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Hasknewbie | 6 years ago

"Apple’s market valuation is roughly equal to the national net worth of Denmark (...). In all but name, this is a superpower"

Denmark is a really nice country. Also, it is not a superpower.

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ginko|6 years ago

It's also not true. Apples valuation is around $365 billion, Denmarks _GDP_ is around $370 billion per year.

I'd argue a sovereign country's assets are essentially invaluable, but in Denmark's case there's the interesting historical fact that the US government offered to buy Greenland several times (and always being rebuffed by the Danes), so at least there's an estimate for the value of that island alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_State...

> If the United States wants it for the strategic value of its property, both on land and offshore, and to project military power, the answer is that a value of $500 billion is not overly rich

EDIT: I got the numbers wrong. Apple Inc. is currently valued at over $1 trillion (I used Apple's total assets from their Wikipedia page) and they mention Denmark's net worth which is indeed in that ballpark. I'd still argue that you can't compare the valuation of a company to the net worth of a sovereign country.

jotm|6 years ago

Let's go by the price of land in Denmark. 25,000 Euros per hectare in 2009. That's for agricultural land.

Greenland does not support agriculture, but it does have natural resources, and can have a good strategic value. So let's say it's 10,000 Euros per hectare, a good discount.

It would cost 2.6 trillion Euros, or 2.9 trillion US Dollars.

Everything has a price, I wonder if that would be acceptable for Denmark and under what conditions.

BlueTemplar|6 years ago

Denmark's net worth is only 3 years worth of its GDP?!?