HONG Kong companies dominate the leading Asian rankings in a global survey carried out by Business Week magazine. The biggest company in the world by market capitalisation was Nippon Telegraph and Telephone of Japan with US$128.94 billion on May 31, the date of the survey. Royal Dutch-Shell Group of the Netherlands and Britain was in second place with $91.93 billion and General Electric of the United States was third with $84.94 billion. Discounting non-Asian companies and those of Japan, Hong Kong and Hong Kong-linked companies took six out of the top 10 rankings. The biggest company in Asia, by market capitalisation, was Singapore Telecom with $34.8 billion. The utility is a new entrant that was listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange only last year in a public offering that left most of the company in government hands. HSBC Holdings was in second place with $27.97 billion and Hongkong Telecom was third with $22.09 billion. Asian firms showed major gains in the rankings after a strong period of equity growth in 1993. The year's gains far exceeded the losses in equities suffered worldwide amid global interest rate uncertainty. A second new entrant to the global top 1,000 rankings was CITIC Pacific, which through a series of placements and injections of assets over the period has seen its market capitalisation grow significantly to $5.84 billion. Of particular interest, all three companies of property tycoon Li Ka-shing make it into the top rankings. They are led by Hutchison Whampoa, Asia's fifth largest company, with $15.9 billion. Flagship Cheung Kong came in at 13th place with $11.09 billion and Hongkong Electric was in 22nd place with $6.33 billion. The Hong Kong entrants are mostly property developers which saw their stock prices greatly enhanced after reporting major re-valuations of their land banks last autumn.