voyages to mysterious and foreign places. They could acquire exotic goods, establish colonies, create military forces, and even initiate wars or conflicts around the world.
Of course, the very nature of these risky ventures made getting any accurate indication of intrinsic value nearly impossible, which meant there were no real benchmarks for what companies like this should be worth.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 11, 2017.