How they got richer as billions got poorer

By Winnie Makena

As the pandemic forced people to stay home and do more things online, some successful companies were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the change. It is these already set businesses, turbocharged by

the pandemic, that are becoming even more dominant. 

Hustle looks at the five biggest global companies that despite a dismal year have survived and thrived. The companies are gauged by their market capitalisation, which is the total dollar market value of a company’s outstanding shares of stock. Market capitalisation is important because it allows investors to understand the size of one company relative to another. Not only that but it shows the market’s perception of its prospects because it reflects what investors are willing to pay for its stock.

Amazon

Their superpower: Excellent customer service and a seamless shopping experience for customers.

At the start of the year, Amazon had a valuation of around $920 billion. After the stock bounced back from the coronavirus market sell-off in March and hit new record highs, the company is now worth $1.49 trillion. That is $570 billion gain in just 2020. That makes Amazon one of the largest companies in the world surging CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth by more than 50 per cent. He is now as a result, the richest man in the whole world, yet he only owns 11.1 per cent of amazon. The e-commerce company’s meteoric rise has been explained by analysts to be caused by the accelerated shift to online shopping and the increased importance of its cloud computing business in the remote work era.