Javier Blas is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. He is coauthor of “The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources.”
They’re one of America’s richest but least known corporate dynasties: the Cargill-MacMillan family. The source of their billions, the commodity trading giant Cargill Inc., is the largest privately held company in the US by revenue. Quietly, both the company and its owners are enjoying some of their best times ever.
That’s rather counterintuitive. Pandemics, wars, inflation and geopolitical chaos don’t typically make for a good business backdrop. But it’s precisely the treacherous conditions of 2020 to 2023, including supply-chain mayhem and wild price gyrations, that are driving the profitability of the commodity trading industry.
They're one of America's richest but least known corporate dynasties: the Cargill
Cargill
Some of Cargill's major businesses are trading, purchasing and distributing grain and other agricultural commodities, such as palm oil; trading in energy, steel and transport; raising livestock and production of feed; and producing food ingredients such as starch and glucose syrup, vegetable oils and fats for ...
-MacMillan family. The source of their billions, the commodity trading giant Cargill Inc., is the largest privately held company in the US by revenue. Quietly, both the company and its owners are enjoying some of their best times ever.
Cargill kept its number one spot for the third consecutive year. Koch Industries, Publix Supermarket and Mars take the 2nd, 3rd and 4th spots respectively, the same ranks as last year. Texas-based supermarket chain H-E-B moved back into the top five after dropping to No. 6 in 2022.
Cargill, Incorporated, is an American global food corporation based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware. Founded in 1865, it is the largest privately held company in the United States in terms of revenue.
"W.W. Cargill founded the business on the Iowa frontier at the end of the Civil War, and his descendants still own 88% of the agricultural conglomerate 150 years later,"Forbes reports. Heirs to the family fortune include James Cargill II, Austen Cargill II, and Marianne Liebmann.
IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public, making it a publicly traded entity. It seems unlikely that Cargill will go public anytime soon. However, investors interested in the agricultural giant have some options to consider.
U.S. 20 largest private companies 2023, by revenue
In 2023, Cargill was the largest private company in the United States, by revenue. That year, they had a revenue of 177 billion U.S. dollars. In comparison, construction company Wawa made around 18.9 billion U.S. dollars.
Today the company is a major player in grain, producing corn syrup, starch and livestock feed, and is involved in meatpacking and energy trading. There are at least 100 family members that together own an estimated 88% of the company. According to Forbes, 21 of the family members are billionaires.
The people who have been sickened or died from eating contaminated Cargill meat, the child laborers who grow the cocoa Cargill sells for the world's chocolate, the Midwesterners who drink water polluted by Cargill, the Indigenous People displaced by vast deforestation to make way for Cargill's animal feed, and the ...
Key Takeaways. Cargill is one of the largest private companies in the United States. The company avoided going public because of its size and the number of assets it holds. Investors can buy shares in Cargill's rivals—Bunge Limited and Archer-Daniels-Midland.
The Cargill family had at least 14 billionaires. The Cargill company and family—who had at least 14 billionaires—were "famously quiet", living "extremely private lives, many of them on ranches and farms in Montana," according to Forbes. In 2016, there were major changes in Cargill Inc.
The source of their billions, the commodity trading giant Cargill Inc., is the largest privately held company in the US by revenue. Quietly, both the company and its owners are enjoying some of their best times ever. That's rather counterintuitive.
Originate, source, transport and process commodities into branded food, feed, fuel and bioindustrials. Sell ingredients, finished solutions and services to manufacturers, foodservice customers and retailers.
While the title of the world's largest public company has changed over the last couple of decades, from ICBC to JPMorgan Chase to Apple, the most valuable private American company has enjoyed its status largely unchallenged. Cargill is the most valuable private company in the world.
And that put the Cargill-MacMillan family's fortune around $47 billion, making it one of the wealthiest families in America. Forbes estimates eight family members are billionaires from this company founded in 1865 following the Civil War.
The Fortune 500 is an annual list of the 500 largest companies, compiled by Fortune magazine, using the most recent revenue figures and includes public and private companies.
One of either Blackrock, Vanguard, or State Street is the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P 500 companies. They are the three largest owners of most DOW 30 companies. Overall, institutional investors (which may offer both active and passive funds) own 80% of all stock in the S&P 500.
While many of the nearly 27 million private companies may also be classified as “small businesses” and therefore count toward the stats listed above, as also outlined above, there are also many other private companies (not publicly traded) that are much larger and are not included in the “small business” figures.
Introduction: My name is Tish Haag, I am a excited, delightful, curious, beautiful, agreeable, enchanting, fancy person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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