PetroChina briefly became the world’s first trillion-dollar company by market capitalization in November 2007.
The milestone occurred after PetroChina’s shares surged on the Shanghai Stock Exchange following its 2007 public listing there. Its valuation briefly exceeded $1 trillion when calculated using the company’s total share count and the higher Shanghai share price.
The headline required an important qualification: PetroChina had different share classes trading at different prices, and the Shanghai-listed shares were much more expensive than the company’s Hong Kong-listed shares. That helped produce an unusually high calculated market capitalization. The valuation soon fell as the share price declined.
PetroChina is the listed arm of China National Petroleum Corporation, one of China’s major state-owned energy groups. Its 2007 peak predates the later American technology companies that crossed the same threshold in 2018.