Dublin pharma group makes Top 100 global companies

Fiona Reddan

Dublin-headquartered Medtronic is the only Irish company to make a list of the world's 100 most valuable companies.

Published on Tuesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the list puts Medtronic, which completed its $49.9 billion acquisition of Covidien earlier this year, in 68th place, with a market capitalisation of $111 billion. Thanks to its acquisition of pharma group Covidien its market cap soared by 80 per cent during the year, putting it among the companies with the largest relative increases in market cap.

Medtronic ranked in fourth place in the most recent Top 1000 survey from The Irish Times, behind Microsoft in top position.

Elsewhere, the survey shows that Apple has retained its crown as the world's most valuable company ($725 billion) increasing its market capitalisation by 54 per cent (+$256 billion) compared to last year, despite returning $56 billion to shareholders in 2014. It is now almost twice as big as the second largest company (Google $375 billion) and almost 10 times larger than the smallest in the Top 100.

The survey also shows that US companies are extending their leading position, with over half of the world’s Top 100 listed companies coming from America (53). China/Hong Kong now has the second most companies (11) with Britain in third place (8).

Clifford Tompsett, capital markets partner at PwC, said: "The US has increased its domination of the ranking – seven of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20 are American. Looking at these companies, the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway and Facebook, it is apparent their success has been driven by innovation and their global reach.

“US corporates have also more aggressively used their scale and relatively higher valuations to increase their growth through strategic acquisitions. With these advantages, risk appetite and drive, other countries will have their work cut out to compete with the US on the same level.”

The entry point for the Top 100 is now $85 billion compared with $45 billion in 2009, with the average market capitalisation of a Top 100 company now $162 billion compared with $84 billion in 2009.

The Chinese internet giant, Alibaba went straight into the Top 100 with a market cap of $168 billion at IPO increasing to $205 billion at March 31st, 2015.