Again this year, Milwaukee area businesses have captured eight spots on the "Fortune 500" list, an annual ranking of America's largest corporations.

Not only did the below eight companies remain on the list but each one rose in the ranking over 2006. The April 30 issue of Fortune magazine (the print version dropped April 16) lists the following Milwaukee area companies:

Business, hometown -- 2007 Rank-2006 Rank
Johnson Controls, Milwaukee -- 67-75
Northwestern Mutual, Milwaukee -- 112-116
Manpower, Milwaukee -- 131-136
Kohl's, Menomonee Falls/Milwaukee -- 152-166
Harley-Davidson, Milwaukee -- 369-380
Rockwell Automation, Milwaukee -- 416-427
Marshall & Ilsley Corp., Milwaukee -- 441-499
Fiserv, Brookfield -- 486-488

Expand the list to 1000 companies, and fifteen out of Wisconsin's 24 businesses are located in the Milwaukee 7 region including the following:

Wisconsin Energy, Milwaukee -- 525
JohnsonDiversey, Sturtevant -- 628
Briggs & Stratton, Wauwatosa -- 733
Snap-On, Kenosha -- 738
Joy Global, Milwaukee -- 767
A.O. Smith, Milwaukee -- 815
Modine Manufacturing, Racine -- 944

Milwaukee, city-proper, has six companies in the Fortune 500 list -- the same as Cincinnati and Seattle but more than Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York has the most at 45. Chicago, for the record, has 11 on the Fortune 500 list.

Included in the Fortune 500 survey are U.S. incorporated companies filing financial statements with a government agency. This includes private companies and cooperatives that file a 10-K and mutual insurance companies that file with state regulators. Excluded are private companies not filing with a government agency; companies incorporated outside the U.S.; companies owned or controlled by other U.S. companies that file with a government agency; and U.S. companies owned or controlled by foreign companies.