July 23, 2012 / Fortune Asia / Volume 166 / Number 2 / GLOBAL 500

66 BRAINSTORM TECH
The Death of Cash
Tech giants―and startups like Square―want you to use your phone to pay for everything from gum to train rides. Here’s how they plan to achieve cash-free nirvana.
By Miguel Helft

78 Megaupload and the Twilight of Copyright
Kim Dotcom’s business facilitated more online piracy than the mind can conceive. Yet it might have been legal. How did we get here? Is there any way out?
By Roger Parloff

92 FORTUNE GLOBAL 500
Das Auto Giant
How Volkswagen shucked off its provincial ways and became a global powerhouse.
By Alex Taylor III

99 No Borders, No Boundaries
The Global 500 had record profits and revenue in 2011. Where on earth will the growth come from next?
By Richard McGill Murphy

107 The List
F--1 The World’s Largest Corporations
F--11 Arrivals and Departures / F--12 Notes
F--13 How the Companies Stack Up
F--15 Ranked Within Countries / F--21 Index

8 FIRST
By the Numbers
Bike sharing is coming to New York City.
BY ANNE VANDERMEY

11 FIRST
The Briefing
Resurrecting Tupac, the rising yogurt culture, entitled France, and more.

12 FIRST
Closer Look
Reinventing Spain’s economy: How the nation could fix its productivity problem.
BY PANKAJ GHEMAWAT AND STIJN VANORMELINGEN

14 FIRST
Executive Dream Team
Marketers are teaming up with the CIO. It’s the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
BY JESSI HEMPEL

21 INVEST
Buying Into a Housing Comeback
Stocks of homebuilding companies still have room to run.
BY SCOTT CENDROWSKI

24 INVEST
Anatomy of a Trade
Fund manager John Osterweis: subscribing to Viacom’s future.
BY RYAN DEROUSSEAU

132 Bing!
OPINION

31 Allan Sloan
The five myths of the great financial meltdown: Round 2.

32 Nina Easton
Millionaire taxes hurt the masses, from Newark to Paris.

34 Sheila Bair
To avoid the risk of a bank run, European leaders must act fast.

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
In ”The Best Places to Retire Now” (July 2), we incorrectly referred to Cuenca, Ecuador, as a coastal city. It is in the Andes. And in ”Bet on the Brands” (July 2), we wrote that Nestlé’s brands include Cheerios and Häagen-Dazs ice cream. In fact, Nestlé sells Cheerios outside the U.S. as part of a joint venture with General Mills, but General Mills owns the brand. In the case of Häagen-Dazs, Nestlé sells the ice cream in the U.S. and Canada but licenses the brand from General Mills.

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