Top companies
Volkswagen leads the national rankings. Who comes next?
German business is in top form. In only three years, the country’s 500 largest companies have increased their turnover by an average 27.8%, according to the German daily Die Welt. Both here and in the business ranking published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), car maker Volkswagen leads the field. Since taking over Porsche, the Wolfsburg-based company has outstripped all its competitors – whether in terms of turnover (193 billion euros in 2012), workforce size (550,000 employees worldwide), profits or market value. The runners-up in the FAZ’s ranking of top German companies are E.on (energy), Daimler (automobiles), BASF (chemicals), Siemens (engineering) and BMW (automobiles). While pursuing its ambitious goal of becoming the No. 1 automobile manufacturer, Volkswagen also made the Top 10 of the world’s biggest companies (in terms of turnover). There, VW ranks eighth, right behind rival Toyota.
