(FORTUNE Magazine) – Exxon, by pumping profits up 10.7%, to $5.28 billion, passed Royal Dutch/Shell (last year's profit champ) to become the world's most profitable company -- good news, surely, to several thousand Alaska fishermen, among others, still trying to wrest legal settlements from Exxon for the Valdez spill. Drug companies, judged by returns on sales and assets, again outperformed other industry groups, with Glaxo, Merck, and Wellcome among the top ten by return on sales. PepsiCo was the rare company that added workers (52,000); employment | for the 500 as a whole declined 3.8% last year, the same percentage as in 1992. General Motors, the world's largest company, dropped 39,000 people.

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Only three Japanese companies would qualify for the table below if results were given in local currencies. Twenty-four actually appear.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: DESIGN AND GRAPHICS BY JEAN HELD CAPTION: BIGGEST INCREASES IN SALES HIGHEST PROFITS BIGGEST INCREASES IN PROFITS HIGHEST RETURNS ON. . . SALES ASSETS BIGGEST EMPLOYERS