The 100 oldest companies in the world

What is the oldest company still operating today and what does it do?

The answer is Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd., a Japanese construction company founded in 578, and still operating over 1400 years later.

In fact, according to a report published by the Bank of Korea in 2008 examining over 5,000 companies older than 200 years, 56% were in Japan and in 2009, a nationwide Japanese survey counted more than 21,000 companies older than 100 years.

I wanted to see how these ancient Japanese businesses compared to the rest of the world’s companies. Where were some other old companies still in operation and how did their fields differ?

As such, I added a list of the 100 oldest countries to an Excel spreadsheet, imported it into Tableau, and made a visualisation.