As of September 2011, the following companies have managed to establish their brand names as the most valuable, and consequently, they generate billions of sales on just the name alone.

This is not a list of the most profitable companies in terms of revenue, but the companies with the most "sellable name”.

Notice the lack of expected names like Coca-Cola, Marlboro, even Mercedes.

10. HSBC
Brand Valuation: $27.1 billion
Country Headquarters: Britain
HSBC Holdings plc is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

As of 2011 it is the world's second-largest banking and financial services group and second-largest public company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine.

It has around 7,500 offices in 87 countries and territories across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America and around 100 million customers. As of 30 June 2010, it had total assets of $2.418 trillion, of which roughly half were in Europe, a quarter in the Americas and a quarter in Asia.

HSBC is a universal bank and is organised within four business groups: Commercial Banking; Global Banking and Markets (investment banking); Personal Financial Services (retail banking); and Private Banking.[11]

9. AT&T
Brand Valuation: $28.35 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Texas, United States.

It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services.

As of 2010, AT&T is the 7th largest company in the United States by total revenue, as well as the 4th largest non-oil company in the US.

In 2011, Forbes listed AT&T as the 14th largest company in the world by market value and the 9th largest non-oil company in the world by market value.  It is the 20th largest mobile telecom operator in the world with over 96 million mobile customers.

8. Toyota
Brand Valuation: $28.8 billion
Country Headquarters: Japan
Toyota Motor Corporation known simply as Toyota, is a multinational automaker headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan.

In 2010, Toyota Motor Corporation employed 317,734 people worldwide, and was the world's largest automobile manufacturer by production.

Toyota Motor Corporation group companies are Toyota, Daihatsu and Hino Motors, along with several "non-automotive" companies.  TMC is part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

7. General Electric
Brand Valuation: $29 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
General Electric Company, or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation.

The company operates through four segments: Energy, Technology Infrastructure, Capital Finance and Consumer & Industrial.

In 2011, Fortune ranked GE the 6th largest firm in the U.S., as well as the 14th most profitable. GE's divisions include GE Capital, GE Energy, GE Technology Infrastructure, and GE Home & Business Solutions.

6. Vodafone
Brand Valuation: $30.7 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
Vodafone Group plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers (behind China Mobile), with around 341 million subscribers as of November 2010.

It operates networks in over 30 countries and has partner networks in over 40 additional countries. It owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile telecommunications company in the United States measured by subscribers.

The name Vodafone comes from voice data fone, chosen by the company to "reflect the provision of voice and data services over mobile phones".

5. Wal-Mart
Brand Valuation: $34.9 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores.

The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000 list, and the largest public corporation when ranked by revenue. It is also the biggest private employer in the world with over 2 million employees.

The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969
Wal-Mart is also the largest grocery retailer in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51% of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business. 

Wal-Mart has 8,500 stores in 15 countries, under 55 different names.[3] The company operates under its own name in the United States, including the 50 states and Puerto Rico. It operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as Asda, in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price.

4. IBM
Brand Valuation: $34.9 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
International Business Machines (IBM) is an American multinational technology and consulting firm headquartered in Armonk, New York.

IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company. In 2011, Fortune ranked IBM the 18th largest firm in the U.S. as well as the 7th most profitable.

Globally, the company was ranked the 31st largest firm by Forbes for 2011.  IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has nine research laboratories worldwide.

3. Microsoft
Brand Valuation: $39 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in  Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions.

Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems.

Microsoft would also come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office.

The company has diversified in recent years into the video game industry with the Xbox and its successor, the Xbox 360 as well as into the consumer electronics and digital services market with Zune, MSN and the Windows Phone OS.

2.  Apple
Brand Valuation: $39.3 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers.

The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software; the iWork suite of productivity software; Aperture, a professional photography package; Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products; Logic Studio, a suite of music production tools; the Safari web browser; and iOS, a mobile operating system. 

Established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California, the company was previously named Apple Computer, Inc., for its first 30 years

1. Google
Brand Valuation: $48.2 billion
Country Headquarters: USA
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, advertising technologies, and search engines. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, [6] and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program.

The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the "Google Guys", while the two were attending Stanford University as PhD candidates. It was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004.

It has been estimated that Google runs over one million servers in data centres around the world,[17] and processes over one billion search requests[18] and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day. This is the world’s most valuable brand, as of September 2011. But this number one slot is heavily contested for by Apple Inc and Google.

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