The Global 500 is the ranked list of the 500 largest corporations in the world by gross revenue–total volume of sales–annually compiled by Fortune magazine. Many top positions in the Global 500 list, published early in 2008 and headed by the American mega-retail chain Wal-Mart, are occupied by companies now quite famous–or rather infamous–by their presence in the media over past months due to bankruptcies, takeovers, or bailouts. General Motors, now at the brink of bankruptcy, occupies the ninth position in the Global 500 ranking, while Ford is thirteenth. Banks and financial corporations that have recently gone bankrupt, been bailed out, or taken over also occupy high rankings in the Global 500. Foreign corporations that have recently received big infusions of government money such as the Swiss bank UBS or the Royal Bank of Scotland and are thus now essentially nationalized, rank thirty-first and thirty-sixth, respectively, on the Global 500 list. Here, Granados discusses how companies who is suffering from big financial crisis managed to rise with the help from the government.