The firms, all in the telecommunications sector, are Primus Telecommunications Group Inc which was placed 43rd, Startec Global Communications Corp at 74th and LCC International Inc at 93rd position.

Primus, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, was founded in 1994 by K Paul Singh, the company's chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), and recorded a revenue of $421 million and a loss of $63.6 million last year. The company, which employs 900 people -- with 200 local employees -- recorded a loss of $2.61 per share. Its stockholders' equity was $114.9 million while its assets totalled $674 million. The firm's market capitalisation was $443.7 million.

Startec, based in Bethesda, Maryland, was founded in 1989 by RamMukunda, who is its chairman, president and CEO, and recorded revenues of $161.2 million in the past fiscal year. Its total losses were $18.6 million and loss per share, $2.08. The stockholder's equity in the company was $15.4 million and assets stood at $225.7 million. The market capitalisation of the firm, which employs 409 people -- with 385 of them being local employees -- was $68.1 million.

LCC International, based in McLean, and founded in 1983 by Rajendra Singh, who is the company's chairman, president and CEO, had revenues of $87.2 million and a loss of $24.7 million. Its loss per share was $1.60, with the stockholder's equity being $200,000 and assets, $84.2 million. LCC, which employs 700 people -- of which 325 are local -- had a market capitalisation of $58.5 million.

Primus provides domestic and international voice, data, Internet, private network and other telecommunications services using its own switching facilities. The company's clients number 450,000 and include corporations, smalland medium-size business and residential customers. Besides North America, it also has a client base in Latin America, Europe and the Pacific rim. Much of the company's revenue comes from Australia where it started providing Internet access for customers last year. Startec is an international long-distance carrier that focuses on 40 ethnic communities in the United States, Canada and Europe, whose members frequently place calls to their places of origin, including India, Russia, the Philippines and the Middle East.

The company's revenue grew by 88 per cent in 1998 as it expanded services outside the United States and increased the number of customers from 71,000 to 122,000. But the company's earnings and stock price stumbled badly after the company took on a $160 million debt at 12 per cent to help finance its expansion.

Startec started out with Indian customers in the Washington area, but has now branched out to other ethnic groups. It tripled its work force in 1998 as it tried to appeal to Chinese,Vietnamese, Korean, Polish, Irish, Pakistani and various Latin American communities.

LCC International provides services to wireless communication carriers, which include network designing and the leasing of products and wireless tower sites. Founded at a time when the cellular industry was in its infancy, LCC today has relationships with more than 200 wireless systems in more than 40 countries. However, 1998 was a hard year for LCC. It hired and fired a senior executive and struggled due to continued economic turmoil in the Asia Pacific region, slowdown in the US wireless engineering market and intense competition in the hardware and software product business.

Founder and chairman Rajendra Singh stepped in to replace Geoffrey Carroll as chief executive in October, just nine months after Carroll had been tapped to lead the company, when its CEO Piyush Sodha suddenly left to form his own company.

Two Indian Americans also held senior positions at the US Airways Group Inc, which came in third on the top100 list, and at MicroStrategy, which stood 87th on the list. The president and CEO of the US Airways Group Inc, Arlington, Virginia, was Rakesh Gangwal, heading the company which recorded revenues of $8.69 billion and a profit of $538 million.

The chief operating officer of MicroStrategy was Sanju Bansal, 32, who founded the company along with Michael Saylor, the company's chairman, president, and CEO.

The company, which makes "data-warehousing" or "decision-support" software, recorded revenues of $106.4 million last year, with a profit of $6.2 million. It employs 979 people, of which 535 are local employees. The top dog on the list was the Mobil Corp, based in Fairfax, Virginia, with revenue of $53.53 billion and a profit of $1.70 billion. The company employs 43,000 people, of which 2,040 are local employees.

The number two spot was occupied by the Lockheed Martin Corp, headquarted in Bethesda, which employs 165,000 people. Lockheed's 1998 revenue was $26.27 billion and profits stood at $1billion.