Apple Nails Spot as World's Most Valuable Firm

Steve Jobs, who says Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy when he returned to the company in 1996, wakes up today as chief of the world's most valuable company. Apple, which briefly overtook Exxon in trading Tuesday, was ahead of the oil giant at the close of trading for the first time yesterday, Bloomberg reports. The company had been in second place since overtaking Microsoft in May last year.

Both companies fell during trading yesterday, but Exxon fell farther, closing with a market value of $330.8 billion, compared with $337.2 billion for Apple, which is seen as having rosier long-term prospects. "The Apple of today is different from the Apple of even a few years ago,” said a market analyst. “People who buy Apple tend to buy big and get your friends and family to do it as well. There’s nothing else like that." (More Apple stories.)