FORTUNE 500: A new No. 1

FORTUNE's annual ranking of America's largest corporations

Which company knocked Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, from its four-year reign in the top spot? Exxon Mobil Corp,the largest oil company in the United States.It topped the list of 2006 Fortune 500 largest companies, consigning Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to the No. 2 spot on the magazine's annual ranking of the U.S. largest publicly traded companies.

The revenue of Exxon Mobil reached 340 billion dollars in 2005, a 25.5 percent increase over 2004, and had 36.1 billion dollars inprofits, the most by any U.S. company in history,

Ranking the second in the list, Wal-Mart's revenue hit 315.654 billion dollars last year, a 9.5 percent increase from the previous year.

General Motor Corp. barely retained its hold on the No. 3 spot,while Ford Motor Co. slipped to fifth place from No. 4.

The top 10.
1 Exxon Mobil
2 Wal-Mart Stores
3 General Motors
4 Chevron
5 Ford Motor
6 ConocoPhillips
7 General Electric
8 Citigroup
9 American International Group
10 Intl. Business Machines

The list is available here