New York City ? Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dethroned Exxon Mobil Corp. to win back first place on the 2007 Fortune 500 list after a confluence of economic forces led American companies to their most profitable year in the compilation’s 53-year history.

The big retailer posted a more than 11 percent increase in revenue to $351.1 billion and profits of $11.3 billion, according to the magazine’s annual ranking of the nation’s largest companies.

Nipping at Wal-Mart’s heels was 2006 title-holder Exxon Mobil, which had $347.3 billion in revenue and the highest profit in history by a U.S. company, reaching $39.5 billion.

Collectively, the Fortune 500 raked in profits of $785 billion in 2006, the highest since the list’s inception in 1954. It marked a nearly 30 percent jump from 2005, and walloped the previous record of $444 billion, reached in 2000 at the peak of the technology boom.