RETAILING

Wal-Mart Predicts $84 Billion in Sales: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the retailing company started by Sam Walton just over two decades ago in rural Arkansas, is poised to top $100 billion in sales next year and become the world’s largest company not too long after. Already the world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart told shareholders at its annual meeting in Fayetteville, Ark., that its sales this year will soar to $84 billion. “At the current rate of growth of 25%, Wal-Mart sales will hit $100 billion by 1995,” said John Eade, retail analyst at Argus Research. That will put it in an elite club of giant oil and auto companies that have reached that lofty sales level. And if it maintains its longstanding growth rate of roughly 20% a year, it will challenge General Motors Corp. as the world leader in sales just two years after. GM’s sales are about $135 million, and it has a much slower growth rate.