The world's biggest company is Chinese

For now, anyway:

PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, became the world's first trillion dollar company today after floating on the Shanghai stock market.

In scenes reminiscent of the dotcom boom, investors rushed to buy shares in the company. They floated at 16.7 yuan (107p), and almost tripled to close at 43.96 yuan, giving the group a market capitalisation of around $1 trillion (£480bn).

As well as leapfrogging ExxonMobil – whose $480bn market capitalisation had previously made it the world's biggest company – PetroChina is worth nearly twice as much as the combined value of Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

Technorati Tags: business, China