Toyota is the world’s most reputable company for the year 2008, a study by Reputation Institute, a New York based research firm concluded.

The Japanese company is currently the world’s largest auto maker, ahead of General Motors, the company it overtook since the last two years. Apart from the Toyota brand itself, it also owns other best selling vehicle brands such as Lexus, Scion, and Daihatsu in the form of compact cars, sport utility vehicles and trucks.

Other than the automotive business, Toyota also provides financial services such as financing, equipment leasing and related financial products.

On the second position was Google, which breaks into the top spot for the first time. The world’s largest search engine, which has won numerous business awards in the recent years, came as a little surprise, with the company’s reputation and value rising up almost unstoppable.

Sweden’s IKEA, Italy’s Ferrero and America’s Johnson & Johnson came third, fourth and fifth respectively.

More than 600 largest companies were researched to find those with the best global reputation. Toyota, which is headquartered in Tokyo, Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, was ranked 6th in the last two years – 2006 and 2007. In July 2008, Toyota was named as the world’s 5th largest company in the world, behind Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP.

SMEs or Small and Medium Enterprises has now been slightly redefined and reclassified, the Malaysia Budget 2009 revealed.

Effective from 2009 tax assessment year, companies which has a paid-up capital of not more than RM2.5 million but owned or controlled by another company with more than RM2.5 million capital will no longer qualify as an SME.

This means the company will no longer be able to enjoy all the benefits and privileges entitled to an SME such as access to financing, tax breaks and incentives, asset capital allowance, grants and others.

Previously, all companies with a paid up capital not exceeding RM2.5 million are categorized under SMEs, regardless how big or how powerful the shareholders are financially. Strong financial background and support by the holding companies, which sometimes were the market leaders, in turn gave an unfair advantage over those SMEs without big name shareholders.

SMEs are defined mainly based on two criteria, namely the number of people employed and the annual sales turnover or revenue. They are then classified into 3 different groups – Primary Agriculture, Manufacturing, Manufacturing-Related Services (MRS) and Services.